Whiners and cheerleaders unite in criticism of Stewart! Yet they're both completely wrong

[jpgray]

The basic problem with cable news is that it defines all political issues and their importance based on how they fit a partisan narrative. The problem with the ideological arms of cable news is that in pursuit of narrative, public figures are turned into monstrous caricatures with no resemblance to human beings. No matter how minor the figure, if the act is exquisitely emblematic of an ideological narrative, it absorbs enormous amounts of broadcast time.

The chief obstacle to forming a progressive majority, ostensibly the goal of DUers, is our mutual caricatures of each other. Nobody wants to work with a Hitlerian Stalinist, crypto-Kenyan anti-colonialist, Muslim-loving Antichrist. Nobody wants to work with a war-monger thirsty for genocide, who tortures for sheer macho sadism and allows New Orleans to be destroyed because he's a cruel and murderous racist. That neither such person exists as defined, or that many of the appellations are inherently contradictory or false doesn't matter. If you see your neighbor as being okay with such a monster, there is no possible intimacy or community there.

Now it's perfectly true that one caricature is vastly more fair, and based on far more evidence, than the other. But every time you see a bizarre elevation of a tiny non-story such as Juan Williams or Bill Ayers, in service of defining a party further as the created caricature, the possibility of intimacy and community with fellow citizens who -support- that party evaporates a little more.

And we need both. So long as tea party people remain wholly isolated and exclusive, hearing only reinforcing narratives, they are going to be exclusive, pugilistic and unchanging in their views. We want them to change their views. So long as we see them as irreparably damaged unhumans, reach out is going to be impossible. So long as we feel they are repulsive and irretrievably vile, so long as we see them all as would-be head-stompers, progressive ideas will only reach a plurality at best, and a vulnerable one at that.

Take this from Erich Fromm as the whole idea we are missing, and Stewart's criticism is meant to expose:

Actually, if you take the average American, and studies have shown that, he is really concerned only with private affairs; that is to say, with his health, his money and family affairs.

He is not concerned with his society. He talks about it, but you know if one speaks of being concerned, I mean something about which one loses one's sleep, sometimes.

And the average American never loses his sleep about affairs which relate to his society and to our whole country.

That is to say, I mean he has separated his private life from his existence as a member of his society, and leaves that to the specialists in the government to take care of.

...the individual citizen has very little possibility of having any influence - of making his opinion felt in the decision-making.

And I think that, in itself, leads to a good deal of political lethargy and stupidity. It is true that one has to think first and then to act -but it's also true that if one has no possibility of acting, one's thinking kind of becomes empty and stupid.

Those specialists are delighting in our division, and our inability to unite over our own exploitation and abuse. The only real power the public has over the specialists is in being organized and active. Any slur, caricature or demonizing that drives us further away from community and intimacy, when we share a common subjugation, is harmful and deplorable. Especially when one need not cede any ground on principles in refusing to resort to caricature.

Keep the steak, lose the sizzle.

[HEyHEY]

1. Yarp.

That's about the size of it.

Sadly, though, too many people here really on entertainment and politics as a mixed bag to amuse them. Even if a news report is completely even-handed they will called it biased if it doesn't portray their side in a good light. That's why they prefer people pundit journalists. They understand it, it makes them think the world is okay cause the man/woman on the electric box agrees with them.

As soon as that person doesn't agree with them, they must suffer punishment for their traitorous ways. ALl because they took away the comfort that was gained through the box representing someone's views.

[emilyg]

2. Good insight.

[jpgray]

6. Yes, and it has the added value of being succinct

Something I would do well to emulate. :dunce:

[jpgray]

4. Our spectrum of hero-to-villain has no middle

Heroes are more than heroes, they are snow-pure saints of immortal goodness and light. Villains are more than villains, they are execrable demons of unmitigated depravity and evil. These absolute categories would be less ridiculous if they were less fluid in membership, yet public figures move freely from one to another, sometimes on the basis of the extremely minor and superficial.

