October 15, 2004
Jon Stewart on Crossfire
Every once in a while, we sit and fantasize about what we'd REALLY like to say to those blowhards on the political cable tv shows. Jon Stewart went on Crossfire today and actually said it.He also called Tucker Carlson a dick. And when Carlson snidely said that Stewart should just take a job at a journalism school, Stewart shot back, "You should go to one!"
Watching this is like going over the rainbow. He's rebelling so strongly against the format of the show that Carlson and Begala seemed like the fish out of water. Salon mentions it in their latest war room - they make the point that Stewart treated Crossfire like what it pretended to be - a show to talk about tough issues - and it showed that Begala and Carlson were completely out of their element.
And, for the first time, I grasped that Stewart could actually do a lot more good for the country on a show that wasn't The Daily Show. Before I wanted him to stay on TDS forever; now I want him to quit ASAP. TDS's format could continue to exist without him, but Stewart is the only one who could create the kind of show he'd like to see.
This was a truly sublime event. And I think people are going to underestimate the ripple effect it's going to have, probably somewhat under the radar. It was remarkable to see how unprepared Begala and Carlson were for being caught with their pants down -- and how clueless they were about the fact that Stewart is as influential as he is with young viewers and voters precisely because his humor is derived from a keen awareness that what people like B and C do is, as Stewart called it, hackery and nothing more.
The mistake people like B and C make is in thinking that young viewers and voters don't care. The reality is that they are sick to death of people like, say, B and C, who routinely demonstrate that they don't care about what their role is meant to be. Young people -- and Stewart -- aren't somehow arch and detached from what matters. They are detached from the hacks who pervert what matters.
And they really didn't have a clue.
Posted by: The One True b!X at October 16, 2004 12:28 AMI love Jon Stewart!!!!!!!!!!