Stossel is like Dennis Miller, an extremist liberal born again into an extremist conservative.
Pulitzer prize winning Jon Stewart was very liberal, but instead of swinging toward the extremism of conservatism, he’s now an avid moderate who skewers those living at either end of the spectrum.
The oversimplifications Stossel made were just really ludicrous. I couldn’t imagine anyone holding their tongue. I like Jon better when he can actually make a joke without sounding like he’s not paying attention.
and moriah - I don’t think that’s such a bad thing. The fact is that politicians from either side tend to ignore common sense far too often.
I don’t know. He was interviewing Val Kilmer a while ago, and Kilmer was being a bit of a dick. When Kilmer asked him if he had seen his new movie, he said: “Are you kidding? Ten bucks for that piece of sh*t??”. It was hilarious.
You kids today. “Goofballs” is 60s drug slang referring to barbituates. Not that some of the others weren’t made up.
As for Stewart and other guests, he’s been pretty gracious and polite with many of the conservatives I’ve seen on the show. The Gingrich interview was very jocular and civil, as was McCain, Dole, etc.
I noticed Jon started getting serious guests on after 9/11, like he realized that he had the duty to edjumacate us idjits that get our news from Comedy Central (not that I blame him). I think he feels that the gap between fake news like himself and “real” news is shrinking (thanks in part to folks like Stossel), and it scares him.
Jon’s liberalism peeks out during interviews, and he doesn’t try to deny it, really (the news segments are about as evenhanded as you can get on a satire program in a tiome where conservatism rules). I remember a while back a conservative guest got booed for pro-Bush statements, and Jon apologized and politely bitched out the audience. He’s as fair and gracious as he can be.
I believe I remember him cracking wise about how hard it was to book celebrities, post 9/11. Most of them probably didn’t want to appear all happy and movie-promoting a short distance away from Ground Zero. And probably a lot of them just didn’t want to be in NYC at all in fear of what could happen next.
There was definately a shift in guests, though, after 9/11. And I think it’s a better show for it.
As I recall, Stossel did the show panning the program, and then mentioned in the last minutes that he owned the beach house. Still managed to give me a stunned look, because with that line Stossel admitted that his TV special, ostensibly made to create outrage about a stupid govt program, would have no effect whatsoever.
But what I love about Stossel is that he can’t control his fuzzy little dog, despite repeated visits with a behaviorist!
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I don’t know. He was interviewing Val Kilmer a while ago, and Kilmer was being a bit of a dick. When Kilmer asked him if he had seen his new movie, he said: “Are you kidding? Ten bucks for that piece of sh*t??”. It was hilarious.
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That does sound very funny. It does sometimes get bad when the guests think they’re funnier than he is- anybody else remember Paul Rudd’s disgusting stories a month or two ago?
On last night’s show, Ralph Corddry, made fun of the show and Stewart with Stewart’s participation. It was not only hilarious, but was possibly meant to point out, yet again, that the show is a news parody show and to not take anything on it seriously.
However, many times they don’t even have to try; they just show clips of other news shows and let their ridiculousness stand on their own (like the msnbc coverage of Martha’s trial outcome).
But with his interviews, especially the non-celebrity ones, Jon Stewart shows more intellect than most television interviewers. I’d put him up there, sans the comedy quips, almost with Charlie Rose.
Last night was pretty classic in it’s own right. The whole bit about “story packages” from the Republicans being sent out masquerading as real news was pretty deplorable. And a story that seems to be largely ignored, as usual, by the major media outlets. Above all, it was hilarious the way they skewered it, in their own, self effacing, way.
I spend the better part of my slower days surfing google news to keep up with curent events. I count on the Daily Show to catch the stories that the most of the media chooses to ignore.
I swear, if I posted something on here every time I thought TDS did something notable, I’d have quadrupled my post count.