That a more or less ordinary person could be snared by hatred and fear is the leitmotif of history, yet increasingly it is impossible to see GOP voters as ordinary people. That we should or could reach out and convince such people is seen as a total impossibility, and so long as that's true no organized opposition to entrenched and capable interests is possible.

[cynatnite]

3. The one thing that made the most sense out of this interview...

Is that there's a lot of money to be made in Red vs. Blue.

Also, I realized that even though my gut hates them in many ways, treating them as such gets us nowhere. They have no reason to view me any differently than I do them if no one budges from their particular spot.

We have to be better than them regardless. A "I hate them less than they hate me" kind of attitude does nothing even if in our heart of hearts we think they deserve it.

One of the things that I'm seeing on DU that I think is wrong is the notion that Jon is being a bush apologist or that he's making excuses for torture. Understanding why someone does something evil doesn't mean that it's being excused. Knowing what the rationalization is is a beginning point. It's a place to start.

I read an article a few years back about a man in Yemen who was working with avowed terrorists. I believe it was from Christian Science Monitor. They believed in martyrdom and in their religion. They believed in the whole "Death to America" thing. The man used their rationalizations (their religion) to get them to see that wanting to kill Americans because they were American was wrong. It was an enlightening article.

Maybe it is possible to find that point where two sides can agree and work from there. Maybe I'm just getting tired of the fighting all the time. I'd rather spend my life working with my enemy towards a more common goal than fighting them all the time. Does that make me a traitor or an apologist? Did I lose my liberal credentials just now?

When Howard Dean ran for president he talked about God, guns, and gays. Those were issues people would never agree on and he wouldn't go there because it would defeat any attempt he made in reaching out to those people who might pull away if he said words like "gay marriage". Those were divisive issues and Howard Dean might have known that Faux Noise and other networks would use that against him and gin up the discourse for their own benefit.

The old saying "if it bleeds, it leads" is very true. Only the blood bath is our political discourse and even if someone knows how to stop the flow, they sure as hell don't want to.

Sorry, this is so long. But you and other people have me really thinking about all this.

[jpgray]

5. Fantastic post.

One of the saddest aspects of DU is that we are so isolated, and feel so impotent, that we pour untold amounts of time and text on some of the most superficial issues, so long as it furthers our belief about some group, sub-group, or sub-sub-group of our own party.

So we take up Grayson's Taliban ad, for example, to have a debate on campaign rhetoric. We take up one lady's question on CNBC and use it as evidence furthering our own little caricatures of each other--the clueless pony-wanting whiners on one side and the sell-out cheer-leading loyalists on the other.

All this radicalizing serves to drive out subtle and important differences in belief--we use the shorthand of response to these minor, minor events to define fellow DUers. If you dislike Grayson's ad, you're a weak-kneed spineless sellout. If you sympathize with CNBC lady, you're an unproductive whiner who never lifts a finger for the party. That people are more than the sum of their reactions to these news-bites enters our minds less and less. On the basis of one noncommittal post from someone, we start to file that person into one extreme group or another.

[jpgray]

7. I'm kicking this in a pathetic hope for further response

Disagreement, argument, vitriol, abuse--anything that might provide more insight into how DU thinks. The uniformly negative reviews of Stewart remain a mystery to me.

[malaise]

8. The uniformly negative reviews of Stewart remain a mystery to me.

Same here

[DeschutesRiver]

15. Same here as well

And thanks to the OP for that response. I couldn't add a thing to it - perfect.

[lame54]

31. and here

[Mz Pip]

33. Me, too.

Stewart may be a comedian but he has some excellent insights on our political divisions. I am sort of amazaed at the negativity about his interview. It seems those who trash him do so because he didn't pass some liberal ideological purity test.

He has an opinion and has just as much right to express it as does Keith, Rachel. Of course people have the right to criticize what he said but Stewart has never promised to be the standard bearer for liberal ideals. If people are disappointed in that, so be it.

