I think Stewart’s point was that they claim to be debate (or he thought they were claiming to be real debate), when they’re not. Like if the Daily Show were to claim to be news.
There’s nothing wrong with being entertainment, if you’re honest about it. I think he would have gotten his point through to them if he hadn’t confused it with his objection to their being no real debate forums available. (Although it’s understandable. If you work for a fake news show and deplore the state of real news, what are you to do? Turn your entertainment show into a news show? No, you have to take it up with people who claim to be doing this job, but aren’t.)
I had something insightful, then realized it was stupid.
In the hopes that this isn’t stupid:
I don’t think the news media can justifiably claim to be entertainment and use that as a license to behave as entertainment. I’m no great social or political theorist, which should be obvious, but I do tend to see the news as being, at least to some degree, the fourth estate. That is, they really are like a branch of the government in their ability to choose what information gets out there, its accuracy, its slant, its relevance and its relative importance are all big decisions that seriously affect the course our society and gov’t takes on important actions. Because of that, I do feel that they have a big responsibility to do the right thing, whether they want to be entertainment.
Tucker could have argued that Jon’s claim that his show is lead in by a show about puppets making prank phone calls is like a pro athelete wearing a t-shirt that says “I am not a role model.” Whether The Daily Show needs to take on the mantle of responsibility to the extent that its coverage at least be fair and maybe in depth is a debate I don’t want to get into. But there may be a fair point to be made. (BTW, some of the best, insightful questions I’ve heard of guests have come from Stewart. I think he does do good interviews and is funny.)
That question doesn’t change the fact that Crossfire is on a news network and functions as part of The Press. I don’t think they could just say it is entertainment and use that to justify sound-byte-styled shots as a substitute for real debate. Hell, they could have fistfights on the show and still have good debates—they could just keep the points factual and logically valid, and peel some more layers off the onion. Real debates don’t have to be nice. Real debates can be very ugly.
Of course, you’re right. Personally (and as I said in a post above), I think that Stewart is correct. But I also think that Carlson and Begala (Carville, I’m not so sure about, and I’d emphatically agree with Stewart that the “Douchebag of Liberty” mantle fits Novak) are having a real debate…within the confines of what can realistically appear on TV. It just doesn’t fit the reasoned, plodding, methodical mold people expect when they use the word “debate”. (Granted, I’m exaggerating a bit for effect, but didn’t I just summarize the main thrust of what Stewart is calling for?) I also think that the entertainment value borders on incidental; the point is the distilled, bumper-sticker zingers.
And again, just to be clear - while I think it’s an inevitable state of affairs, I shudder to think that it is the best the media provides.
If any of you have ever gotten a chance to see the BBC’s program (or should it be programme ;)) Hardtalk with Tim Sebastian, you’d know just how much fun it is to watch politicians, business execs, and other power figures, squirm in their seats as they’re being assaulted by Tim’s aggressive and incisive questions, zero tolerance for evasiveness, and impeccibly researched questions. (Hardtalk must have the most cracking research staff in the industry.) When I lived abroad, I used to watch this show all the time, even though most of the time I had no idea who was being interviewed.
And he goes after the left and right with equal abandon.
While Tim Sebastian can be a little over-the-top in his approach, America absolutely needs a program of this kind of caliber.
I had mixed feelings about it although I loved seeing Carlson, the little bitch, get skewered. I agree with Stewart that it would be great to have an “honest” debate show where people were looking to get to the truth rather than prove they’re right, (Of course, I wish this was true of the GD as well) but Stewart’s criticism is kind of like yelling at pro-wrestlers for not being boxers. He seemed to want to blame these two for the everything that’s wrong with the media today. He was also annoyingly passive aggressive, but on the whole I do really like Jon Stewart. I haven’t watched in a while but I’ve seen a couple shows lately and it seems he and his audience have really swung left. It’s probably more of the case that he feels he can let his position be known because his audience will tend to agree.
I think you have to do one thing to get Jon to go into attack mode, as he did on Crossfire and (to a lesser extent) Nightline, Hayes, Bonilla, Stossel, or even Jennifer Love Hewitt or Posh Spice (and I think I may have named all of his hostile interviews, anyone name another?): piss him off.
Okay, what pisses Jon off? Well, shilling utter shit on his show pisses him off. So does stating what he considers utter and undefensible bullshit. Being human, Jon has his own opinions on what’s bs and what’s not. And, like many of us, he’s more sensitive to bs coming from a position he doesn’t agree with.
Also, by virtue of being teh ruling party, the Republicans are throwing a lot more out there, and are a lot easier to dissect than the hypothetical effects of kerry’s policies. The result is that he looks a lot farther left than he really is, if all you consider is his fight pattern (after all, “the media sucks” is a nonpartisan, if contentious, position).
He’s really quite polite to right-wing guests that he likes. He’ll debate them, but not vivisect them like he did Hayes and Bonilla. He practically fawns over John McCain and Bob Dole.
I have to say, I do respect Koch for being at least honest enough to admit that he’s a one-issue voter, and that Bush’s domestic policy stinks on ice.
So since Stewart only goes after people who are spouting "bullshit’, or ‘talking points’, can someone name a time in the last year when Stewart attacked a Democrat or someone on the left the way he has a number of Republicans? Or are Democrats never guilty of spouting talking points or bullshit?
