He’s not a partisan. He is liberal (and his audience even moreso, he’s had to shush them when they boo conservative guests or cheer his replies to them), and doesn’t hide that during the interviews, although he’s more fair and polite than most partisans, it’s still not meet the press. I still think the news segments are rather even-handed. Hell, I’d give him points for just having obscure political authors and newmaking guests, instead of yet another celebrity for him to drool over (although he dioesn’t do that either, he was brutal to poor Jennifer Love Hewitt)
As for attacking the Bush administration, that’s his job! He makes fun of the news, and the Bush administration is the news. He pokes fun at Kerry where he can, but Kerry gives precious few openings outside of “hey, I’m stuffy and boring!”* The attacks on Bush are getting more and more vicious lately because they holes in this adminitration are wider and it’s easier to catch them in blatant lies recently. When you can play a clip of Cheney saying one thing, and then an earlier clip of him saying exactly the opposite, that’s comedy gold.
*That strategy killed Gore but it may, or may not, work for Kerry. He’s giving precious few reasons why the undecided voters should vote for him, but Bush is giving plenty why they shouldn’t vote for Bush. But that’s another thread in another forum.
His treatment of Hayes was not played for laughs. It was not a riff.
Stewart has conducted serious interviews on the Daily Show before (well, serious with the odd wisecrack thrown in). In fact, he’s a pretty good interviewer, and in fact was doing a pretty good job at the start of the Hayes interview. I just think he fell down on the job towards the end of this one.
The show had just done a segment in which they discredited the argument that Iraq and al Qaeda were linked by showing contradictory statements from Cheney and Bush. Then they had a guy on the show who had written an entire book devoted to the argument who was given a chance to rebutt them. I thought that part was very classy.
Hayes didn’t really offer a very spirited defense of his argument. He looked pretty sheepish from the word go. I thought Stewart asked the right questions and pointed out the right chinks in his guest’s argument. “Shouldn’t we be sure of these things before we go to war?” is a perfectly legitimate question to ask. I think Stewart, who has a low tolerance for bullshit, just got fed up at the end. I’ve never seen him act like that before, but frankly I didn’t blame him. And it was funny (which is job one for him). If he makes a habit of it or adopts O’Riley’s tactics or something like that, I’ll stop watching.
I also thought it significant that Stewart gave Hayes the last word in the interview, even though Hayes blew it. He said something to the effect of “Well, don’t you think that the same people who are criticizing Bush for this would call for his impeachment if, in January 2005 after his reelection, al Qaeda attacked New York City with Iraqi chemical weapons?” If I had been sitting in Stewart’s chair I would have said “What Iraqi chemical weapons?” But Stewart let him get away with it.
Well now, let’s be scientific about this. It’s impossible to chart his reaction to a presidential administration from just one data point. Obviously the only scientifically reasonable thing to do is vote Bush out of office in November. If Stewart takes it easy on the Kerry administration, then you can fairly label him a partisan.
I was taken a little aback when Stewart started in on the “4 things about a country” which applied to Iraq, and several other countries. It was deathly silent and serious during this part which is pretty rare. Usually the last example would be a joke or something. Not this time.
In a way, it was nice to see Jon really flex his debating skills and get serious about a topic, without throwing in his usual self-depricating references about not being very smart.
In Hayes’ defense, the author was relatively humble about the book. Some peoples come on the show expecting a free mic for 5 minutes to do as they please and are upset when Jon makes jokes. At least he seemed to be willing to play by the rules of the show.
Do you think that Jon Stewart, back when he was doing stand-up (at least, I’m assuming he got his start that way; most comedians seem to) ever thought that one day he might be able to influence a presidential election?
Seriously, the guy has some POWER. He’s been very straightforward about the purpose of his show - humor, not news - but it’s clear that many people do view it as news.
I agree with Dewey on this one. Stewart played to the crowd at the wreckless expense of a man’s dignity, and that’s the cheapest comedy trick in the book, usually reserved for hacks and pretenders. Very beneath Jon Stewart.
