FAKE NEWS

Digging for the meaning of fake news' acceptance:

"Hipsters on the streets of New York are wearing 'Stewart/Colbert '08' T-shirts, promoting a Dream Team presidential ticket featuring the Comedy Central stars. And the subway is plastered with ads for Man of the Year, the new Barry Levinson film that imagines an American public so disgusted with politics that it elects a fake news anchor president.

Jon Stewart, host of The Daily Show, insists he's not running. But judging from the reverential reception he received at last weekend's New Yorker Festival, and the fact that tickets to his appearance sold out in about two minutes, there's a hunger for something truthful and authentic in American politics. Man of the Year suggests the place to find it is in fake news.

'I'm a jester. A jester doesn't rule the kingdom. He makes fun of the king,' Robin Williams' character (Tom Dobbs) says in the film, which opens tomorrow. Still, he's persuaded to run for president against a Democrat and a Republican who are indistinguishable. Dobbs is the child exposing the emperors for what they are - scripted, risk-averse career pols who haven't given a straight answer in so long they no longer remember how.

'If it was unpatriotic to question the government, we'd still be English,' Dobbs says during a presidential debate in the movie.

You'll never see Stewart in such a venue. He's a reluctant hero who doesn't want to shoulder the burden of educating a generation of 'stoned slackers' - Bill O'Reilly's inexact term for Stewart's audience. He repeatedly insists that he is only a comedian and that his show is about making jokes."