But he does this during the bits, but not during the interviews, so it is irrelevant.
Perhaps you don’t remember his interview with Gomert during the RNC convention in New York. Gomert was doing his Kerry is the most liberal sentator ever bit, which was the current talking point, and Stewart knew where it came from and sliced the moron into little pieces. IIRC the Republicans kept people off TDS for some time after. he might be a bit more respectful now - but you don’t see McCain coming back, do you?
I dont see why Stewart would ever want to do the gig. He’s in the sweet spot of right now of being part political interviewer, part clown. He get’s to be both serious and goofy. The goofyness he gets to hide behind when he himself is challenged.
I want a Sunday morning political talk show called The Klaxon. The host would have a copy of everyone’s talking points, a pair of shooters earmuffs and a button to press that would start an ear splitting siren, aimed at whichever nitwit who uttered any pre rehearsed line.
Stewart has mentioned somewhere he is feeling burned out. He’s been doing The Daily Show for about 15 years now. He can be a superior interviewer because he actually reads the books the authors write and asks good questions and listens to the answers. Usually. He is dreadful at interviewing someone like Bruce Springsteen because he is so star struck. His political interviews used to be good, but he does fewer of them because even idiots like John McCain have realized that this is no puff ball interview and a stupid answer will result in a zinger.
Wouldn’t Stewart be way too partisan for a show like that? He has no problem skewering both sides on occasion but he is an unapologetic liberal. His current gig does not require any sort of neutrality.
That’s not balance, Mr. Todd. That’s capitulation, and abdication of any legitimate role you may have in the national conversation. And it’s one more piece of evidence that television cannot be trusted to deliver journalism.
Perhaps you have all forgotten that Stewart killed the show Crossfire on CNN by pointing out there inane talking head style of political discourse. I doubt he would have been interested in the position, but he would have done a better job than anyone who has held that chair so far. But there is no chance that NBC would have let someone like Stewart actually do that job. The point of the show is to fit the guest’s responses into the common condensed news scenarios suitable for the general public to digest in 30 seconds or less. Stewart would de-Internet-ize TV news media.
That quoted comment is everything wrong with the news media. Their goal is to sell to advertisers and not inform. To get eye balls they need guests, to get guests, they don’t make waves. Completely upside down.
I’d watch. A lot of people would–even if not from high-minded principles, but instead for the thrill of the Gotcha. Everybody loves a good Gotcha.
(Next step, of course, would be Post-Debate Fact Check shows being regularly-scheduled to alleviate the inescapable pain coming in 2016…)
The nearest thing to a hypothetical “Fact Check” show on now, aside from the embarrassing video evidence often unearthed by Jon Stewart, might be CNN’s “Reliable Sources.” In that Sunday morning show, the host cleverly avoids actually calling out the high and mighty as liars, by casting the discussion in ‘blue media versus red media’ terms. Even so, there are some good nuggets of actual fact-checking dispersed throughout.
Stewart would be a bad fit on Meet the Press, because it would rob him of his most valuable contribution to current political discourse, which is pointing out the consistent failings of our news media. I don’t want him on CNN, because that would limit his ability to criticize CNN for being a shit news network.
What’s weird is that Jon Steward was on CNN (sort of). Overseas, CNN International used to run a weekly edition of the Daily Show hosted by Jon Stewart that was a compilation of the best bits of the previous week’s episodes. The beginning and end was new Jon Stewart content and the rest was made up of clips. I always wondered why CNN put him on their network, when he made it clear that he despises them?