I'm Sure They'll Do A Craig Kilborn Profile Someday

The Esquire profile of Jon Stewart is really terrific.  It confirms by belief that Stewart knows he was being a dick in his famous Crossfire! interview, but he gets away with it because he's a well-meaning dick.  What's really funny is that he's slowly morphing into that which he tries to abhor -- a power broker with a base that adores him, which in his case includes the mainstream media.  I also enjoyed this passage for obvious reasons...

Oh, well: another night, another show about Fox News. It's been like that, over at The Daily Show, ever since Obama was elected. Stewart just doesn't have the material he used to have when George W. Bush was in power, nor the nightly foil. (Audience members still ask him to "do Bush" during the introductory Q&A.) He's been accused of making halfhearted jokes about Obama in an attempt to keep the show ideologically balanced, but that's not the problem, not really; the problem is that Democrats, with their perpetual disarray, are not as funny as Republicans, with their reality-bending unity, and that Stewart is left to nurse what is probably the most potent comedy killer of all: disappointment. According to one former writer, the creative atmosphere  at The Daily Show has gotten "doomier" since it became clear that Obama wasn't going to fulfill his promise — and that Jon Stewart was not in a position either to help or to savage him. "You can see the strain in his interviews," the writer says. "It used to be, 'Hey, we're a comedy show.' Now it's, 'What we do is so hard.' And it is hard. One of the reasons I finally left is that we were running out of targets. I was like, 'Do we really want to make fun of Fox & Friends again? Really?'"

Why isn't Stewart in a position to savage Obama?  Is it because he can't hammer Obama without disappointing his audience. or because doing so hurts because Obama's such a disappointment?  There was a time when comedians found it difficult to mock Obama, because they thought he was "trying to do something good."  It's good to see comedians, including Stewart, have found a way past any initial reluctance to attack the One, because the material is in such great supply.

The funniest thing about the disappointment in Barack Obama?  Someone as cynical and world-weary as Jon Stewart bought his shit.

I'll Take The Latest Obama Scandal for $500, Alex

It used to be that people claimed that despite the incompetence, at least we didn't have any major scandals plaguing this Administration. Of course, that was... well, a couple weeks ago. The Solyandra scandal is officially getting bad when it becomes a punchline for Jon Stewart...

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Stewart's already done Gunwalker.  Wonder when he gets around to this one?

Stimulus II: Revenge of the Rotten Economy

Megan McArdle hammers Obama's obvious cyncisim in sending a jobs bill to Congress that has absolutely no chance of passing either the House or Senate...

If the president were serious about providing stimulus, he would pay attention to the work of his old CEA chair, and pay for the jobs bill by decreasing the growth rate of something-or-other in the future by 0.2%. This is also what he would do if he were serious about getting any part of it through Congress. Instead he is apparently sending them a less-stimulative bill designed to be maximally embarrassing to the GOP--which by definition means minimally politically viable.


You can say that Obama has no choice, because the GOP is just so damn obstructive that they won't pass anything anyway. As it happens, I disagree--I don't think that he could have gotten the whole thing through, but the GOP would probably have given him a few pieces to avoid looking like total jerks, and while that might not have done too much for Obama's re-election chances, it probably would have meant a lot to the schmoes trying to make their mortgage payments in a tough economy.


But say it's true. If it is, I really wish that Obama hadn't wasted my Thursday evening, and that of 31 million other Americans, listening to a jobs plan that was only designed to produce one job--a second term for Barack Obama. I mean, I don't blame him, exactly. But I get a little pang when I realize that I could just as well have spent that time bleaching the grout in the master bath.

Ouch. And keep in mind that McArdle's prone to be sympathetic to Obama.  Keep in mind, the tax hikes proposed here couldn't pass a fully Democratic Congress in 2009 when originally proposed as a financing mechanism for Obamacare.  At this point, you have to start to wonder if the Obama Administration believes the magic bullet solution for every economic problem is a tax increase on some group they define as rich.

Actually, they probably know it doesn't solve anything.  They just think it sounds good politically (I am making the dangerous assumption that this adminstration is thinking, and actually making some intelligent choices when doing so).  Jon Stewart had a point when he mocked the name of the American Jobs Act -- it's so transparently set up as a campaign vehicle that one would expect more in the name... until you remember these are the same geniuses who thought Obamacare would be bill that created jobs.

Sanity Does Not Apparently Include The Ability To Read

This is my favorite video of the campaign season (hat tip: Hot Air).  The fact that it takes apart some of the true believers and stoners attending "The Rally to Restore Sanity" by playing on their own preconceived notions of what the other side is saying is somewhat ironic given Stewart's pitch for reasoned conversation. If you're going to have a conversation with someone, it helps to understand what they're saying rather than jumping to conclusions.

