Link or quote please. While at it, how about that exchange I quoted. If he is sane then Maddow must be self-righteous bitch.
Oh, please. :rolleyes:
Just for reference here’s Bill Maher New Rule - if you get 200K people better be about something…
Say what you will about Maher but his comment is spot on. For example, saying Obama is Hitler and Bush is war criminal are NOT equivalent statements that “poison” political discourse as Stewart is sanely offering.
I think the thing that bugged me the most was Stewart’s adamant stance that what he did was not news. It was comedy but it was not news.
But it’s a report on current events in the world. It goes through an editorial process. It goes through a fact checking process (and, despite his protests the contrary, it goes through that process for the same reason “real” news does: to not get things wrong).
In short, it does everything that “real” news does, it just does it with a comedic twist. Look, I completely get Stewart’s point that this type of comedy has been around forever and that the journalists are moving more into his arena than he is into theirs; nevertheless, I don’t agree with his argument.
He’s a news show. He’s seen by others news shows as a news show. He’s where the majority of 18-35 year olds get their news. I get that he has a vested interest in maintaining the illusion of comedy…but I don’t think even he believes it. It’s just something he feels compelled to say. But he’s news.
In the same way that you can protest that some bloggers aren’t real journalists. But you know…sometimes they are.
It’s getting to be a finer and finer line, but the issue and the rule there is that he IS a comedy show, and bound by different rules. Fox, CNN, CBS nightly news; they cannot get away with, nor would it be considered appropriate or tolerable; if they were to use satire and comedy to poke fun at people and situations. TDS can, because it isn’t a news show, even if, very sadly, too many people get their news from it.
I liked that the first thing he mentioned was Phineas & Ferb!
I really don’t know what’s not to get. Both sides are doing it, just to different degrees. It’s not an excuse to say “Well, the other side is doing it so much worse.” If one side is rating a 10 on the Unreasonability Meter and the other side is rating a 3, it’s not equivocation to say that both could try to bring it down to a 1.
Especially considering that in that clip Bill complains that the Republicans keep moving farther and farther to the right and expect the Democrats to meet them in the new middle. “If they’re at 10, then it’s okay for us to be at 3; if they’re at 15, then it’s okay for us to be at 5.”. No. We shouldn’t pretend that “less ridiculous than Glenn Beck” is a meaningful phrase.
The statements “Obama is Hitler” and “Bush is a war criminal” are equivalent in the sense that they both cross the same threshold. It doesn’t matter very much how much farther you go after you’ve crossed it.
The objection Stewart has to being labeled a “news show” isn’t to the implication that his show has news, but to the implication that his show should adhere to the same standards of conduct as all the other news shows.
Stewart is a satirist, whose target is the news media. He only reports stories and fact checks to the extent that it helps with the satire. He doesn’t go out looking for interesting stories that the public should know about, he goes out looking for absurdity in the way the media covers events.
Two very different things in my opinion. You can say that both require somewhat similar tactics, but it’s not accurate to lump both under the banner of “news show” and to assume that both should have similar standards of conduct.
That’s a ridiculous -and false- equivalence whether you state it or Stewart does. There’s simply no factual basis for the former comparison, but a reasonable legal case has been made for the latter charge. Even if one doesn’t buy the legal argument, those making the charge are basing it on actual deeds and statements made by President Bush during office.
Rather than “shutting down” discussion, the provocative statement about Bush attempts to prompt closer examination of certain questionable-at-minimum activities of the previous administration, activities which were not adequately questioned by those with both the power and responsibility to do so at the time. The statement about Obama just attempts to make him into a boogie man.
When Stewart criticized the left’s objection to Bush’s torture authorization because it supposedly “starts” from the assumption by some liberals that Bush is evil, my jaw dropped. When did we completely lose the concept of moral leadership in this country? We used to believe, as a society, that some abhorrent propositions need to be shouted down. I mean, I remember that it used to be considered proper to shut off debate in the structures of power about state sanctioned torture. Now, according to Stewart, we can’t even morally censure its proponents at the risk of invalidating our point of view?!
This attitude is farcical and dangerous. IMNSHO, it’s the type of thinking that enabled the Abu Ghraib and Gitmo abuses.
Except that calling Bush a war criminal --in the manner discussed in the interview-- is clearly not an attempt to prompt closer examination of his administration’s actions. It’s just shouting in an attempt to make Bush into a boogie man. There lies the equivalence.
You can still scrutinize the actions of the Bush administration, and you can still discuss whether Bush is a war criminal, but tactlessly screeching the truth can shut down discussion just as easily as screeching lies.
Hey, I’ll readily agree that all those Democratic congressional leaders calling Bush a war criminal and all those liberal talking heads who screech it nightly on cable news are just demonizing the man.
Except, I don’t remember that happening. I know there were a lot of protest signs saying the same, or worse, but I don’t remember it ever being pushed as a narrative by even one news organization, and I don’t remember opposition politicians ever remotely implying it. There was certainly never a major political movement a la the Tea Party where such a meme was central.
