Jon Stewart, and Bill O’Reilly’s Dildo

It’s a pretty good example of how strange this election has become that America’s best liberal comedian has James Carville snorting in outraged indignation, while the dourest, nastiest demagogue on the right has the entire national liberal community just laughing their asses off.

Bill O’Reilly has been accused of making harassing sexual phone calls to one of the executive producers of his show. In one of the more memorable specifics, he’s accused of saying that he had a battery-powered device inserted in his anus while he was speaking to her. That lead one brilliant wag (ok, it was me) to suggest that he change the name of his tv show, “The No Spin Zone” to “No Spin. Just Vibrate.” 

Jon Stewart, as everyone knows, went on Crossfire and pretty much tore the place to shit. Aside from stating the painfully obvious (he called Tucker Carlson a dick), he echoed the widespread disgust growing among viewers with the mind-numbingly stupid kabuki that passes for political discussion on the toob these days. 

Stewart, armed with a sense of timing that Jack Benny might envy, explained that the phony shouting matches, which he said related to actual debate in much the same way that pro-wrestling related to physical conditioning, were hurting America, and would they stop it? If you haven’t seen the video clip of the interview, I recommend you see it.

http://homepage.mac.com/duffyb/nobush/iMovieTheater231.html 

Tucker Carlson, who really is a pompous, deceitful little dick who affects the pose of being the next William F. Buckley of the right, growled that Jon was a lot funnier on his own show. “I won’t be your monkey,” Jon shot back.

Back about 2000, James Carville had about the same sort of cachet among liberals that Stewart enjoys today. He was seen as the sharp-witted and agile warrior who, if he didn’t have the answers, at least knew what questions to ask. He was the scourge of the right wing, and wrote several books, including the admirable “We’re Right; They’re Wrong.” I had nothing but respect for a man whose moral basis for his politics stemmed from reading “To Kill a Mockingbird.” He was funny, he was incisive, he operated from a steadfast political ideology and with a solid moral basis, and he was what Stewart is today.

Most importantly, he exposed the constant propaganda, lies and dirty tricks of the right, and made liberals realize how badly the right had hijacked the public discourse, twisting it into a Goebbelsesque parody of an independent media.
.
But then he became one of the Jabberwookies on the television blabfests, and “The Copperhead” was slowly defanged. While still presenting the “liberal” side of the shoutfest, he simultaneously negated the impact of his thoughts, bringing them down to the level of the hoarse shouts of the right, and became just another player in the corporate pretense that volume equals information. 

So when he snarled that Jon Stewart, by criticizing shows like Crossfire as being “harmful to America,” had revealed himself to be “a pompous ass,” I was saddened, but not surprised. You have to admit, Carville looks cute in his Time/Warner pink tutu.

Thanks to the internet, millions more have seen the Stewart interview and can form their own opinions about whether Jon Stewart was being a pompous ass or not. (His phony correspondents on his “newshow” have been having fun calling him that ever since). People can draw their own conclusions. But it’s clear that Stewart, with his condemnation of the low level of discourse and open pandering to the right, hit a resonant chord with most people. (I’ve heard him compared to Howard Beale, the demented newscaster who has a meltdown on TV in “Network,” and it’s a sign of how far the television media have fallen that these days, Howard wouldn’t look too far out of place on Faux or CNN). Even the studio audience at Crossfire were laughing and applauding him wildly. 

And nobody, but nobody, seems very impressed with or sympathetic to Tucker Carlson’s whines that Stewart wasn’t funny, or agrees with James Carville that Stewart was “a pompous ass.”

The commercial media in America is a disgrace, and the so-called “debate shows” are a joke. Stewart only pointed out the obvious, and Carville only lowered himself in defending that travesty by attacking Stewart personally. 

Well, what the hell. Carville didn’t need that credibility anyway.

But if Carville lost credibility, at least he had some to begin with. CNN is still a pack of whores mindlessly pandering to the Rush Limbaugh crowd because their corporate owners see them as being the most revenue friendly. Faux News still deliberately and maliciously lies to the American public. Bill O’Reilly, whether the accusations against him are true or not, is still a sleazy jackass, and Faux, in true neo-fascist fashion, is trying to convince a judge to rule in advance of the action that firing the executive producer who filed the sexual harassment lawsuit won’t be a retaliatory act, but came about as a direct result of actions to be invented later. 

Ted Koppel, who used to be a credible journalist himself, got in a snit because not only were Jon Stewart’s ratings beating out Nightline, but Jon remarked that people took it more seriously as a source of information.

There’s a simple reason for that. Jon Stewart and his crew at The Daily Show are the only news program out there that is openly skeptical of government, and is willing to call idiotic actions and events what they are. Iraq IS a “giant mess o’ potamia,” Putsch really is a blundering, arrogant fool, unable to put five words together in sequence without help. Tucker Carlson, trying unsuccessfully to retain some of his undeserved dignity, whined that Stewart was a sell-out who “sniffed John Kerry’s throne” because he “didn’t ask tough questions.” But Tucker Carlson, who never was a journalist and never will be, doesn’t understand: a good journalist doesn’t ask the tough questions, he gets the tough answers. A journalist who can charm a politician into admitting a screwup is far more valuable than a corporate puppet who bullies guests his masters don’t like.

Jon Stewart, with his fake news show and honest look at government, is much closer to being a journalist than the whole sorry pack at CNN. And the talking heads at CNN and the rest of the television media, indolent, pampered, out of touch and VERY well cared for by their corporate masters, are much closer to being clowns.