Maddow interviews Jon Stewart

[Cramulus]

Presenting: what I consider a really great interview with Jon Stewart

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908/vp/40141311#40141311


Jon talks about

(spoiler warning?)

• his intentions for the rally to restore sanity and/or fear: it was aimed more at the news media than at partisan politics
• what's wrong with cable news: they have elevated red vs blue as the primary conflict in America, which Jon thinks is incorrect
• What does Jon think the real conflict in America is? corruption vs noncorruption
• Jon is a bit touchy about the accusation that Bush is a war criminal. He thinks "war criminal" is a word for people like Pol Pot, and that Bush's blunderings were not intentionally deceitful - Bush honestly did think he was gonna find WMDs in Iraq and isn't actually as EVIL as the people at MSNBC often make him out to be
• Jon talks about the difference between his job and news' job. Maddow believes Jon is in the same boat as cable news because people treat his show like news. Jon insists that what he's doing is outside politics, like a monkey throwing fruit at it. (correlation: Roger Ebert is not part of the movie game. Because he's not making movies, he's just commenting on them) Jon describes himself as being part of a long tradition of satirists with well defined rules and boundaries totally separate from news reporting

The above link is a full 48 minute uncut version

I had some trouble watching it due to load speeds on my netbook, so I watched it in 4 chunks on youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qlcRQjdcqNo&feature=related <--there's part 1

this is the version which appeared on Maddow's show.

[Cain]

Since when was "I believed I was doing the right thing" a defense against war crimes?  On that basis, Hitler wasn't necessarily a war criminal because he really believed Jews were plotting to rule the world and eliminate the Aryan race through interbreeding.

He also admits to ordering torture.  On that basis alone he's a war criminal.  Stewart should stop with the strawman bullshit, he's no better when he does this than the people he mocks on his show.  Willful and continual ignorance of the evidence.

[Cramulus]

here's the clip specifically regarding Bush et al

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0lRAO4AvSr4

[Cramulus]

and this particular bit of discourse isn't Jon's most well-articulated moment... but his intent isn't to defend Bush so much as to challenge the black vs white depiction of him. He is trying to point out that while we on the left agree that waterboarding is torture, is actually a gray area, probably more nuanced than the folks at MSNBC have handled it. It's part of a larger point about how cable news promotes tribalism by invalidating interpretations outside of their narrative.

Rachel disagrees with him in a number of places -- primarily she objects to the equivalence he draws between Fox News and MSNBC. I think they both make some strong points throughout. Jon tends to cut her off quite a bit though, which is actually becoming quite normal for him. 

[Cain]

Actually, it's considered torture by US and international law.  And has been accepted as such for at least a century.  It really is that black and white.  It's not a "left versus right" thing, a dichotomy Stewart is actually perpetuating rather than undermining with his comments.  It's been framed as a left/right thing by torture proponents, to turn it into the same kind of "he says, she says, the truth is probably somewhere in the middle but we couldn't rightly say" kind of debate, as if the decision to torture were on a level to either increase welfare spending or engage in tax cuts.

[AFK]

I watch a decent amount of MSNBC.  Mostly Matthews and Olbermann, and I've never really got the sense from them that they are plugging away hard at the "war criminal" angle.  I don't think it is nearly as extreme as Jon seems to be portraying it.  Certainly, the judgment of Bush is harsh and pretty damning, but I feel they stop short of really pressing the "war criminal" tag.  

I do think there is a bit of a false equivalency between MSNBC and Fox News.  Certainly there is a similarity in partisanship and overall ideological leaning.  However, MSNBC, in my experience, is far more critical of its "team" than Fox News is of theirs.  That is, MSNBC has had some fairly critical reporting on Obama and the Obama administration.  Granted, some of it is form the "not liberal enough" perspective.  But you really didn't see much from Fox News pointed at Bush.  Not even a "not conservative enough" perspective.  

I certainly appreciate what Jon is trying to do and I think he does have some pretty valid points and criticisms of the media.  but I think pinning MSNBC to Fox News is done on a basis that is too general and casual.  And of course, he also has to factor in the end user, the viewers, who drive what happens.  The viewers obviously like the reporting enough that they are still tuning in.  

These cable outlets aren't going to change until the audience changes.  

