harikari.com

Last week Jon Stewart criticized FOX News for being hypocritical about the use of sweeping generalizations of people based on their political beliefs and party affiliations. 

He ended the segment with by showing a clip of Bernie Goldberg saying that a liberal would never allow a child with Downs Syndrome to even be born and then responded to Bernie’s flagrant generalization with, “Go fuck yourselves.”

Bernie Goldberg appeared on Bill O’Reilly’s show to respond to Jon Stewart’s attack, and last night, Jon Stewart responded in full force, complete with gospel choir backup.

It’s genius.

Jon accurately describes FOX News as:  “a terrible, cynical, disingenuous news organization.”  (Note to Websters:  Use this in your next edition.)

One of the things Goldberg said that I found particularly revealing was that Jon Stewart should try social commentary.  Of course that’s what he does every night – through comedy – something Goldberg doesn’t seem to grasp. 

And, since this video ping pong match started over the use of sweeping generalizations, I will use Goldberg’s remark to make one of my own. 

Remember a few years back when Fox had its own comedy news show?  You might have forgotten because it wasn’t on for very long.  It wasn’t’ on for long because it wasn’t funny, and it wasn’t funny because conservative pundits like Bernie Goldberg don’t understand satire and are therefore incapable of producing it.

Last night’s Daily Showwas a little different.  Instead of the show starting with Jon behind his desk, he was stood center stage to do his impersonation of Glenn Beck and announce to the world that he was infected with cancerous progressivism.

After the introduction, he continued his Beck impersonation for another thirteen minutes complete with blackboard diagrams, nonsensical word dissections, and just the right amount of batshit craziness.

Marc Thiessen is out doing talk shows to promote his book, Courting Disaster:  How the CIA Kept America Safe and How Barack Obama Is Inviting the Next Attack.  It’s a book about how if our country stops torturing its war prisoners, WE’RE ALL GONNA DIE!!!!!!!!

Thiessen, who when asked by CNN’s Christine Amanpour if he’d submit himself to waterboarding, said:    ”No because it’s terribly unpleasant and I’m not a terrorist.  heh heh heh…”  (link)

Yes… “terribly unpleasant.”  More like “brutally excruciating” according to a review of recently released internal CIA documents describing the Bush Administration’s enhanced interrogation techniques.  Read all about it in the “Waterboarding for Dummies” article by Mark Benjamin over on Salon.com.

Thiessen will appear on The Daily Show tonight.

Here’s an excerpt from a review of his most un-American book written by a former senior military Interrogator:

First, Thiessen promulgates a theory that Islamic extremists are uniquely deserving of torture because they are doctrinally obligated to resist cooperating, after which they may disclose information. Of course this isn’t unique to Islamic extremists.  The U.S. military’s own Code of Conduct and the resistance training given American soldiers impose the exact same requirements. Article V, pertaining to interrogations states:  I will evade answering further questions to the utmost of my ability.

…

Thiessen also argues that we will never know what other information we would have gotten out of KSM had we not used torture and abuse. … Serious interrogators have little doubt that we would have gotten better information from KSM, and sooner, had the interrogations been conducted by professional interrogators using noncoercive techniques.

…

Thiessen never bothers to cite military doctrine in his research.  Had he read the Army Field Manual’s instructions, he would have to answer for the fact that it cautions: “Revelation of use of torture by US personnel will bring discredit upon the US and its armed forces while undermining domestic and international support for the war effort.  It may also place US and allied personnel in enemy hands at greater risk of abuse by their captors.” Torture makes Americans less safe, not more so.

…

Thiessen and the torture apologists mock every American soldier who has followed the rules of law and ethical warfare.  He insults every interrogator who has learned to elicit information without resorting to medieval abuses. The America that I know and signed up to defend does not stand exclusively for security.  It also stands for freedom, justice, and liberty.  It stands for universal rights afforded to every human being (even unlawful combatants or “detained persons”).  America, as Thiessen surely has written into many a presidential speech, is a beacon of light precisely because it represents the protection of basic human rights.  Yet, in Courting Disaster, Thiessen thoroughly villainizes those who defend individual rights against the state (such as members of the Center for Constitutional Rights).  Thiessen’s ideology represents exactly what we are fighting against in the battle with Islamic extremism—the regression of human rights and the sacrifice of individual protections to the state.

I am looking forward to watching Jon Stewart pick this guy apart.

Update:  Here’s Jon Stewart’s interview of Thiessen on The Daily Show. 

If you thought Thiessen was a total dick before seeing this, well you’ll think even worse of him after watcthing it.  He truly is about as un-American as one can get.  As for Jon, he gets hot in this interview and gets accused by Thiessen of not letting him say his piece.  Note to Thiessen:  You weren’t invited on the show to give a speech.  It’s SUPPOSED to be a discussion.  And furthermore, when you place yourself in front of someone who truly believes in freedom and the rule of law, and you go off on how Liz Cheney is right to call those in the Justice Dept that represented Guantanamo detainees “the Al Qaeda 7” and question their loyalty, AND  you come on to promote your book that defends the military’s use of torture, you have to expect to be involved in a heated conversation like this.  So be a man and deal with it.

