Jon Stewart was not telling you that you shouldn't be angry. Nor was he creating a false equivalency

[no limit]

People are far too quick to label everything as left vs right, progresive vs conservative. There are faults on both sides. I have a number of things I don't personally like about Ed Shultz and Keith Olbermann, they are not perfect. That does not mean that Ed Shultz, Keith Olbermann, or MSNBC are just as bad as Fox News, they aren't. But it is not Jon Stewart's job to keep score, his job is to point out absurd statements in our media when they happen no matter where they came from. And sometimes they come from MSNBC.

The entire point of this rally was to show just how insane the political discourse in this country has gotten and how the media is largely at fault for that. We no longer have honest analysis in this country, our news is now delivered by pundits. Some on the left want to believe that republicans want you to die quickly when you get sick, some on the right want you to believe the left wants to pull the plug on grandma. And with discourse like that we sit here wondering why the majority of America has absolutely no idea what really is in the healthcare bill. And those people on the right that want you to believe that will always be there, just as those on the left will be. In the old days we didn’t pay attention to people like that. Today they are pundits on our "news" channels.

Now I know some will take fault at me attacking what Alan Grayson said. I like Alan Grayson, I really appreciate he took time to answer questions on this site. And given the opportunity I would vote for him. But I also know that he is extremely smart, he didn’t get to where he is by accident. I don’t think it was a coincidence that the day after he made his remarks most of the media covered it and as a result he had one of the best fundraising days ever. For the people that think all this was an accident don’t give Alan Grayson the credit he deserves. He was ratcheting up rhetoric for his base, as the right does for theirs. I have family members that are republicans, I have coworkers that are republicans, some of my friends are republicans. I like them and we all get along. No matter how much I disagree with them I don’t actually believe they want me to die quickly when I get sick. Likewise they don’t actually believe I want to pull the plug on their grandma.

This is no way means that you shouldn’t be angry. Or that there are serious flaws on the republican side that we should never compromise on. But what it means is that we should be able to discuss these differences with reason. If I don’t say that Joe republican wants to kill sick people maybe he won’t say that I want to pull the plug on his grandma. And as a result we can have a serious discussion, a discussion I have all the time with those republican friends, family, and co-workers. Yet in the media that discussion does not exist outside a small number of outlets.

It is time to have an honest debate in this country, and both sides bare responsibility (even if obviously one side is far worse than the other).

[sally cat]

1. I swear, a memo must have gone out and I missed it. Play nice is the new motto. Screw that. They

didn't play nice the last two years, and if the worst happens and they do take the House, why would we play nice with them when the opposite tactic worked so well for them since 2008? I am so frustrated by this new capitulation attitude.

[no limit]

2. It's not about playing nice. Its about stopping the culture of only getting your point out

if you scream or say stupid shit.

[datasuspect]

5. it's all fucking propaganda

we must welcome our bircher overlords with civility.

never mind that the tea baggers and the republicans (who are now the tea party's useful idiots) want to reenact Mein Kampf.

for fuck's sake is everyone fucking insane?

i remember my dad and all his friend's saying that john hinckley jr. should have got a medal. they were all teamsters, tradesmen, union guys in blue collar chicago, but jesus, no one looked down on them for saying that, and people automatically alienated far right extremists on principle. you couldn't get away with that shit back then - not to the extent that actual LIES are repeated as news and disseminated as TRUTH through media channels. they weren't mainstream back then. hell, i think the eisenhower era republican platform included a pro-union/pro-worker plank.

and the john birch society (the closest thing we have to them is the tea party racist front in our day and age) was largely marginalized by the mainstream right. they had conservative intellectuals back then. they renounced the birchers. they were too far out of the mainstream. the tea party jihad is our modern equivalent. just switch out "communist" and "red" with "terrorist," "illegal," "muslim," and "brown."

but we had actual journalists back then too who reported news rather than infotain us with cartoon graphics.

plus corporations couldn't spend upwards of 4 billion dollars during this recent campaign season. this is open bribery. at least in third world countries, they have the dignity to keep that shit behind closed doors. official corruption has been codified and enshrined in our law supreme court decision.

[rainlillie]

13. Amen!

[CrawlingChaos]

33. "we must welcome our overlords with civility"

Perfect way to sum up that rally!

[rainlillie]

12. I couldn't agree more.

[Naturyl]

3. Let's face it, Stewart threw fellow progressive advocates under the bus to look "fair & balanced."

It was a dumb move and there's no defending it.