[Cain]

Ironically, Stewart is doing the exact same thing he is criticizing the media of - presenting false equivalencies.  "Oh, well, yeah, of course FOX are bad, but just look at this group of opposite yet equal extremists at MSNBC!"  As if the hippies at MSNBC and their pet causes (Code Pink etc) had anything near the sway over the Democrats that the Teabaggers apparently do with the Republicans.  He totally ignores the actual impact of insane policies on the right versus insane policies on the left to paint himself as the Only Sane Man, holding the reasonable centre and rational discourse against all would-be wreckers.

It's not like anyone is even moving to prosecute Bush as a war criminal.  Only the Teabaggers seems to have any chance at actually ramming through their policy at the national level.

[Chairman Risus]

Ironically, Stewart is doing the exact same thing he is criticizing the media of - presenting false equivalencies.  "Oh, well, yeah, of course FOX are bad, but just look at this group of opposite yet equal extremists at MSNBC!"  As if the hippies at MSNBC and their pet causes (Code Pink etc) had anything near the sway over the Democrats that the Teabaggers apparently do with the Republicans.  He totally ignores the actual impact of insane policies on the right versus insane policies on the left to paint himself as the Only Sane Man, holding the reasonable centre and rational discourse against all would-be wreckers.

It's not like anyone is even moving to prosecute Bush as a war criminal.  Only the Teabaggers seems to have any chance at actually ramming through their policy at the national level.

Maybe we should try to get something like this message shot back to Stewart.
That being reasonable isn't staying with the overton window and pretending it has not moved, and that he is presenting false equivalencies.
I'll open up a new thread on this in OMF when I'm not bogged down with work.

[Cain]

It probably wont work, as Stewart seems convinced that the kind of people who would say that are left wing extremists and cranks.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

It probably wont work, as Stewart seems convinced that the kind of people who would say that are left wing extremists and cranks.

In other words, he's pulled a Carville and wimped out on us.

[AFK]

Is he shacking up with Victoria Jackson? 

[Cain]

It probably wont work, as Stewart seems convinced that the kind of people who would say that are left wing extremists and cranks.

In other words, he's pulled a Carville and wimped out on us.

Yup.  Once you consider "being evenhanded" more important than telling the truth, you're not a journalist.

Of course, Stewart says he isn't a journalist, he's a satirist.  Apart from trying to have it both ways, that makes it even worse, as a satirist needs to be so utterly precise in their statements and actions they would put a journalist (a proper one, not the paid courtiers most well known "journalists" actually are) to shame.

Colbert is much better at this.  I'm sure he's lightning quick when he needs to be, but I also bet he never appears anywhere in public without having prepared for every detail of his encounter, and considering the impact of each and every word he uses.

[Cramulus]

I agree with you about a lot of this, but to play devil's advocate--


I think the overall point he makes in the course of the interview is not about how left wingers are just as extreme or bad as right wingers,

but that we are getting overly focused on the tension between political parties - and news media serves this.

The Red State / Blue State thing is a relatively new construction, created by CNN to make sense of elections. By being fed through the 24-hour news cycle it has become the primary character of American discourse.

Jon doesn't think that these are actually the two sides we should be focusing on. He thinks thinks that the public would be better served if the newsmedia framed their discussion in terms of corruption vs noncorruption.


it doesn't really sit well with a point he makes about how Fox News isn't partisan, but ideological.

[AFK]

it doesn't really sit well with a point he makes about how Fox News isn't partisan, but ideological.

That is kind of hard to reconcile when you look at some of the people on the Fox News payroll.

Newt Gingrich, Sarah Palin, Mike Huckabee

Seems kind of partisan from where I'm sitting. 

[Disco Pickle]

you can be ideological without being partisan, but you can't be partisan without espousing the ideologies that make up the (seemingly) make up the party.

I'll preface this by saying this might not be the best example but it's the best, most recent one I can think of.

California has gone democratic at the national level since the early 90's and is I believe considered by most people to be fairly liberal.  Yet when the vote came to ban gay marriage, it went the other way than many would expect based on voting history for the last 20 years.   Democrats and people who identify as independent but lean left more than 50% of the time must have parted with partisanship and voted their ideology, which is not as liberal as some in the party would have us believe.  Liberals who were against the ban will tell you that it was the Right, but really if that were the case and there was such a strong Right voting block still in California, you'd think it would have shown at the national level more often.

he's wrong about fox and right about MSNBC IMHO.. they're both partisan, and therefore ideologically partisan.