Jon Stewart, meet me at camera 3.
The fuck was wrong with you tonight, Jon? The random Bieber and the disjointed, pointless bagging on Olbermann were bad enough. But that interview. What the actual hell?
Maybe you didn’t mean to suggest that a US invasion of Egypt would be feasible. Maybe you just meant to ensure that the Joint Chiefs didn’t think it was. But it didn’t sound that way. And judging from almost every other comment you made during the interview (“those guys on horses with whips - nobody knows who they are”), it seemed like you spent 5 minutes beforehand preparing for the interview by watching CNN coverage.
You normally go into your interviews knowing every detail about the topic, so that when you ask questions you have an informed opinion with which to counter what the interviewee says. This time it seemed like you were asking very basic questions without knowing the answer: for instance, you had to ask the Joint Chief what the role of Egypt’s military is. Not only did you not know that already, but you spent interview time asking the fucking Joint Chief a question you could have googled.
Another example was your simplistic reading of the US response to the protests. It’s obvious to anyone with any knowledge of US foreign policy that the gap between the US “liberation” of Iraq and its current response to Egypt is not based on innocent confusion when confronted by a grassroots democratic movement, but on cold calculations based on US interests. The federal government isn’t shocked by grassroots democracy in the Egypt; it’s afraid because it threatens our interests and requires a massive shift in our longstanding Middle East policy.
Look. Maybe foreign policy is just not your strong suit. Maybe you, like many Americans, were unaware of US Middle East policy beyond that which directly touches us, i.e. Afghanistan and Iraq, and for whatever reason you didn’t prepare enough to make up for that lack of expertise. That seems suspicious to me, though, coming from the guy who could quote details about the health care legislation ad infinitum.
But the only other reason I can imagine is sheer bias: maybe you wanted to strike a balance between support for the protesters and support for US foreign policy. I can’t really imagine you doing that - you never shy away from taking on the US government, especially on behalf of the oppressed - but maybe it’s different when it comes to foreign policy. But if it was your intention to not attack US foreign policy, why did that require that you essentially squander the entire interview asking stupid questions? Why would you do that?
Were you too busy babysitting Bieber to prepare for your show or to follow the biggest current news story? What the fuck happened to you, Jon?
But hey. At least you wore blue.
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Again x-posted to Tumblr. What is my life?