Oh, and by the way... if Obama's not a Keynesian, he almost has to be a Socialist. Glad we cleared that up.

The Rally To Do Something

Ann Althouse points out the flaw in the mainstream press reporting about the rallies being held by Stewart and Colbert this weekend -- the numbers may not add up on how many people they claim will show up.

My number one hope is that they have enough Port-A-Potties, particularly since a lot of them will probably be reserved for use by the Marine Corps Marathon earlier in the day.  Other than that, I'm going to do what most Americans over 26 will be doing -- ignoring the mass of humanity, living my life, and waiting till Election Day to register my distaste for the policies of the Adminstration.

Jon Stewart Kinda Sorta Grills Obama

Everyone's discussing the President's appearance on the Daily Show last night.  Dana Milbank is pretty annoyed about Jon Stewart referring to the President as "dude", but whatever -- this was the most substantive interview Obama's had since Bret Baier grilled him during the Obamacare debate.  As for the "dude" reference, it's bad form, but Obama set up that prospect -- every time the President pops up on a comedy show, the stature of the office drops a bit.  Over at the Baltimore Sun, David Zuwarik's review is just as tough...

During the last half of the show, though, Stewart asked informed and substantive questions that put the president on the defensive. In fact, the questions took the interview to a depth rarely explored on television. What was so revealing, however, about this portion of the show for me was not Obama's predictable "we-inherited-all-the-trouble" rhetoric as he tried to defend his failures, but what a dogmatic leftist critique of Obama's presidency Stewart clearly embraces.


Maybe I was deluding myself because I like the intelligence of Stewart's humor, but I really believed he had a more balanced and centrist take on American life. If the White House was looking for the court jester and mouthpiece of the folks senior White House officials described as the "professional left," they found him. He was sitting across from the president Wednesday night prodding him with all the White House had not done.


And that's the difference, isn't it? The right feels Obama has done way too much without thinking it through -- call it the the cash-for-clunkers style of governing with massive and misguided social programs. The left, meanwhile, thinks he hasn't done enough. He didn't bring the British or Canadian model of health care to America overnight, for example. I think Stewart actually mentioned Canadian healthcare somewhere in his questioning Wednesday.


But he never once seemed to be able to even conceive of a question that would come at the president from right of center -- or even center-center. Think how enriched this interview would have been by even one question from right of center asking about unintended consequences or huge federal spending programs that came nowhere near doing what Obama had promised they would.


The first half of the show wasn't pretty -- in fact, at its worst moments, it almost reminded me a little of Sean Hannity interviewing Sarah Palin during the 2008 election on Fox News.

I think Stewart's a pretty good interviewer, but he has an advantage in that he can ask questions in a manner that real journalists are not allowed to use -- he can actively mock the subject if he so chooses, but also engage the subject from a partisan point of view. He doesn't always do so -- his tonguebathing of John Kerry in 2004 stands out in my meory of a case where he was dealing with a humor-challenged douchebag and backed off on any attempt to conduct an in-depth interview.

But my favorite take on the interview comes from Jonah Goldberg...

What’s interesting — and obvious by my lights — is that Obama barely even noticed the “dude.” He was stung by the fact that Stewart — and the audience — clearly busted the president saying something politically very stupid. Saying that Summers did a “heckuva job” — on the Daily Show! — was a real blunder. Obama is clearly embarrassed that he got busted saying it. And rather than laugh with the audience and at himself he says, entirely unconvincingly, “pun intended.”


No it wasn’t. For the record, it wasn’t even a pun


But Obama’s ego couldn’t let him take it on the chin. So he in effect said “I meant to do that” with that “pun intended” line. It was defensive and lame.

This goes to something I've always believed about our 44th President -- his ego prevents him from laughing at himself.  A self-deprecating sense of humor is something that eludes certain politicians, and Obama misses the chance to poke fun at himself too often for it to be a coincidence, particularly when things aren't going well.  And they aren't going well right now.

And by the way, if Bush had said "Pun intended" when referring to a non-pun, both Stewart and the liberal blogosphere would have jumped on the chance to mock him.

You Mean Charlie Sheen Didn't Make The List

Jon Stewart is apparently the Most Influential Man in America.  Good news, Jon -- this means you should be responsible for fixing the country and making it better.  Hey, I don't care if you're just running a comedy show -- if you don't use your influence to fix the economy, you're hurting America.

Kudos, John Stewart

There's not much we could say about the South Park/Comedy Central censorship imbroglio.  A douchebag who lives in Fairfax, Virginia, blogging an explicit threat against Parker and Stone, gets Comedy Central to change its programming out of fear.  Meanwhile, the American media, which looks for violence everytime someone farts at a Tea Party protest, largely fails to cover the controversy for days.

