The phrase trod into a minefield just entered my mind.
I think it's delightful. Jon Stewart has always given his critics ample time to come on the show and argue why he's wrong, and in the vast majority of occasions he has made them look positively silly - it was an open secret in Washington that conservatives frequently hated to go on his show because he had an extreme talent in making the obscenely obvious politicization of decent and totally middle-of-the-road policies by hackwing pre-purchased Senators and Representatives seem like the ridiculous, anti-American shit it was. That's why I always gained a
little respect for conservatives who went on the show, because they were really on uneven footing.
On modern cable news, these failed journalists have to pretend every story has two equal sides... you just become very good at hiding your intent from the average attention span of the American Audience, which is like under eight minutes or some shit. So Fox News only has to pretend long enough to show they have a Democrat and Republican both debating a policy, but not long enough to show they got the most pathetic, anxiety-ridden Democratic candidate known to man who can barely string a sentence together, for example. MSNBC just is terrible at hiding it, so they're just don't even bother. They should just call themselves Liberal-By-American-Standards-Which-Really-Is-Not-Liberal-At-All-but-Whatevers-NBC.
But anyway, because of this fact, they are frequently giving equal air time to bonkers shit. For example, modern cable news still gets away with calling the Climate Change subject a 'debate', and absolutely love to pretend this debate is in some way eventful or equally credible. Of course, there are not two sides to the Climate Change debate. There is
one side that has pretty much any high profile, storied climatologist on their side and the other "side" who
just make up bullshit in which zero evidence is there to support any of it. Any real journalist would be pointing out the disparity in credibility - one being on par with, say, bigfoot sightings - but refuse to do so, because the far right has politicized the subject into oblivion.
A show like Daily Show doesn't have that obligation. He
has no problem attacking Obama, but he doesn't try to pretend every story has equal sides. And because his weapon is humour, he can cut right to the heart of how ridiculous something is without making it seem like a politically incorrect jaunt into territory that can be misinterpreted by more stupid people.
Other people can do this job, but Jon Stewart was particularly effective... because he actually was well read and did have a rather decent grasp of the subjects he was impaling, but also because he also could balance the serious moments (
9/11,
Eric Garner) with the pathetic and hilarious political flubs of the people meant to represent us. He made mistakes like anyone else, and he is no expert. But unlike most, you do get a sense of genuineness to his beliefs, and he tries his damnedest to defend it with actual facts. There's not a lot of fakeness beneath that veil. He's not gunning for office, and he's not a fatuous journalist who is arguing behind the scenes how much blood they can show without seeming to
relish in all that death because hey ratings all all that jazz.
But by all means, I do want to see a well rationalized argument against the dude. I've disagreed with many of his politics over the years. But I hope people have better arguments than
NogibTC, because that was beyond weak.