IMHO: Listen to what Stewart says.
His show makes fun of the absurdity of the situation. His show is successful because the situation is absurd. But the situation being absurd does not help America.
Crossfire, in his opinion and in mine, only contributes to the absurdity. You have a guy from the left and a guy from the right lapping up and spewing out the bullshit fed directly to them from their respective parties. Instead of challenging the shit talking points that each party spews (John Kerry as the “most liberal senator” is one fine example, there are hundreds of others on each side of the aisle), they just look to yell it out louder. Instead of discussing and dissecting the issues, the Crossfire and Hardball guys reduce everything to sound bites and talking points. There is absolutely no substantive debate to the actual issues forwarded by these shows. Stewart came on and tried to alert them to that.
This is contributing to a perceived decline of democracy in this country. The presidential debates were largely seen as “boring” and John Kerry was criticized as throwing too much facts and data around. In a damn policy debate. Because the average viewer’s mind is blunted to the point where a 2 minute answer seems like it drones on and on because everything else is a 15 second sound bite.
Stewart on The Daily Show has taken issues with the talking points, and when a particularly juicy one comes along, he demolishes it. He is not afraid to go after partisan mouthpieces who spew those data as well. But this is a newly adopted role for him, and he is not a trained journalist, nor a trained political scientist, nor an economist, nor a media analyist. Like me and I’m sure many of you, he and his writers read a few blogs and read a few newspapers and op-eds every day. We go to the primary sources when inconsistencies arrive. And we make up our minds. The cable news shows have forgotten how to do this. Their experts and hosts are all partisan shills. So the same 10 talking points are repeated every day and left unanalyzed. And Stewart, consistently, is the only guy on TV trashing this bullshit. So he comes on Crossfire to ask the real journalists to take over this role or at least help out a bit.
I think that Stewart gave Kerry a pretty rotten interview, but I think that he is right to claim that he is just a fake news show. Again, not a trained journalist here. Watching Stewart, he interviews three types of people well:
- Other comedians. An example is Will Ferrell when he was promoting Anchorman. It was a hilarious interview in which they just played off of each other.
- People who are at ease, don’t feel they need to pander, and he doesn’t need to impress. An example is Bill O’Reilly from last week, which was a great back-and-forth.
- Partisan shills who present some bullshit line, which he uses to rub their nose in it. An example is Henry Bonilla, a Congressman from Texas who came in unprepared and parroting the “most liberal senator” line. Stewart made him look foolish. Again, this is a new role for Stewart and the reason he gets mad props here and everywhere else is because he is the only person on TV doing this. Not the “news debate” shows, not the national news, not anybody on TV. Which was his point to Begala and Carlson.
Kerry was in a different class, and provides a tough interview. You see the same thing with plenty of other of comedy hosts (Leno, Letterman run into this kind of guest far more often). Stewart was intimidated, Kerry was intimidated, Kerry is not naturally funny, and Stewart has like 10 minutes of interview time. Stewart has done find with people in the #2 spot like John McCain and John Edwards (during the primaries, before he announced his candidacy for president, which he eventually did on TDS). Kerry wasn’t in there; he was making his only TV appearance in a while and Stewart was trying to be nice and Kerry was trying too hard. So I understand it, even though I wish he had done better.
