Jon Stewart Bitches Out Crossfire

Off Topic Politics & World Issues
21

[quote]ZEB wrote:
I simply agree with his policies. I think he is right about Iraq and the war on terrorism. Those who think that terrorism is just Bin Laden are short sighted. If you fail to see the danger that Iraq posed I sure as heck cannot convince you in this post.[/quote]

But come on, you must realize that the war on terrorism is like the war on drugs - full of shit. You can’t stop terrorism by occupation of a country that supposedly supports them. And in any case Iraq had zero to do with war on terrorism. The slogan was ‘it’a threat, WMD, yellow cake, purple donut…’, they rushed the inspectors before they could scan the whole turf and immediatly secured the oil ministry. I mean if that’s not dishonesty then I don’t know what is.

[quote]ZEB wrote:
I also think Americans are overtaxed and his tax cut was good for the economy. I feel if given another four years he may shake up the tax system to the point where we could have a flat tax, or at least something more sane than what we now have.[/quote]

Don’t you think, however, that your taxes should be higher if you make alot of money? The more you own the more you get taxed, it’s only fair. And please don’t tell me that these weren’t tax cuts for the rich, they were, it’s fact.

[quote]ZEB wrote:
If you have not yet been treated to paying over 50% of your gross income to the tax man (state and federal) then you are in for a real treat. In fact, you may change your mind once this horrible event occurs in your life. Some things you just have to “feel” before you realize how nasty they are.[/quote]

I know what you mean but I do think that you are really exaturating. It will not go to 50%(Ok, now let’s both vote Democrat so I can prove you wrong).

[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:
Bush’s intelligence has always been underestimated, and that’s been a source of his political strength.[/quote]

His popularity and the power of the US media has been underestimated.

[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:
Such a naive statement. Actually, Bush’s speeches are usually quite good - extemporaneous question answering is where he looks awful.[/quote]

Naturally, as a speech can be memorised or written down.

[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:
I don’t want a impressive mouth and an empty suit - and I’ll vote accordingly.[/quote]

You’re viewing everything in black and white. Does it either have to be a dufus or an empty suit? Do you suppose that in this whole country there aren’t people who have both personal and political qualities? A president must be an exceptional person and yes he must be educated. It’s the #1 person who represents the entire United States. If people continue to vote for whoever their party decides to throw at them then what society do you think will arise out of this?

[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:
Bush is in a great tradition of American presidents who exhibit everyman style and big courage[/quote]

Courage? Courage to do what, use his family to get out of vietnam or the courage to pretend to be a cowboy while not even knowing how to ride a horse? Excuse me, but there’s nothing courageous about Bush. Any president would have gone to war after 9/11.

22

Maybe you should get a little bit more full of yourself? Almost sounds like you folks are the new master race or something. Sigh.

23

[quote]JeffR wrote:
w2o97, gojira,

You run your mouths pretty ragged.

This talk about “unsophistication” of W. and the American people in general is as unwarranted as it is untrue.

First of all, are you both Americans? If not, what country are you from?

Either way, you know that our culture, science, and military are the glory of the human race. We have the finest minds on the planet, bar none. So quit with the “average” American garbage. The high achievers pull our “average” up far enough to make this statement meaningless.

JeffR [/quote]

OH my god Jeff you are a jerk.
Comments like this and attitudes like this are a large part of the reason that America is the most hated country in the world. Try living overseas at the moment.
America’s domination of the world is based on one thing: wealth. Wealth facilitates the science and military might. As for intelligence? Surely the average American has the same average IQ as a person anywhere else. And the finest minds on the earth BAR NONE? So no other country produces any geniuses? Any inventors? Any composers? I guess you won’t be joining the ranks of the finest minds on the earth anytime soon.

24

[quote]ZEB wrote:
Actually Stewart is a starry eyed liberal who needs to stick to comedy, which he is actually only marginally good at.[/quote]

Stewart rules. He is both the funniest man on TV and one of the most intelligent. He does seem to stick it to the right more than the left though, so that would explain Zeb’s dislike for him. Also Zeb has shown repeatedly on this site that he has no sense of humor.

25

Stewart is right,

Our news organizations are a freakin joke. If you are lberal, you have your station, conservatives have theirs.

Unfortunately the real news is never shown. Just the left and the right.

Who cares if stewart is liberal, his point is still valid.

26

[quote]deanosumo wrote:

Stewart rules. He is both the funniest man on TV and one of the most intelligent. He does seem to stick it to the right more than the left though, so that would explain Zeb’s dislike for him. Also Zeb has shown repeatedly on this site that he has no sense of humor.[/quote]

I concur – The Daily Show is BRILLIANT!

27

deanosumo:

Hey…I do too have a sense of humor. I still talk to you don’t I? :slight_smile:

28

w2097:

Terrorism…You think terrorism is like the war on drugs? I see why you are voting for Kerry…

Taxes…I don’t think that the more you make the higher percentage you should pay. That is a repressive system and actually discourages people from wanting to make more. A higher wage should not mean a higher percentage as the same percentage would already offer up more to the tax man! I have seen many hourly people who refuse overtime as they state that the government will get more of it and they resent it. These are not the “rich.”

