Jon Stewart just SLAMMED Stephen F. Hayes

Cafe Society
1

WOW! Jon Stewart often has conservatives on The Daily Show, and he usually jokes around and doesn’t become too partisan in his sparring with them.

But tonight’s guest, Stephen F. Hayes, wrote a book that I gather defends the notion (officially discredited last week by the 9/11 commission) that there was a connection between Iraq and Al Quaida. Jon got serious and made some really thoughtful and perceptive comments about the flawed “Bush Doctrine.” Later in the interview, he just took the gloves off and actually referred to the book (and to the administration’s similar claims) as a “clusterf**k”!

I’ve always known Stewart was smart as well as funny, and now I think he’s as good as any serious TV analyst. (No, not just because he said “clusterf**k.”) Look out, Tim Russert!

2

Actually, he referred to the war as a clusterfuck. He’s done it before. He let The Connection stand after he commented that it didn’t really conclusively prove anything. Hayes didn’t really argue that point.

A nitpick, but yeah, he did take the gloves off today, in a way he rarely does even for his more conservative guests.

3

I just saw this as well, and frankly I was a little disappointed in Stewart. It’s one thing to nail a guy who’s being evasive, but Hayes wasn’t doing that – he was answering Stewart’s questions, even ceding points to Stewart where warranted. Stewart obviously takes a very different interpretation of the material Hayes looked at, which is fine, but I don’t think it’s terribly appropriate to essentially tell someone flat-out that they’re full of shit in an interview setting when all they’re doing is giving you direct answers you happen to disagree with.

FTR, I think Hayes’ conclusions probably are full of shit. But the way for an interviewer to handle that is to ask pointed questions (as Stewart did in the first half of the interview), and not to directly attack the interviewee or his work. Let the interviewee hang himself.

On preview: was it in fact “clusterfuck” that he said? I thought he tapped the book and said something like “this is a crock of shit.” Of course, it’s hard to be sure what with the bleeping.

4

Given that the book was such an obvious piece of partisan hackwork, I don’t see how Stewart could have done anything but challenge it. Any attempt to be “objective” would have given the work a legitimacy it did not necessarily deserve. Challenging Hayes was the only way to keep the debate anywhere near the center.

5

And I’ll go in with Dewey on the notion that Stewart’s personal attack on Hayes wasn’t warranted. I did not form a favorable impression of Hayes based on the interview, but simple name-calling was … uncalled-for.

6

What name calling?

7

My favorite part was when Hayes said that some claim against his stance was “unsubstantiated” or something like that and Jon Stewart, half under his breath, said (paraphrased), “You’re one to talk about unsubstantiated.”

8

That’s a good example, Qwertyasdfg. I don’t think that sort of active hostility towards a guest makes Stewart look all that great. It’s the same sort of vibe I get from Bill O’Reilly when he has a guest he disagrees with (granted, Stewart’s hostility is much, much milder).

What’s doubly irritating is that I know Stewart can be better than that. I’ve seen him totally take apart an interviewee while still remaining professional – mostly because he asks good questions and allows the interviewee to hang himself.

But every now and then he gets a guest that, for whatever reason, he just obviously hates from the second they step on stage. His interview with John Stossel was like that – Stewart basically mocked everything that came out of Stossel’s mouth (and not in a good-natured funny way, either). I agree that Stossel’s a blowhard, but that doesn’t mean Stewart’s interview technique was a good one.

An example: Stossel, in discussing (in his view) the notion that antitrust laws aren’t that great an idea, was raising a point that Standard Oil may not have been so bad, since they drove down oil prices thanks to economies of scale and the only real harm was done to their less-efficient competitors. This is actually a respectable view, and there are serious economists who hold it. But Stossel never got to finish the point, because Stewart just cut him off with a loud “you think robber barons were a good thing?” type comment and a bunch of rolling eyes and camera mugging.

A better interview technique would have been to raise pointed questions about more successful applications of antitrust law – the breakup of AT&T, for example, which unquestionably was beneficial to long-distance phone service consumers. But that would require a cool head, and like I said, Stewart was obviously pissed at Stossel before Stossel uttered one syllable.

9

My take is that the Daily Show writers and Stewart are just fed up with the Administrations lies. I don’t know when they tape the interview relative to the rest of the show, but today this guy came on right after they proved that Cheney was lying out his ass about this very topic. Contrast that to good natured, but funny, jokes about Clinton’s sex life and shoes.

But Cheney gives them the ammunition, what do you expect them to do?

I didn’t get that Stewart was going after Hayes personally, but rather the conclusions he drew from the evidence in his book. I know that’s not done in interviews, usually, but I think Stewart is now in favor of regime change.

I can just imagine Hayes’ call to his publicist the moment he got out of there. :smiley:

10

I just watched the re-run at 1 am, and Jon definitely did not call him any names. But I was wrong and Menocchio is right: it was the war he called a clusterfuck. He tapped the book with his pen at the same moment, which is probably why I thought he was also referring to it.

I’m even more impressed with Stewart on the second viewing. It was clear that he had read the book, was conversant with the issues, and had thought seriously about the whole situation. By and large I think he was very professional, taking into account his trademark use of humor.