This is what I don’t like about Stewart’s interview style. He’s constantly interrupting his guests to either make a joke or get his point across. The purpose of these interviews should be to get the guest’s point of view. We already know what Stewart thinks. We watch him every night. He even does this with guests that he clearly agrees with.
While he’s certainly entitled to ask challenging (even combative) questions when he doesn’t agree with a guest, his habit of dominating the interviews gets tiresome quickly. I think it’s a mark of a failed interview when the host has more talk time than the geust.
This was a man who tells lies in his efforts to shill shamelessly for a corrupt administration, and then he goes on a cable talkshow to shill shamelessly for book sales.
SHOW me the dignity that Stewart nosed out just so he could exploit it.
If such exploitation is reserved for “hacks and pretenders,” I’d say Stewart met your standard.
I don’t know how to show you that. It would be like showing my wife the beauty in Bobby Fischer’s queen sacrifice against Donald Byrne. A man cannot be shown what he cannot see.
Stewart did not insult Chase. He did not call him a liar. He did say that some of the arguments in the book were not supported. I suspect Chase thought Stewart was going to attack the connection, whereas Stewart attacked the justification for war. So Stewart found a hole in the argument that Chase couldn’t defend - and I have zero sympathy. Especially after Chase ended with that crap. (Yes in 2002 everyone thought there were WMDs, but by the time the war started it was obvious that they either did not exist or were not as prevalent as previously thought.)
I thought Stewart was going to ease off after the commercial, but it seems his line of questioning was deliberate, and not done in the heat of the moment.
I get my news from newspapers, so could those of you who watch the nightly news tell me if regular news sources covered the Cheney lie also? I hope so - I’d hate to think that only a comedy news show had the guts to tell the truth about this.
I was a little surprised at how Jon Stewart acted during the interview but on reflection not so much.
It seems to me that he’s slowly becoming more and more agressive during the interviews over a slow period of time. I remember the first time he asked some tough questions instead of playing patty cake with the person he was interviewing and how that changed my perception of him being a Jay Leno with a (fake) news show instead of another talk show.
I guess we’ll just have to wait and see if this is the way he’s going or if he’s just frustrated with all the BS and is lashing out.
My favorite was the Spice Girl who apparently thought it was a straightforward talkshow, didn’t understand that it was a comedy show, and was aggressively offended by him. Was hySTERical.
It is relevant to show that predicate phrases like “shill shamelessly for a corrupt administration” and “goes on a cable talkshow to shill shamelessly for book sales” are so general that they apply to practically every person even remotely associated with politics. Such phrases are meaningless spin. Why did you not ask Lissener how his characterizations of the man by those phrases were relevant?
**lissener: ** The sky is blue.
**Libertarian: ** “Blue” is such a general term; there are millions of colors that could be called blue, so that’s a meaningless statement.
**lissener: ** George Bush is a liar.
**Libertarian: ** “Liar” is so general that it would apply to practically every person even remotely associated with politics. Such phrases are meaningless spin.
**lissener: ** Hilary Clinton is a liar.
**Libertarian: ** You’re such a cleareyed and levelheaded political visionary. Can I be your friend?
I honestly believe Jon jumps in and cuts people off to keep the interview moving along - that segment is only 4 or 5 minutes, after all. Kevin Smith did call Jon on it once, but other than that the guests go along with it. Heck, some of them NEED to be cut off.
As for Jon’s treatment of Hayes…he let the author have his say (explained how the connections were made via someone outside of the CIA) and then Jon pointed out that some of those sources seemed a bit dodgy. I’ll give Hayes credit for ADMITTING that the connections seemed dodgy - heck, I wonder if he believed them himself - but he really lost me when he poo-pooed Iran’s use of mustard gas during the Iran/Iraq War. FYI, the former has taken some British sea men into custody for traveling half a mile into their waters, so things in THAT country will probably be heating up soon…
I think what surprised me most about the interview was how Jon was NOT taking the subject lightly. I was more astonished with his interview with Jennifer Love Hewitt. Its one thing to take the gloves off for someone justifying a war that seems to have less and less justification every day, but another to riff on someone there to plug a movie.