This is an instance in which folks decrying “false equivalence” are guilty of the same. Just now, you chose to select two criticisms and characterized them as equal. Let’s try this instead.
But now that I think about it, “Nazi” and “war criminal” really aren’t so unequal after all. Look at this list of convicted war criminals — it is impossible to deny the incredible proportion of this list is comprised of Nazis.
But we’re losing sight of the main point, which is this: demonization of your ideological opponents is toxic to constructive discourse, and when we’re talking about Important Things, such toxicity is proportionally destructive. If a certain kind of behavior is wrong when your opponent does it, you lose the moral authority to decry it when you engage in it yourself. Whether one faction does it more than the other certainly matters, but to use a metaphor, just because a killer may not be a serial killer, doesn’t mean he still doesn’t deserve some jail time.
Or to put it the way a kindergarden teacher would, “Two wrongs don’t make a right.”
Thanks for the link. I enjoyed the interview.
Sorry, but after all the disagreement above, this simple little comment at the end of the page made me smile.
Well done, sir.
To borrow from Bill Maher again, for the former there is no factual basis whatsoever and such comparison is stupid and sometime dangerous fear mongering. For the latter, you can factually say that each started at least one war under false pretenses in which innocent people died. Unless, you’re suggesting that only 5 million people puts you in war criminal category but I don’t think that’s what you’re suggesting; i.e. that in case of Bush, the threshold has not been met.
Oh, silly me, you are in fact suggesting something more profound - that a war criminal can only be a Nazi. Bush is not a Nazi ergo, Bush simply cannot be war criminal. Brilliant!
Find one example of such behavior. Just one. Every example that Stewart made in his interview was false. You find one example in which demonization of someone from the Right was not justified and thus person who demonized wrongly became exactly what he/she set out to expose.
But Hitler is a symbol of totalitarian dictatorships and genocidal extermination of a race of people, not starting wars under false pretenses. Sadly, dodgy reasons for going to war are far too commonplace, even in our own country, existing both before Hitler (Democrats’ pressuring of McKinley to declare war on Spain in 1898) and after (Democratic president Lyndon Johnson’s response to the Gulf of Tonkin incidents).
I am suggesting nothing of the sort. The page I linked to demonstrated that Nazis are a nothing more or less than a very well-represented faction of war criminals. Given that fact, is it not possible, even likely that the average Joe would envision a Nazi when the term “war criminal” thrown around?
[ol]
[li]Taliban Dan Webster[/li][/ol]
You previously asked what the message of the rally was (and I would assume, what larger point Stewart is trying to make. In his words, it’s “Let’s all take it down a notch.” I paraphrase that as meaning demonizing your opponents is toxic to civil, constructive discourse, and that most of us are guilty of it to varying degrees. So we all benefit if we behave a bit more civilly.
From all your posts, I don’t think I’ve seen you weigh in on this premise. So I ask… What do you think of that idea?
I think my problem with what Jon Stewart was saying was is that it completely ignores the fact that the left hated Bush for the things that he did. The right hates Obama for the things that Fox News says he might do or that he did but, in reality, actually didn’t happen.
I was hoping for an example of media flagged as Left that does the dishonest hatchet job. Discussing this election ad shows highly selective taste. Not only Stewart called him on it, even MSNBC anchor called Grayson on out of context quoting http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nndt0jMoGds
This is the opposite of an example I was looking for as your video and one I have from MSNBC clearly show that on the alleged Left media people are calling out one of their own when he clearly stepped over the line. This is what alleged purpose of media is.
So, to formulate my request more precisely, Id like to see an example of Lefty media flagrantly defending someone like Grayson. Because such an example would prove Stewarts claim from the interview. This example, in fact, defeats the idea that media on the Left is SAME as media on the Right as both they protect their own on the ideological basis and, as such, polarize the nation so “everyone should take it down a notch”. I think calling everyone to take it down a notch is empty slogan that solves nothing. It`s like telling a bully and an abused kid if you guys just take it down a notch you might get along. I call BS and in fact, accuse Stewart of purposefully muddying the water and offering credibility to incredible.
But, I understand it’s a moot point so I’ll take it down a notch.
As for what I think about the rally is what Bill Maher said in his New Rules segment I posted earlier.
The Daily Show has a little over a million viewers a night. Jon Stewart is not where a majority of anybody gets their news, and his show is not a news show. It’s a show about current events and the media, but they don’t break news.
There’s no obsession.
The rally was primarily a comedy event. The message was that civil discourse will do more to solve the country’s problems than demonizing and yelling and screaming.
Over a million users who watch it on TV. Their demographic is also the one most likely to watch it in other forms, whether it’s online the next day, or torrented that very night. I wouldn’t be surprised if the TV figures severely under represent the show’s reach.