I agree with you in principle, but I was disappointed that Stewart wasn’t able to make a better showing against Sen. Frothy Lube. For example, I would have loved to see Stewart bust out some of the studies that have been done on people who had been raised by gay parents, and how those people tend to grow up to be more stable and succesful than kids raised by heterosexual parents. Or (and he touched on this briefly, but could have driven the point home harder) that marriage as practiced in present day America is a relatively new invention, and not something that’s been unchanged for 4,000 years, as Santorum claimed. Santorum’s position is intellectually and morally bankrupt, and it is not at all hard to demonstrate this. Stewart could have done better, IMO. But, of course, he still did pretty good for a stand-up-comedian-turned-fake-news-anchor in the first place, which is twice as good as I could expect from any “legitimate” journalist on TV these days.
I thought Jon Stewart did a great job. This is what he probably meant when he said people like Tucker Carlson and Paul Begala were hurting america by preventing intelligent, civil debates. Jon presented his opinion and Santorum presented his, and they did it in a civil matter. I doubt anyone who believed in gay marriage watched that episode and said ‘wow that Santorum makes some damn good points’ because at the end of the day he really didn’t have any. But I’d bet a few people watched it and became more tolerant/open to the idea of gay marriage as a result of it.
Yeah that bothered me too. Marriage was a property arrangment filled with physical violence that was designed to sire children which were physically and mentally abused for the vast majority of human history. Or that gay marriage is just as good as heterosexual marriage.
http://www.narth.com/docs/does.html
“These studies find no significant differences between children of lesbian and heterosexual mothers in anxiety, depression, self-esteem and numerous other measures of social and psychological adjustment,” said the authors.
Does, “wow, Santorum actually has a good point” count?
I seriously doubt that anyone’s mind was changed – on either side – by last night’s interview, but I think it’s a little arrogant to assume that only the “other side” would have anything to gain from it. I’ll never agree with Santorum’s point, and I definitely don’t think it’s good enough to build legislation around, but it is a good point. (I can disagree with a point but still consider it to be a good one – YMMV.) On the flip side, I don’t think that Stewart presented enough of a counterpoint (deliberately or not) to make anyone who agrees with Santorum have a reaction that mirrors mine. Maybe that’s arrogant of me to assume, but oh well. 
Actually, he DID point out that marrying for love and raising a family is something that we’ve only seen in the past 200 years or so-that marriage was originally about property.
Moderator speaketh: Look, this forum is supposed to be about arts and entertainment, not about politics. I realize that it’s a fine line with the Daily Show, but most prior threads have been about the show’s entertainment value, and not about the guest’s politics. So, please try to maintain that subtle distinction.
- A discussion about the entertainment value of the show goes here
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The moderators have been slightly loose on this before, because it’s a border line case. The show is a comedy show, but there’s substantial politics under that guise. However, neither Ukelele Ike nor I want to have to moderate political discussions.
FWIW, Jon Stewart cracked wise on last night’s show abouthow lame his interview was.
What’d he say? Having seen the interview but not having enough quota left to see last night’s show I’m most curious; it was a lame interview but I agree with everyone else who said that he can’t go for the jugular without seeming hypocritical.
Go to the show’s site off of comedycentral.com and you can view a lot of the recent headlines and interview. 
Was he the guy that had the book about people ruining America? That argument was brutal. I have a tendancy to miss shows (knowing I can catch up online makes it worse) and that was also the episode where I noticed the couch was gone :(.
I’ve noticed that that is one of the things that 9/11 changed for the show. I think a lot of people (in the show and watching) began to see the celebrity interview schtick really didn’t mean anything. The Ludacris and John Leguizamo interviews stick out in my mind as being shallow and fake, but when he has Collin Powel or someone who wrote an interesting book I pay more attention.
I like how when Stewart has a guest he doesn’t “put their feet to the fire” and doesn’t claim to. When he had Zell Miller on he was surprisingly polite, he even told him he disagreed with almost everything he stood for but things Zell has his heart in the right place.
Very roughly paraphrased:
A lot of you have given your feedback on our show last night. Two camps are emerging. One group says “It sucked”. The other group (said in a rising high pitch) “IT SUCKED”.
Ah yes, the 4,000 years of human history. So Santorum is one of those who takes the Bible literally and reckons the age of the Earth as about 6,000 years, give or take?
Nope, not a fundamentalist, but he does feel more akin to conservative Catholics. I don’t want to put the thread further into GD territory, but this recent NY Times Magazine profile by Michael Sokolove is a good read for everybody here.
As for Stewart, I think he was making his own points subtly, and the audience was with him, but he was also a terrific interviewer. He called Santorum on his beliefs when he disagreed but also let the guy express them, which is only fair. For a show with a strong host POV and going after the guests with both barrels, you can check out Bill Maher. I mean you, because I gave up in disgust on it last spring–the smug self-righteousness coming from both guest and host was given free reign, and the audience was so rambunctious attacking anybody who expressed any doubts at the ultra-liberal side of things that Bill himself (it’s a live show) would have to stop and ask them to tone it down, since they were hooting so loud at people like Santorum and applauding so much that they stole precious time from everybody on the stage. No conservative (or moderate) will come near the show now even though Bill realizes what’s going on and begs for them and non-radical audience members to come (show’s on hiatus until August FWIW).
I don’t want that to happen to TDS. While some people here and elsewhere might get some satisfaction from hearing Santorum ripped apart by Stewart and the pieces devoured by the audience, you’d end up with an endless circle of predictable lib guests and Stewart spraining their shoulders patting each other on the back.
First off, not on the topic of Santorum, I thought the coverage of the Tour De France was absolutely HILARIOUS. I loved “Quitter!”.
Anyhow, I agree that it’s good that JS is polite and doesn’t really play hardball, but I do think he did a poor job of responding to what is, imho, an outright lie, namely Santorum’s claim that marriage has been the way it is for 4,000 years. John said something vague about properly rights and the 1700s, which Santorum ignored, but I was hoping he would have asked, in mock innocence, whether marriage today is the same as it was among the ancient Greeks, the Yap islanders, etc.
I did think he got off one BRILLIANT line, which the audience barely noticed, which was when Santorum was saying that we should legislate the ideal, and JS said something like “…and fight the war with the army we have”.