Stop the class warfare and watch the economy double!

You think I am exaggerating on taxes? Perhaps you failed to see that I stated “Federal and State.” If you combine these two you get about a 50% tax rate. Dang I hate to go down this road but I have to ask: How old are you? (no lectures on young people please I know they are wonderful and brilliant-but some things you have to experience).

I assure you that when you get a high paying job, or start a business and make some money you are really going to hate the oppressive tax structure of this country! A vote for Kerry will simply make it worse. You cannot fund a government run health care system by only taxing “the rich.”

Judging by your further comments to thunderbolt it seems you are pretty filled with hate toward President Bush. As there is nothing that I can post that would change that, I wish you the best…

Good Luck in all you do,

Zeb

29

w2097,

“His popularity and the power of the US media has been underestimated.”

His popularity has been underestimated? So he’s even more popular than was previously thought?

The US media - by and large, not a fan of Bush - has been underestimated? What does this mean?

“If people continue to vote for whoever their party decides to throw at them then what society do you think will arise out of this?”

They’ll stop voting. And I wouldn’t discount this process so quickly - the primaries are tough and winnow out pretenders.

“Courage?”

Yes, courageous enough to finally decide Islamism is not a criminal justice matter to be managed, and courageous enough to not try and win a global popularity contest in pursuit of winning the war.

“Courage to do what, use his family to get out of vietnam or the courage to pretend to be a cowboy while not even knowing how to ride a horse?”

Bush doesn’t know how to ride a horse? I don’t know if he does or doesn’t, nor do I think he pretends to be a cowboy. But he is a Texan and a Southerner in his gut - he certainly is not a nifty peach Northeasterner.

“Any president would have gone to war after 9/11.”

Perhaps, but would they have the courage to finish it beyond Afghanistan? No one knows, but a dandy apologist like Gore would have been the next Neville Chamberlain.

It doesn’t necessarily take courage to start strong - but it does take courage to maintain the intensity and finish strong.

Coffee is for closers.

30

[quote]Right Side Up wrote:
deanosumo wrote:

Stewart rules. He is both the funniest man on TV and one of the most intelligent. He does seem to stick it to the right more than the left though, so that would explain Zeb’s dislike for him. Also Zeb has shown repeatedly on this site that he has no sense of humor.

I concur – The Daily Show is BRILLIANT![/quote]

You’re both wrong. Ellen is the funniest man on TV.

31

OK, just watched the video. While I don’t agree with Jon’s politics, I agree with his humor and pointed questions to the media.

While the media does need to ask the right questions, they also need to stop reporting the crap that has no meaning. I think Jon was probably reaching at that.

32

gojira and w2067 –

Your condescension is amusing on so many levels…

There are some very smart people supporting both candidates – while you were busy laughing, gojira, I assume you missed the fact that one of the two most recent winners of the nobel prize in economics was endorsing Bush’s tax cuts, except that in his opinion they didn’t go far enough? Without the benefit of either your or w2067’s IQ scores or educational histories, I’m willing to bet that I could identify some Bush supporters who are much smarter than both of you (and much smarter than I am, too).

BTW, ever stop to wonder why we don’t have access to Kerry’s test scores, educational grades, etc.? W’s are out there. I wonder why the ever intelligent, articulate Mr. Kerry wouldn’t want to release his? Just something to ponder…

33

Also, as to the media generally, while John Stewart is quite amusing, he’s dead wrong if he thinks it’s the media’s fault that people are uninformed. People are as informed as they want to be, and if the media bores them, they change the channel – hence you have our media entertaining viewers with the format of news and issues shows, and you have 9 networks emulating each other to various extents.

It’s not like TV has to be your source for information if you want to be informed.

One last little note – for all the demonization of American media, it’s not as if the rest of the world has it better. Many, if not most, countries have state-run and state-censored media, a single-broadcaster monopoly (Hello Al jazeera) or a combination of the two. And foreign sources are hardly bias-free – they just show a different form of bias from the one you’re trained to discern (take the BBC for instance – anyone remember the little tif with Prime Minister Blair – seems the BBC came off with egg on its face on that score).

34

[quote]ZEB wrote:
w2097:

Taxes…I don’t think that the more you make the higher percentage you should pay. That is a repressive system and actually discourages people from wanting to make more. A higher wage should not mean a higher percentage as the same percentage would already offer up more to the tax man! I have seen many hourly people who refuse overtime as they state that the government will get more of it and they resent it. These are not the “rich.”

Stop the class warfare and watch the economy double!

You think I am exaggerating on taxes? Perhaps you failed to see that I stated “Federal and State.” If you combine these two you get about a 50% tax rate. Dang I hate to go down this road but I have to ask: How old are you? (no lectures on young people please I know they are wonderful and brilliant-but some things you have to experience).

Zeb[/quote]

More than almost any other tax system that has been proposed, a flat tax is class warfare. The flat tax is a great idea for anyone who lives in a gated community but a poor idea for everyone else. Those in poverty already have the cards stacked against them - we may as well make it nearly impossible to get out (80% of people wind up in the economic quintile their parents (or whoever raised them) was in). The U.S. government has a history of institutional bias against urban areas so maybe it’ll happen.