The Reverend Jim Wallis interviewed Jon Stewart for Sojourners magazine, a Christian publication about “faith, politics, and culture.”  Wallis starts the interview by comparing Stewart to “The Hebrew prophets” who often used “humor, satire, and truth-telling to get their message across,” which Jon Stewart dismisses.  A little later in the interview comes this exchange:

Jim Wallis:  A lot of people love your show because they feel like someone is finally saying what needs to be said, that the news media is an emperor with no clothes or has no backbone. Are you aware that you’re evoking this sense of relief?

Jon Stewart:  Well, we hear feedback from the audience. We also evoke anger. You know, one man’s meat is another man’s poison. It really is a question of does what you do find an audience, and is it an audience that appears to be ill-served? You can have the same conversation with Fox News and say there are a lot of people out there who feel a catharsis when they hear [them] spinning Obama’s love of Dijon mustard as proof that he is Lenin’s disciple. It’s not one or the other.

People have always said to us, “You want it both ways; you want to be taken seriously but then not.” And I always say, “When do we want to be taken seriously? We’re just doing our show.” It is what it is. It’s no attempt to be taken seriously. That’s how we’ve done things from the beginning and will continue to do so as long as we sell enough Budweiser that Comedy Central will let us stay on the air.

Jim Wallis:  But you take on serious things. I preached a sermon at the Washington National Cathedral and talked about you—it was right after Jim Cramer appeared on your show. The scripture for that day was the text of Jesus overturning the tables of the money changers in the temple.

Jon Stewart:  But see, that’s the thing. [Jesus] only had to do one show. We have to do four a week!

Wallis:  (laughing) But I likened your interview with Cramer as a modern enactment of that parable—you were overturning the money changers.

Stewart:  Gee, I hope it ends better for me.

Last night I watched the rerun of the Monday night Daily Show during which Jon Stewart went after Fox News twice.  First he rebutted Joe Scarborough’s rebuttal of a Daily Show piece from last week that ridiculed “Morning Joe” for bringing on Starbucks as a sponsor, using Starbucks product placement in their show, and inviting Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz on as a guest.

Next he goes after Gretchen Carlson who was deeply offended by Brüno’s (Sacha Baron Cohen) performance during the MTV Movie Awards.  Watch to see how Jon portrays Gretchen as an ass-hating, ass-loving hypocrite.

The whole show was excellent.  Just watch the whole thing.

Make no mistake about it:  Jon Stewart is a national treasure.  Unlike the clowns that pass for reporters or analysts on the 24-hour cable news channels, Jon is actually funny and he really does know what he’s talking about.  He also has great respect for good journalists, but he loathes those who do not live up to their calling.

The New York Times reports:

It wasn’t a “Brawl Street,” or a thrilla in vanilla. It wasn’t a “Daily Show” friendly feud or even much of a discussion. Mostly, the much-hyped Thursday night showdown between Jon Stewart and Jim Cramer, the mercurial host of “Mad Money” on CNBC, felt like a Senate subcommittee hearing.

Mr. Stewart treated his guest like a C.E.O. subpoenaed to testify before Congress — his point was not to hear Mr. Cramer out, but to act out a cathartic ritual of indignation and castigation.
“Listen, you knew what the banks were doing, yet were touting it for months and months, the entire network was,” the Democratic Senator from Comedy Central said. “For now to pretend that this was some sort of crazy, once-in-a-lifetime tsunami that nobody could have seen coming is disingenuous at best and criminal at worst.”

…

Mr. Stewart made his feelings clear. “I understand you want to make finance entertaining,” he told Mr. Cramer. “But it’s not a game,” he said, using an additional adjective that was bleeped out. “When I watch that I can’t tell you how angry that makes me.”

…

And the “Daily Show” host pointedly questioned the hyped-up theatricality and dubious claims of CNBC shows like “Mad Money” and “Fast Money.” When Mr. Cramer explained, “There is market for it and you give it to them,” Mr. Stewart stared at him in disbelief, exclaiming. “There’s a market for cocaine and hookers!”

Watch the whole interview here – unedited and uncensored:

…and if you haven’t seen all the segments that led up to this showdown, watch them all beginning with the one that got it all started.

And after you’ve watched the whole series, you’ll probably agree that Jon Stewart is the [expletive deleted] King of America!

If you missed the Bill Moyers interview of Jon Stewart last week like I did, well you can watch it on your computer right here.  And you should watch it… now!

As Bill Moyers points out during the interview, over the last couple of years Jon Stewart has become a “serious social and political critic.”

During the 33 minute interview there are clips of The Daily Show’s coverage of the Gonzales hearing, the McCain interview, the Ali Allawi interview, and the “We’re Making Progress” segment.  Moyers discusses each one with Stewart and talks with Jon about what was going through his head in each one.