I can forgive, because everyone makes mistakes - but a mistake is exactly what it was.

[no limit]

4. Do KO and Ed Shultz make stupid statements from time to time?

Of course they do. Should those statements be ignored?

[rainlillie]

14. I totally agree!

[madrchsod]

6. one person`s opinion is`t any better or worse than any other`s....

one big fuck`n mountain out of a mole hill.

[no limit]

10. That's not even remotely close to what I said.

[TheKentuckian]

7. If your TeaPubliKlan family and association didn't want folks to die quickly

then they'd allow for other options.

They've been fighting tooth and nail for a lifetime or more to make damn sure health care is a privilege and sure as hell not a right.
So, I don't care if you like or love your low grade sociopaths they still strongly support dictating personal behavior and our sex lives, they demand the murders of innocents in their beds, they struggle year after year for corporate takeover of our government, they fight to strip us of all protection from those corporate powers, they insist on environmental destruction without consequence or accountability, they howl in demand for inequality, they seek to completely undermine public education, they cheer as our Social Security is stolen and never cease in efforts to destroy the program, they assault our civil liberties, and generally are pretty fucking wicked by any sane definition.

You like greedy, domonist, hypocritical, warmongering shitbags that live to dump on the poor and blame brown folks for the ills their masters create with their enthusiastic, flag waiving, howling, bloodlust support.

Fucker donate money to assholes who run on cutting school lunch programs and leaving old people without a pot to piss in.

These cotton picking jokers wake up early in the morning excited to vote to deprive people of their human rights.

What does personal affection have to do with what a subject supports and buys a chunk of with that support?

I'll stop telling the truth about these scumbags when they stop giving reasons to.
Don't want to be called vile and evil? Stop supporting it. Stop ensuring evil is done with your encouragement.

What would Jesus do? Refrain from shitting on the poor folks for a fucking start!

[no limit]

11. My parents are republicans, I dont have insurance. You are saying they want me to die quickly...

...if I get sick?

People like you are the problem, not the solution. Imagine if I came up to my parents, or my friends, or coworkers and started the discussion by saying "you guys are low life dirt bags that piss on the poor and demend the murder of innocents while they sleep". How is that discussion going to turn out? Sounds like you have that type of discussion all the time, how well does it go for you? How many minds have you changed?

[TheKentuckian]

22. That is exactly what I'm saying. I wasn't giving you a script for a missionary mission but stating

the it the way I see it.

You don't deny it but rather say it is a bad sales pitch. I'm sure an honest appraisal of the soul rot isn't going to motivate the Scrooge set to change their ways and go about the business of being a decent human being that tries to look out for their brothers and sisters in this world but it changes nothing of the assessment of what grows from the seeds they plant.

If they would accept the consequences of their insanity then I'm happy to take on "baby killer" and "commie".

What is their health care plan for you? If it boils down to something other than die quickly then say so and what it is. They want health care to be a privilege for those with means and for everyone else to what???? Fucking die. What the hell other options are available but die?

Policy has natural consequences and brushing those consequences under the rug without consideration of what that means for real and living people doesn't mean you don't take the downside.
That is why folks become angry at murder and injustice in their names, because they have conscience enough to realize they bought shares.

[no limit]

23. The way you see it is fucking insane, no different than the way teabaggers see things

You think that because republicans have different ideas for healthcare ideas than you do (as crazy as those ideas might be) that they want you to die quickly. It's fucking insane. My parents are good people. My coworkers are good people. Are they misguided? Yes. But you aren't going to change their minds by calling them murderers.

People like you are the problem. The right makes noise so someone on the left makes noise. And that will always be that way. People like you will exist. Just as people like you will exist on the right. The point is to stop giving people like you attention, you don't deserve that attention.

Everything you have faults with when it comes to republicans can be discussed rationally and reasonably and if such a discussion occured everyone would see that what you believe actually makes a lot more sense than what they believe. But we don't have those discussions in our media our in our national discourse. We just have people like you (from both sides).

And yes, in this case I am making a equivalence, but it is not a false one.

[October]

26. Well said.

I'm amazed and the angry hate-filled threads about Jon Stewart here at DU. Here's a guy who has done more than most of our Dem politicians for YEARS night after night after night -- and because he wants us all the calm the f*ck down... he's vilified. It's ridiculous.

DU was once sane... but it has become so caustic -- and so similiar to what was once despised.