Also, to the poster who believes America is far superior to the rest of the world: all of the economics and mathematics grad students that I know are foreign-born. All of them. America may have the best graduate schools but the best students in those programs are not Americans.

35

[quote]ninjaboner wrote:
Zeb

More than almost any other tax system that has been proposed, a flat tax is class warfare. The flat tax is a great idea for anyone who lives in a gated community but a poor idea for everyone else. Those in poverty already have the cards stacked against them - we may as well make it nearly impossible to get out (80% of people wind up in the economic quintile their parents (or whoever raised them) was in). The U.S. government has a history of institutional bias against urban areas so maybe it’ll happen.

[/quote]

Umm, one question: Why?

36

[quote]jackzepplin wrote:

While the media does need to ask the right questions, they also need to stop reporting the crap that has no meaning. I think Jon was probably reaching at that.[/quote]

I believe you to be wrong in your interpretation of Stewart’s point. He criticizes a show like “Crossfire” because they think they’re doing their job by presenting “both sides of the fence.” They think that by putting an indoctrinated liberal across from an indoctrinated conservative is being fair and objective…allowing the people to decide. But, what occurs is two people presenting and defending exactly what their ideology dictates without exception, with no further questions asked.

For example, Bush will never do any wrong in Sean Hannity’s eyes, likewise he’s unlikely to do any right in Al Franken’s.

The problem is perpetuated by shows with this platform, for the public themselves “choose sides” in this black and white approach. What Stewart thinks is the job of the media is to OBJECTIVELY analyze the actions of our leaders – and this, most likely, means everyone doing some right and some wrong.

Shows with a platform like Crossfire, or Hannity and Combs, etc. promote diversional, biased thinking, rather than well thought out opinions and analysis based on objective information. This is what has resulted with the dawn of news as entertainment.

37

RSU,

Perhaps you are correct; however, I don’t watch either show to gather enough insight to say that I know what Jon Stewart was really reaching at. From the clip, I just assumed that he was preaching that the media, in general, is doing a shitty job. At the same time, he also makes a great point that his show is on Comedy F’n Central. To think that people are actually watching HIS show for NEWS is just incredible, and he seems to agree.

Am I right?

38

Interesting observation from U. of Wisc. law prof. Ann Althouse – I’ll reproduce because I agree with the thrust of what she wrote: Stewart is good because he’s funny, not because he has a point - and he should stick to being funny. However, I think she’s a little harsh in saying he’s like Alanis Morrissette(sp?) when he becomes a one-sided, partisan act – more like Whoopi Goldberg…

Sunday, October 17, 2004
“The Daily Show” is dropping in the ratings.
Drudge has the story that the ratings for “The Daily Show” have dropped, despite “jumbo hype from media writers and a bestselling book.” I would add that the presidential campaign should also be heightening interest in the show. But it does not surprise me at all that Jon Stewart is losing some of his audience, because he has become a one-sided partisan. Not only does he miss opportunities for humor that might be had at the expense of the side he favors, but his live audience is now packed with lefty overlaughers–people who laugh uproariously at anti-Bush snipes that are hardly jokes at all. If you don’t hate Bush, it really cuts into the fun.

Bill Maher’s HBO show “Real Time” has the same problem, along with the usual Bill Maher show problem of having celebrities talk about political subjects in ways that make you instinctively change the channel, like last night when Alanis Morissette started to rail about the situation in Iraq. In a contrast to that, I really rather liked Sean Astin on Bill O’Reilly’s show the other night. O’Reilly wanted to needle Astin about celebrities doing politics when they don’t really know what they’re talking about, and Astin was so modest and unopinionated that O’Reilly was reduced to saying “Come on! Have at me!”

By the way, that Drudge link also includes the transcript for the notorious Stewart appearance on “Crossfire” the other day. I’ve watched the streaming audio of it that is available elsewhere. I think Stewart is kind of funny, but also peevish–not as nimble at turning things into fun as he used to be. He becomes a bit of a plodding scold as it goes along, and I get the impression that he has decided he needs to demonstrate how serious and important the political situation is by sacrificing comedy. But Jon, we need you to be funny. That actually is the most important thing for you. Otherwise you’re just Alanis Morissette blabbing about Iraq and I’m going to have to change the channel.

posted by Ann Althouse at 7:54 PM

39

Thunerbolt,
It is really sad to hear the right wing slogans spouted out by you as if they are original thoughts. Actually, the keen intellect you display while defending your position makes me glad you’re on Bush’s side.

BTW, Bush isn’t Texan. He may have a ranch there, but he was born in the North East.

Back to the topic… I think Jon Stewart is quite brilliant. His point may have gone over the hosts’ heads, but he was dead on. Funny thing is that Tucker tried to go head to head with him in a little battle of wits, and Stewart just swatted him down like a mosquito. I’m certainly looking forward to reading his book.

40

So ZEB BostonBarrister JeffR and Thunderbolt23, I wonder what tax bracket you’re in? If you don’t mind me asking, I doubt its one of the lower two.