Sh*t Just Got Real™: The Rachel Maddow/Jon Stewart MSNBC interview.

[ladypolitik]

In Stewart’s hour-long interview on The Rachel Maddow Show was remarkable for Stewart’s unprecedented openness about where he stands when he’s not making jokes. Because Stewart respects Maddow, he took her up on her invitation to clarify the message many believed he sent out at his “Rally To Restore Sanity”: That there’s a parity of invective on

Comments

[ladypolitik]

One thing that struck me right from the start was Jon's unwitting indecisiveness in what he wanted from modern political discourse

[keithmex17]

You've taken what I was feeling while I was making my comment down below and extrapolated it quite beautifully right thar.

[ladypolitik]

"false refereeing"*, FML

[ladyanneboleyn]

I don't know that he necessarily meant it that way... because then the question is, If he isn't really arguing for genuine discourse, what is he arguing for? Is he really trying to favor the Tea Party?

As seems to be his pattern since the rally, I think Jon is coming from a stance of "The specifics of what is happening aren't as important as finding out exactly why it's happening." The point I understood him to be making was, "These people might be individuals being played by powerful ideological organizations, but they are part of a movement of genuine anger. So let's try to figure out why these people are so angry instead of dismissing the Tea Party as a whole."

I don't think his problem was so much the specifics of the townhall interruptions, but the tendency overall to delegitimize the root concerns of Tea Partiers and dismiss the Tea Party as a bunch of crazies.

I don't feel like he articulated it well at all, but taken in context with all his other comments, I feel like that's what he was getting at.

[ladypolitik]

This however speaks to the opener of my comment about Jon's unwitting indecisiveness.

If Jon's point is that we need to get past the specifics and find out why exactly normal people are angry over any given issue instead of just dismissing them, then what--by his own position--is up with his own "dismissive" comments about Code Pink and people who refer to GWB as a "war criminal"? Why would he opt to peg them as part of the 'insanity' that the rally was taking a stand against, instead of empathetically acknowledging the basis for the rhetoric used by those groups of angry people, i.e., a presumably genuine place of anger?

That's more what I scratch my head at.

[ladyanneboleyn]

I see your point. I feel like he would like to be dismissive of the fringe on both sides, i.e. the townhall disruptors and Code Pink, while acknowledging the genuine anger shared by many who don't go as far as to disrupt a meeting like that. And he has made fun of both fringes on his show.

I think that, because he was talking with an MSNBC host, he felt they both already understood the genuine basis for the war criminal comments and Code Pink, and his point was that they need to extend the same courtesy to the Tea Party. I feel like if he were talking to, say, a Fox News host, he would've approached it from the opposite angle, i.e. we need to try to understand the genuine basis behind Code Pink and the war criminal comments.

Actually I think a big part of this whole kerfuffle comes from the fact that Jon keeps modifying, not his message, but the articulation of his message, according to whom he's addressing it to, which leads to confusion about what his actual intentions are.

[muppetfromhell]

I taped the interview and so I haven't watched it yet... but maybe it's me wanting to read too much into it - but to me there's more value in non-emotionally reporting that they are fake fake fake than between being dismissive?

A comedy show can be dismissive in it's humor, but a news show should be factual and report-y... Satirical political humor is great, don't get me wrong, but it really isn't going to educate anyone other than people who already going to agree with a specific joke, because when you are snarky about something someone likes, it's not a compelling argument to them. the attitude used at Fox even by the less biased folks like Chris Matthews isn't going to make me listen to them, even though they *might* actually report real news.