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(I’ll say this for George W. Bush — if
he’s so bad that he gets even me out of my comfortable
lounge chair, you know that something has gone terribly
awry.)
I am left with little choice but to keep my eye on
the proceedings in the hopes that a ray of truthful
light will shine out from the clouded mess of the
campaign trail and illuminate the best path for us
to follow. But if one has decided to keep tabs, then
the first hurdle is a wicked one: How do you go about
it? For a lazy and poor young student like myself
(our votes count too, right? Right ...) the answer
is both true as well as terribly, terribly sad.
Cable news. I can’t decide if my skin crawled
more when I was quietly hating this political stuff
or since I started seeing it through the lenses of
these people.
Now in case you don’t already know what I’m
about to get at, the dilemma here is as follows: Cable
news, despite its constant arguments to the contrary,
is about as unbiased as my right hand. Someone who
just wants truth and the facts is looking for a network
to be as “fair and balanced” as possible.
But what do we have to work with? Let’s see
here. Primarily we have three choices: Fox News (ha
ha ha), MSNBC (we’ll be fair as long as GE doesn’t
have a problem with it!) and CNN (Who’s Turner
voting for?).
The media, by my observation, appear to be almost
as full of it as the politics they “cover.”
Right vs. left vs. right vs. left vs. right vs. left.
Good Lord, where’s the humanity? Where’s
the guy who’s going to reach out of that screen
and say, “Hey, look at how stupid this is! I
can’t even figure it out!” Where’s
the man who’s going to stop just toeing a line
and be honest with me? Where are the people who are
just going to show it, say what they think and then
just be uncomfortable with me?
It was enough to make me completely mad. That is,
until I found it. On Comedy Central.
Jon Stewart, known until a few years ago as a somewhat
struggling comedic actor, heads up the “fake
news” gambit over on “The Daily Show,”
a half-hour program that airs four times a week and
is dedicated primarily to two things: to be entertaining
and to make the truth look stupid. Which it often
is. Recently, though, Stewart and his cohorts have
gone even further than that and have made themselves,
in my eyes, some of the smartest and ballsiest people
on television.
Last week one of Stewart’s guests was Republican
Congressman Harry Bonilla, a man who couldn’t
give a straight answer to a simple question if his
life depended on it. Stewart questioned Bonilla about
the groups used to gauge a senator’s position
in the ranks of “most” or “least”
liberal, and in the end not only had to explain the
actual answer to Bonilla, but even went so far as
to openly criticize the Republican party’s “Rapid
Response Team” that Bonilla worked on during
the Democratic National Convention. Try catching someone
doing that to a guest on CNN.
Meanwhile, from home, I was applauding.
A few days ago Stewart started off with a story about
a column written by Robert Novak – famous for
publishing the identity of an undercover CIA agent
– in which Novak expresses his thoughts regarding
the military officers trying to deface John Kerry.
The Swift Vote Veterans for Truth had released an
advertisement indicating that they had served with
Kerry during the Vietnam War and that he had lied
about his war record during his tour there. Days before
Novak’s column, Stewart ran the story about
the ad and pointed out that the veterans actually
hadn’t served with Kerry, but rather they had
been in Vietnam at the same time as Kerry. Stewart
compared their service with Kerry to Snoopy’s
serving with the Red Baron.
When Novak wrote his column, Stewart was quick to
point out the idiocy with which Novak uses the fact
that the veterans had barely served with Kerry in
order to lend his support their point. Stewart then
spent the next two days referring to him as “Robert
Novak: Douche Bag of Liberty.” It’s like
the man is inside my head.
When President Bush’s war record was released
to the press, Stewart did an editorial on the show.
He talked about how much he enjoys watching the White
House press conferences, because the journalists rarely
to do anything but sit there and take notes on exactly
what the press secretary wants them to say.
On this day, however, the journalists had spoken
up and been upset over the lack of information within
the records, as well as the poor format in which they
were given. The press secretary seemed almost speechless
at their forwardness, and Stewart was pleased that
they had finally stepped up, despite the fact that
the White House press corps was, as Stewart put it,
“like, eight wars behind.” In the end
Stewart had only one question for the press corps:
“Where the fuck have you been? … All of
a sudden they’ve got questions!”
He brought Ralph Nader on the show and told him that
he hopes that he or Kerry wins the election. He had
President Clinton on this past Monday to discuss the
shameful campaign tactics of the Republican Party.
He pointed out the fact that a certain Republican
running for a Senate seat in a state where he does
not live is doing so after being one of the loudest
to object when Hilary Clinton did the same thing.
When Vice President Dick Cheney was mocking John Kerry
for his use of the word “sensitive” while
talking about the war on terror, Stewart was there
to point out that Bush himself used the same word
while speaking to the same group the day after Kerry
had been there.
I am not trying to say that “The Daily Show”
is an unbiased bastion of truth and justice; it’s
far from it. It has its biases and it makes them clear.
In these ridiculous and unclear times, Stewart might
be one of the last human beings on television. If
you screw up, if you contradict yourself, if you go
out of your way to use an underhanded way to upstage
or destroy your opponent, Stewart has no shame and
nothing to lose in showing what you’ve done.
In fact, you might say that Stewart is the precise
opposite of Robert Novak.
In the end, I don’t believe Stewart would care
much if we tried to rank him in the left or the right.
The two-party system is a joke, anyway. All Stewart
probably wants is for fewer idiots to be hanging around
the White House, and he is more than willing to make
that clear every chance he gets. He’s just another
guy, someone with the same concerns as any other normal
American, who, luckily for us, has been given an outlet.
So kudos, Jon Stewart! Keep on fighting the good
fight for all of us jaded folks out here.
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