But Jon Stewart, who actually works for Comedy Central, has the balls to cover the story -- and does it fairly.  Even though he may be a little softer on the Comedy Central execs for whom he works, I'm not going to blast them too harshly.  Parker and Stone can make a stand on their art and take risks, and the execs may even be willing to risk their own skins.  But when other employees and company property may be put at risk, it's not hard to understand why a corporate executive may not be willing to take a stand on principle.  But it says even more when a comedy show has more balls in "speaking truth to power" than alleged real journalists.

Stewart focuses his rage at the end on the appropriate actors -- the douchebags issuing the threat.  As he notes, fuck them.  Hot Air has the story on the "Everybody Draw Mohammed Day" coming up next month, which may blow the roof off the controversy.   In the meantime, here's Stewart, in all his brilliance.

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Say More Than One Prayer

The scenes from Haiti are downright heartbreaking. While you say a prayer for the folks there, also say a prayer for all the folks responding throughout the world, including our military (President Obama has now called up selected reserves to assist in the relief effort). It's rather difficult to imagine the logistical nightmare of dealing with a relief effort in a society that's utterly devestated, but they are there and I have no doubt they will succeed. Perhaps those are high expectations, but they always meet them.

Meanwhile, I'll side with Jon Stewart in this debate. Rather sad that we're having it, but entirely expected.

George W. Obama

That headline's not fair to W. When he ordered a surge in Iraq, you sensed he believed in it. I'm not sure Obama believes in what he's doing. At this rate, I may need to start lobbying for Jon Stewart to get real journalism awards, for noting some striking similarities.



By the way, Jon, the references to "vague, unnamed critics" is typical of Obama. But I do like the Discover card line.

Hot Air has more...

By the way, Stewart was off a bit in his conclusion. Both the Left and the Right hated at least some of the substance; the Right hated the 18-month timetable, and the Left hated the troop increase entirely. And while the Right certainly didn’t like the style, the Left wasn’t singing any hosannas about it either.

That's because the style sucked. Gallup seems to indicate that Obama's managed to get a majority of Republicans and Democrats on board... but not a majority of independants. I'm not sure what to think, except that if the center isn't in favor of this, I'm not sure Obama has a long leash. And if he has to shift away from the planned strategy either way, he may lose one side or the other quickly. The President is walking a tightrope... actually, the good news is that he's not the one walking it. The bad news is that he's got our troops walking it. Of course, they're used to pulling off miracles. I hope they've got one more in them.

It's Still the: Best. Science. Scandal. Ever.

Give credit where credit's due -- Jon Stewart provides a pretty good report on Climategate...



"He was just using a trick to hide the decline. That's just scientist-speak for using a standard statistical technique to... trick you into not knowing... about the decline." Although the Penthouse and polar bear lines are even better.

Meanwhile, Megan McArdle, in a post addressing some of the issues, zeroes in on the efforts of the climate researchers to avoid FOIA requests...

This is horrifying, and I simply cannot understand why so many of their supporters are willing to downplay it. A couple of sample quotes: "Unfortunately, there are also a couple of messages that suggest an effort to destroy emails that might have been subject to a Freedom of Information request. That's a genuine problem, though it's not clear to me just how big a problem it is. . . . So on a substantive level, there's really very little to this." that's from Kevin Drum, who I greatly respect. More worrying is Real Climate: "Suggestions that FOI-related material be deleted ... are ill-advised even if not carried out. What is and is not responsive and deliverable to an FOI request is however a subject that it is very appropriate to discuss."

Words fail one, reading that latter comment. Ill-advised? Deleting data in order to avoid an official information request is a crime, as is trying to coordinate same, even if you fail in the execution. It's also grossly unethical, and hard to reconcile with any reasonable understanding of science. Moreover, it's the sort of thing that is often done by people who have nasty secrets, so it's hard to pass it off with a blithe, "Oh, dear, now that was a wee bit naughty!"

Imagine reading this email exchange coming from, say, senior officials in the Bush administration. Would any of these bloggers regard this as the ethical equivalent of jaywalking on an empty street?

McArdle's right here -- deleting documents and talking about doing so screams cover-up, and lends credence to the worst things skeptics are saying about your claims... which you may not be able to substantiate, or cannot do so with as much strength as you did before. Ronald Bailey sums it up beautifully:

In their zeal to marginalize and stifle their critics, this insular band of climate researchers has damaged the very science they sought to defend. We all now are the losers. That’s the true tragedy of Climategate.

This may well be the case. Of course, anything that leads to more mocking of Al Gore can't be all bad.