Though Anderson Cooper’s unexpected “hard to talk when you’re teabagging” comment (at 0:47) won the bad puns award, I thought both Daily Show and Colbert Report did banger jobs last night reporting on the Tea Parties, especially on what a “spontaneous grassroots thing” it was. I thought Colbert had the best moment though in his dissection of Glenn Beck’s “I’m going to be at the Alamo, because where’s more appropriate a place for this great thing?” comment; George Washington and Hannibal defending the Alamo against Nazis was brilliant (and at least as historically accurate as what Beck seems to think the Alamo was about).
But I loved the interview with Elizabeth Warren (part 1 here) on the Daily Show. She seemed at first to need a really stiff drink to loosen up, but once she got going and went into the history of regulations from 1792 on I thought it was one of the most informative and “why the hell aren’t CNN and other ‘news’ channels having this?” moments of the bailout coverage. Anybody else watch it and if so what’d you think?
No, I thought she was either clueless or pandering when she went on that rant and since she’s a politician I’ll go with pandering. It’s that or the person in charge of TARP knows less than a layman who pays attention about the development of economic theory in the past fifty years and our reactions to economic crisis.
Less regulation after Enron? When they worked out a new set of corporate accounting rules? And the idea that regulation could “adapt” to changing situations is so counter to the history of government that I’ll just ask for a cite of any time in human history where government regulation has successfully dealt with unforeseen changes in a market. (That’s not intended as anti-regulation rant of my own, BTW, just an acknowledgment that you can’t just handwave away the complications.)
I loved the “Obama is doing this literally overnight, it’s taken him a long time to get here.”
And then (Oliver?) corrects the interviewee, and she totally doesn’t get it.
“You can’t have literally over night, and over a long time, thats not possible”
“Yes it is”
“No, it’s not, if you say Literally over night, thats what it means, you can’t have both.”
And the moment of Zen :
Jon Stuart is a communist yadda yadda yadda. She ended up saying more about herself than a simple interview would have.
Great night for both shows. Loved the “MSNBC IS US!” Comment.
Daily show has been on for what, 10 years + right?
Colbert has 3 or 4 years in, right?
Yeah, I Think these things are evergreen for Comedy. If not, some news show would be. They fill in the niche there, and then some.
Slightly related : Is Hughleys Show on HLN still on? Hughley breaks the news?
Is Chocolate News still on?
What about David Spades Entertainment show? Has that officially been put to pasture?