Just a little of the transcript here to whet your appetite:

JON STEWART: After weeks of mock testimony, there you have it, Alberto Gonzales does not know what happened, but he assures you what he doesn’t remember was handled properly.

END CLIP: THE DAILY SHOW WITH JON STEWART

JON STEWART: And by the way, that was all just — that was a game, and he knew it, and the guys on the committee knew it. And for the President to come out after that and say, “Everything I saw there gave me more confidence in him,” that solidified my notion that, “Oh, it’s because what he expected of Gonzalez was” it’s sort of like, do you remember in GOODFELLAS? When Henry Hill got arrested for the first time and Robert DeNiro met him at the courthouse and Henry Hill was really upset, ’cause he thought Robert DeNiro would be really mad at him. And DeNiro comes up to him and he gives him a $100 and he goes, “You got pinched. We all get pinched, but you did it right, you didn’t say nothing.”

BILL MOYERS: Gonzales said nothing.

JON STEWART: Right. And “you went up there and said nothing. You gave them no legal recourse against you, and you made yourself a smart man, a self-made man look like an utter pinhead on national television, and you did it for me.”

and on the “surge”

JON STEWART:  …here’s the disconnect. It’s sort of this odd and I’ve always had this problem with the rationality of it. That the President says, “We are in the fight for a way of life. This is the greatest battle of our generation, and of the generations to come. “And, so what I’m going to do is you know, Iraq has to be won, or our way of life ends, and our children and our children’s children all suffer. So, what I’m gonna do is send 10,000 more troops to Baghdad.”

So, there’s a disconnect there between — you’re telling me this is fight of our generation, and you’re going to increase troops by 10 percent. And that’s gonna do it. I’m sure what he would like to do is send 400,000 more troops there, but he can’t, because he doesn’t have them. And the way to get that would be to institute a draft. And the minute you do that, suddenly the country’s not so damn busy anymore. And then they really fight back, and then the whole thing falls apart. So, they have a really delicate balance to walk between keeping us relatively fearful, but not so fearful that we stop what we’re doing and really examine how it is that they’ve been waging this.

Watch the whole thing.  It’s all good.

If you want to learn a little about what’s going on in Iraq and where we might be headed, watch Jon Stewart interview former Iraqi Minister of Defense Ali Allawi on The Daily Show.

Part I

and Part II

We the contributing editors of harikari.com are huge, HUGE fans of The Daily Show.  (Well except for Mr. Barnes who doesn’t have expanded cable at his house.  What is up with that Mr. Barnes?)

The rest of us hope that you are all devoted fans of the show.

I for one often think as I write stuff for this blog (yes my mind wanders as I write… that’s what makes it so damn hard!) why bother?  People shouldn’t waste time here reading our stuff, they should just watch The Daily Show, it’s the best commentary on American politics anywhere; TV, radio, newspapers, magazines, blogs… there’s nothing better.  (Countdown with Keith Olbermann deserves special mention as a very close second… oh an there’s that Colbert guy too…) Why The Daily Show?  Because it cuts through to the heart of the topics of the day, and… it’s funny.

Case in point. Last Monday night the guest on the show was none other than former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton who has been the butt of many jokes on the show for the last couple of years.  I for one was very surprised that he agreed to be on the show.  He didn’t even have a book to promote.  He just came on to discuss politics with Jon Stewart.

It was a very entertaining interview, and yes John Bolton was a bit of a dick like you would expect.  Watch it.

Then the next night, Jon did this follow up piece that almost made we wet my pants.

What else can I say.

If you haven’t already seen it, watch it!  And if you have seen it, watch it again!

I’m a college professor who usually despises TV, yet I’m addicted to the Daily Show. I’d love to cancel my cable subscription; I’m sure there’s a better way to spend $38.04 every month, but I have to have my nightly dose of Jon Stewart. I was a bit alarmed to learn that many young people rely on Stewart as a news source, but not at all surprised when researchers found that his viewers are better informed than those who watch CNN or Fox. It could be a matter of self-selection, better-informed people choosing to watch the “Daily Show” because it addresses itself to a better-informed audience, but I think there’s a different answer.

Jon Stewart wages a daily satyagraha, an on-going nonviolent struggle in which he clings to the truth, Gandhi-style, making us laugh as he gets us to think. As a result, Stewart, on his fake news show, often does a better job revealing what’s going on in the world than the real news media. That’s why so many young people turn to his show for their daily news, and that’s why I’m glued to the boob tube every night.

…

Think about the underlying truths hiding in what appear at first to be casually tossed off one-liners: “War-in many ways it’s the only remaining obstacle to peace.” Or (as a professor this one’s my personal favorite) on the Iraq Study Group report: “I’m glad they got a study group together, but the test was three years ago.” Sometimes the jokes are less subtle, but the truths no less profound, as when Stewart mockingly summarized Donald Rumsfeld’s proposal to cut off aid to Iraq for ‘bad behavior’: “You destroy a country’s infrastructure and this is the thanks you get! After all we’ve done to you!”

Read all of “Jon Stewart’s Gandhian Struggle” by Kelly Rae Kraemer here.