Dewey may be right that the exchange Qwertyasdfg referred to went slightly over the line, but I agree with Evil Captor’s first post: Stewart didn’t want to give the book any credibility at all. (Although he did hold it up at the beginning and end of the interview, and give it the usual plug references. So I guess Hayes is happy.)

BTW, that exchange went as follows (I taped it):

Hayes (disputing Stewart’s claim that Iran used mustard gas against Iraq): I don’t think that that’s been shown.

Stewart (picking up Hayes’ book and laughing, but not nastily like Bill O’Reilly): Well, you’re no one to talk about what’s been shown.

I have to give Hayes a little credit, though. He was willing to concede points on the other side of his argument. He seemed to me a lot more reasonable than a lot of other right-wing partisans I’ve seen in the media. Unlike Cheney, who was caught in a flat-out lie in an earlier segment, Hayes didn’t lie, dodge, or change the subject to avoid saying that the other side might have a point.

But since Hayes is basically being an apologist for the ideologically slanted quasi-intelligence organization Bushco set up to circumvent career intelligence professionals and tell Shrub what he wanted to hear to justify the war at any cost, I can’t give Hayes too much credit.

11

How do you know what Hayes’ argument is? Stewart didn’t give him a chance to speak. I thought it was an awful interview. Stewart was quite unfair to him. I like Jon Stewart, but this consistent claim that he’s not a ‘partisan’ is getting old. He attacks the Bush administration on every episode. And lately, the attacks have been getting pretty vicious.

12

I love the Daily Show, but I thought Stewart went a little too far with that one. He did seem pretty hostile, and it ended up being a rather awkward interview. I actually felt kind of embarassed for him. He cut the guy off too many times. He should have given Hayes a little more rope and let him hang himself. He should leave the shouting-down tactics to O’Reilly and his ilk.

But Sam, be honest - you have to admit they’ve been pretty merciless with Kerry as well as Bush. In fact, Stewart does a pretty funny Kerry imitation.

13

True. A lot of it, though, seemed more like backpedaling than genuine concession to me. I should give it another look, for that and for Stewart’s performance.

Overall I thought Stewart did a good interview. I confess that I enjoy myself quite a bit when he momentarily loses it like that–he’s a smart, sharp guy who can’t stand bullshit arguments, and it’s fun to see him really nail somebody who crosses his threshold. At the same time, though, I was worrying about his professionalism and credibility during those few moments during this interview. He may have gone a little overboard, but it didn’t bother me overmuch. He still, as usual, asked good, hard-hitting (but not asshole-ish, a la O’Reilly) questions that revealed flaws in the other position and opened things up for debate.

And it’s not surprising things got a little heated…after all, the book seems to be quite partisan/apologist, and the news is full of tidings from the commission about there being no demonstrable link between Iraq and Al Qaeda–poor timing for this dude to be touting his book.

As to the question of Stewart’s partisanship, sure the show is left-leaning, but like blowero said, they don’t leave the Democrats alone by a long shot. It’s just that right now, there’s a hell of a lot to nail the Adminstration on–and a lot to get angry about, which it’s becoming clearer that Jon is. You don’t have to be partisan to be furious about the way the Administration has been handling things, IMHO.

14

This is a new one for me. What is the origin of this term? I can’t imagine such an event being negative, but that’s just me.

15

cluster fuck n 1. an unorganized mess, something that will be difficult to organize again. Some examples of things that could be “cluster fucks”: a car pileup, a messy room, an unorganized meeting.

http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~wrader/slang/c.html

16

I’ll concede that Stewart didnt’ actually call any names, however, he was rude enough to give the impression that he had. The Hayes guy was such a weaselly little hack, Stewart was doing a fine job of taking him apart without the overt hostility.

17

To me it seemed like Hays wasn’t all that interested in fighting for his viewpoint. JS said that the book would admit when something was only from one source or had not be backed up other wise.

It seemed to me that Hays just put this book out to score some cash off conservatives, not that he himself really believed it.

18

Have there been any official claims that Stewart is a partisam? I always thought it was perfectly clear that the Daily Show is a liberal-leaning program that’s uncommonly open to conservative guests.

As for the attacks on the Bush administration… well, it’s not as if they didn’t make fun of Clinton every other day. It’s just that the current admin is giving them an awful lot of ammunition and the war/election happens to be the issue on everyone’s mind.

19

You people crack me up.

If Stewart’s opinion differs from yours, you judge him by the same standards you’d hold the New York Times to.

Jon Stewart calls the Daily Show, explicitly, fake news.

It’s like SNL, or Laugh In, for god’s sake. It’s not Nightline.

It’s a standup routine, for chrissake, not a newscast. He takes elements in the news and *riffs * on them. Anyone who goes on his show and is naive enough to think he’s gonna be immune to the riff is an idiot and deserves what he gets.

Newsflash to future guests of the Daily Show: You are a prop in a comedy routine. Accept that, or stay the fuck home.

The rest of you, if you turn to the Daily Show for your hard news, and insist on unbiased journalism from what’s essentially a half-hour version of SNL’s Weekend Update, well, you crack me entirely up.

20

Every year around Februrary there’s another set of articles about how ‘more people than ever’ are using the Daily Show as their primary news source.

This year, Stewarts response was something to the effect of “Well, they’re probably high.”

That man rocks.