As for Hayes, he may well have deserved the attack Stewart levelled at him, but how would anyone know? He wasn’t given an opportunity to present his case. Stewart lit into him the moment he sat down and didn’t stop. Hayes finally gave up and sat there and smiled.
Even when he’s ‘nice’ to Republicans, he can’t resist taking shots. Marc Racicot was on last week, and Stewart fired a few shots his way, which Racicot just ignored. I think you guys are missing some of that.
I don’t think it’s so much that; it’s just that the Democrats have been effectively squashed. You never hear about them. Really, they can’t do much of anything, with both houses and the Oval Office locked up.
However, there’s more that Steward probably could be doing to skewer Kerry and Edwards. They’re prime comedy material. Did you see that skit on Mad TV, the Trading Spouses spoof with the Bush’s and the Kerry-Heinz’s? (…whoever that chubby guy who does Bush is…he’s effing brilliant…frighteningly similar voice and mannerisms…but I digress) That skit was some pretty brutal satire aimed with equitable accuracy.
If, on the other hand, you’re just talking about people he’s lit into on his own show, that’s a little tougher. I can’t think of any off the top of my head. Then again, considering that the “number of Republicans” he’s attacked equals “two,” I think there’s a strong case to be made that you’re arguing from an insufficient sample size.
Imagine a whole interview based on variations of the question “why would anyone want to make a crappy movie based on a comic that hasn’t been popular for twenty years?” and you’ll have a sense of how the Hewitt interview went.
Any analysis on the IMDB indicates that the movie in question is probably Garfield. Did you get the sense he just didn’t like her or couldn’t come up with anything to say?
I don’t know about “like” - but he certainly seemed not to respect her. It appeared that the interview was making her rather uncomfortable, and upon observing that I feel it would have far classier for Stewart to have toned things down.
CNN International airs a version of the Daily Show.
The impression I get is that Jon is fed up with being considered a news host. He wants to be a comedian, and since much of his comedy involves shining a light on the blatant BS we see in the media, contrasting what candidates say today with what they said last year, and so on–stuff that news shows should be doing but aren’t–people are getting the wrong expectations.
He may not know how to run the kind of debate show he envisions, but he does know how to recognize BS, and he knows that while BS is good fodder for his show, it’s not good for informing the public.
Begala didn’t get a pass, he just kept his mouth shut. Jon didn’t say a thing about the political ideology of either host.
And I think you’re making the same mistake that Begala did: confusing “more aggressive” with “real debate”. If you spout as many talking points as you can, as loudly as you can, that’s aggressive but it isn’t debate.
The sad thing is that Crossfire used to be a great political show - one of the few around who had real debates. That was back in the day when it was Pat Buchanan against Michael Kinsley. Buchanan was not as far out there as he is today, and Kinsley was often brilliant, and always entertaining to watch.
The new producers have turned it into a game show. So to that extent, I agree with everything Stewart had to say. I just think it was rude of him to choose to go on their show and say it. You have to remember that these guys are just doing their jobs, trying to professionals just like Stewart. They didn’t deserve to be harangued by someone who takes great sport in interviewing eccentric regular people and then selectively cutting and editing the footage to make the person look as stupid as possible. Stewart is right, he just chose the wrong venue for venting his rage.
I’d say he chose exactly the right venue. The people who watch TDS already know that cable news debate is a sham; by going on Crossfire, he got his point across to the people who actually watch cable news debate.
And by hijacking his own appearance on someone else’s show, he stirred the pot enough to attract a wider audience than he’d normally get. He mocks the media every day on his show, but that alone doesn’t lead to front-page articles in Salon or hundreds of thousands of people downloading the clips.
It isn’t rude. This isn’t someone’s house, it’s a TV show. They clearly had an idea that he’d be critical, since they had graphics prepared to attack his Kerry interview. They clearly Thought
It isn’t rude. This isn’t someone’s house, it’s a TV show. They clearly had an idea that he’d be critical, since they had graphics prepared to attack his Kerry interview. They clearly thought he’d be a lightweight, which he wasn’t. Kudos to Stewart for using the means he has available to speak out for what he believes in. It’s unfortunate that we tend to vilify people for that these days.
Was Mark Racicot the one who was on recently who, among other things, claimed that Saddam Hussein had been proven to have personally invited Osama bin Laden to visit Baghdad?
Since he included that in a long string of untruths, Stewart didn’t even call him on it. Very frustrating.
Even though it’s already been asked, I don’t think it was adequately answered. What happened in the JLH and Posh Spice-Beckham interviews? I hardly ever watch his celebrity interviews anymore because they are usually boring as hell. He’s no Oprah.
Watching TDS this week I think that Stewart is at least a little embarassed by his behavior on Crossfire and is using humor to defuse it. He has that, “My point was right but I was a prick about the way I went about it” look on his face every time he lobs out a joke about the incident. I liked that they showed Carville and Novak as their moment of Zen on the Monday show.
Also, I thought Koch made some salient points, even if I don’t agree with him on his conclusions, on the Monday show. You could tell that Stewart didn’t agree with him, and tried to get a couple of counterpunches in, but used kid gloves, either out of his respect for Koch’s mayoral work or possibly out of a sheepishness inspired by the Crossfire show.
Finally, regardless of how bruised Tucker Carlson’s ego might be, that show has gotten a lot of attention and the audience seemed to have loved it. I’d bet their ratings jump and wouldn’t be surprised if Stewart was invited on again.