Perfection or nothing? And everyone's idea of perfection differs, so we get nowhere. Everyone is just screaming here now.

I, too, have a couple of republican friends and family members. A few family types I can't even talk to because they are such ditto heads -- but I also have a few whom I like. We even openly marvel at our differences because sometimes we sound like we're complaining about the same things -- we just really see different solutions.

Anyway, just adding 2 cents.

[TheKentuckian]

27. These issues haven't sprung into existence as the result of a coarsened media environment

Almost every debate has been over many decades and those positions are deeply philosophical.

Positions are held not from a lack of debate but because of a lack of essential human decency.

Your pretending this divide is something new is a whitewash of history and the fruits of their plan has been die quickly. Is their some other objective observation of the current system?

All you have is a cop out, you are correct but shouldn't be listened to but rather some imaginary "reasonable" Republican who is interested in a sensible dialog.
Never mind that my "radicalization" is the fruit of long years of finding no "reasonable" conversation but rather unassailable hardness.

This isn't about to be solved by your prescription because there are no rational fair dealers to work it out with. It isn't my fault, the train left the track years before I came along.

You have theory that is an article of faith with out supporting evidence.

The media has been much better but it was never been evenhanded enough apparently because we are where we are.

It's not about a rational debate but irrational positions held by the the enemies of the poor and the proudly anti-social. We're talking a debate going back to Truman here. I don't think you are being entirely honest because being even handed is of greater importance because otherwise you must either think less of you associations as human beings or join them but neither is in the bounds of acceptable so you blame the media environment and liberals for not rolling over when this goes much deeper than such logic can account for.

You have every right to refuse to reconcile the people you know with the inevitable product of their positions but it certainly results in a hazy distortion of actuality that doesn't jibe with the real world.

If it ain't die quickly then what (again) is it?

Listening to people like me is crucial. People like me have the right policies to move this country and her people to broad prosperity and a better, more sustainable future.

"Sensible Centrists" are just as ideologically bankrupt as Republicans as their ideas come from the same dry socket of a source.

Medium is not a philosophy but a size beverage that may or may not have enough for your craving. Perhaps a small is all you need or maybe a large will barely handle your thirst. Being between small and large is not a virtue or automatically on target.

Jesus in Heaven sir, we adopted the Republican's plan for health care and they are still foaming at the mouth and you want to blame me or Keith Olberman for their intransigence???

The problem is they are greedy fucking assholes that don't care if their fellow man lives or dies. Otherwise this is fixed long before my ass came along and well before I became tired of the bullshit.

Your entire paradigm is false, never mind the lame equivalence argument of the mentally lazy or the willful distorters.

[no limit]

29. You keep insiting I have positions which I do not have and make your replies longer and longer

I do not belive the media is responsible for the problems in this country, that all this started with the media. But these problems will not be resolved with the media the way it currently is, and that applies to both sides.

Yes, there is a lack of human decency out there. But that lack of human decency should be ignored, the point is that it is not. Instead it is actually amplified by the media.

People do hold extremely irrational positions in this country. Absolutely. But you don't show those positions to be irrational by calling the people that hold those positions murderers, traitors, rapists, or whatever the hell you would like to see them called. You do it by pointing out the factual flaws in their positions.

Republicans do not want you to do that, they want you to shout. So your message gets lost in that shouting. Because as hard as it might be for you to believe as soon as you call someone a murderer they usually ignore anything you have to say after that. Again, republican policies are bad policies. But there are far better and more effective ways to explain why they are bad policies than using hyperbolic rhetoric.

Look at the Iraq war for example. It's not that the left was too quiet. It's that nobody in the media made the simple argument that the evidance for WMDs was highly flawed. Nor did anyone point out that occupying Iraq would cost over a trillion dollars because of the huge devide between sunni and shia. Infact our own president had no clue what differences between the sunni and the shia were. If only we had a media back then that wasn't interested in shouting but interested in facts. We didnt.

[TheKentuckian]

31. There was no shouting but rather a quiet an unquestioning push for the Iraq war

Anybody shouting was a desperate and far off voice in a wilderness of company line.

[datasuspect]

34. it was "shoved down our throats"

but people didn't seem to worried about "throat shoving" back then as they are now.

they could give everyone free healthcare tomorrow and it would STILL probably be cheaper than a fucking war.

[applegrove]

8. The GOP doesn't want an honest discussion in this country because then people would vote their best

interests and the right wing agenda would fall apart (since it doesn't help the middle class grow). It is all bread and circuses for them...I believe that. That is the only part of your post I disagree with. An abstructed discussion is what the GOP wants. Not an honest one.

[Hello_Kitty]

9. Grayson was talking about Republicans in Congress, not Republicans in general

When he said the "die quickly" thing.

[Waiting For Everyman]

15. Instead of Olbermann and Schultz, he could've focused on Scarborough

or even Tweety. I wonder why he didn't? Why Olbermann and Schultz?

Stewart can go screw himself. He's finished as far as I'm concerned.

[rainlillie]

17. I'm feeling you. Keith helped with the free health clinics for the uninsured

and Ed fights like hell for the 99ers (unemployed)

[TuxedoKat]

24. What?! I'm with you too.

This is very telling that he didn't include the Morning Joe crowd in his video review. I didn't know that. No wonder MJ didn't criticize the rally yesterday, rather they were patting themselves on the back for how they weren't like the other media people in the video. They are among the worst smarmy, self-agrandizing bullies in the media, especially Joe, Mika, Barnicle, Toad and many of their guests. This morning they had a segment on civility - a video that someone had produced and they only showed the video and had no discussion or comments about it afterwards, just went to a commercial. Guess they didn't want anyone emailing or calling to point out their numerous instances of rudeness and incivility.

[disillusioned73]

16. It's nice that YOU know reasonable Repubs....

I don't, not in RED country PA. They are either very well off and obviously only looking out for THEIR best interest or low info. types that suck up all the propaganda that's spread by the "well offs".... and that's about it, the intelligent ones have already left the party around these parts ( unfortunately there wasn't a whole lot of those types)

There is no compromise with these people, they agree with the Demints, Angles, Palins, McConells & Boners. They want this Democratic President, and the party as a whole for that matter destroyed and to hell with whatever collateral damage the country has to absorb. So I might agree with you if I had the Repub aquaintences you have, but I don't..

[rainlillie]

18. My hubby has republicans in his family and not one of them is reasonable.. we STILL

get the "he's a Muslim" e-mails. They worship Beck and think that everything he says is the truth. We are so screwed as long as people think the republican/baggers are going to play nice, fair and do what's best for all the citizens in this country.

[no limit]

19. I didn't say the ones that I know were always reasonable or intelligent.

But we get along, and when we discuss politics we are perfectly capable of doing so without shouting or spewing insults.

[AndrewP]

20. I wish Jon Stewart the best in his career, but frankly don't give a shit what he thinks....

He's just a guy. Enough with the walk on water treatment.

[Johonny]

21. exactly he's been wrong many times

he threw ACORN under the bus like everyone in MSM, he threw the climate scientists under a bus just like MSM, etc...

[TwilightGardener]

25. Please. What BS. Republicans certainly do want you to die quickly

IF you don't have cash or private insurance to pay for all of your care yourself, because they don't want to spend any amount of taxes to state or national programs to keep you alive. Unless, of course, it's Medicare for them. Or VA benefits. That's different. They're worthy of it, you're not--whoever you are.

[rapturedbyrobots]

28. its not that they want the poor to die quickly

they just don't care one way or the other.

p.s. i agree with everything you said. and would add that we have to be equally vigilant in protecting ourselves from neoliberal centrist dems (the ones who gave us a re-branded republican health plan from the 90s) as neoconservative rightwingers. two sides of the same destructive coin.

[UTUSN]

30. The problem is shown in the phrase "telling you," as in Jon "telling you."

It's like O'LOOFAH telling Joy BEHAR, "Listen to me so you'll learn something."


It's the condescension, patronizing, talking-down. Now, this is what we Libs are always accused of doing by the wingnuts. Well, it rankles when one of (supposedly) our own does it to us.

Along the same lines were the street theater skits and the Mythbusters and the cloying sentimental "heroes" of the rally. What the fuck are we, medieval children that we need parables and whaddayacallit the passion plays and the morality tales.

But above all the lecturing and sermonizing.



And I love Jon STEWART. Think what it'd be like if I hated him.

[many a good man]

32. So it's an issue of what he MEANT versus what was SAID

There WAS a little bit of stuff that could be interpreted as false equivalency.

He WASN'T just referring to the media, he was referring to all of us.

He WASN'T saying let's capitulate and roll over.

I admire his intentions. Overall it was a really good time. But it could have been better. Nothing to get all bent out of shape over. I think we've beaten this dead horse enough.