It's kind of ironic that there are so many who are willing to criticize Obama and other democrats for not delivering but get all snarky over Jon Stewart when he points out the same things. Can't win.

And polarized we remain, even on DU.

[Dyler Turden]

9. very nicely said.

And it's good to see a kindred voice. K&R

[PeaceNikki]

10. Kicking this because the voice of reason is often ignored.

And you, jpgray, are a voice of reason.

[jpgray]

12. I wonder how often that applies in the technical DU sense

:silly:

:hi:

[PeaceNikki]

18. More than most realize.

:hi:

[TheKentuckian]

13. pseudo rationality is not being reasonable but rather an effort to appear as such

sound as such, and desperately hope to be perceived as such. Generally by unreasonable people in a supposed effort to win the unreasonable over and if not the unreasonable the folks that cannot be bothered to discern who is being reasonable and who is not.

Actual truth and objective reality of actions and policies be damned along with accountability for heinous actions perpetrated, abetted, cheered, or ignored by the unreasonable.


Its a sham and a throughly silly one at that.


The unmitigated navel gazing stupidity of the entire concept shocks me. It isn't like Operation: Mealy Mouth Chump hasn't been given a really good go from the early 70's till largely this very day with horrible consequences.

The rhetoric fails to match reality and the apparent goal is the hobbling of any liberal movement.


WHAT PART OF WE TRIED YOUR ALAN COLMES, WHIMPER AT THE OPPRESSOR, BULLSHIT FOR FUCKING YEARS FAILS TO REGISTER WITH YOU HABITUAL PISSBOYS AND GIRLS???

Try going for a win instead of a motherfucking tie sometimes surrender monkey motherfuckers and maybe we get somewhere. Call a motherfucking spade a fucking spade for once instead of trying to fish out an excuse for torturers and we might slow down the march of the sociopaths.

If you are tired of fighting then lay your chump asses down in the dust and fucking die but cease and desist with the whining for us as a movement to do the same.

We have not even begun to fight and your primary focus is bending over and trying to shove the world's biggest white flag up your patootie.

Work on what together with the TeaPubliKlans? The destruction of public education, the dispossession of the elderly, the shitting on the poor, the murders of the brown skinned folks, the disenfranchisement of minorities women, and gays, the funneling of resources to the wealthy? What???? What???

It sounds platitudish but it is fucking bullshit. What can be accomplished will be accomplished DESPITE this mouthbreathers not because of them like the rest of history.

You silly buggers would try to compromise with a runaway freight train on how much it squashes you.

The state of affairs what it is today and this is your concern????

This shit is real and all you got is "can't we all get along?"!

[jpgray]

14. Yes, we will out-headstomp them. For peace.

That one can refuse to hate and demonize the abused ignorant while strongly denouncing the lies that delude them never occurs to some people. Yet it occurred to a man whose house was bombed by such people.

I said to myself these are not bad men. They are misguided. They have fine reputations in the community. In their dealings with white people they are respectful and gentlemanly. They probably think they are right in their methods of dealing with Negroes. They say the things they say about us and treat us as they do because they have been taught these things. From the cradle to the grave, it is instilled in them that the Negro is inferior. Their parents probably taught them that; the schools they attended taught them that; the books they read, even their churches and ministers, often taught them that; and above all the very concept of segregation teaches them that. The whole cultural traditional under which they have grown—a tradition blighted with more than 250 years of slavery and more than 90 years of segregation—teaches them that Negroes do not deserve certain things. So these men are merely the children of their culture. When they seek to preserve segregation they are seeking to preserve only what their local folkways have taught them was right.

What a mealy-mouthed chump.

[TheKentuckian]

26. Passive Resistance only works when conscience can be appealed to.

Not that it matters, you and your ilk would assert that King is a rabble rouser and needs to be more patient if he were having his struggle today.

As for me and mine, we'll stop telling the truth on those in power and their enablers when they change their shitty ways.

[bettyellen]

38. it's ignorant to think loud and abrasive is better, and you pretty much prove it in this thread

you're so deliberately obnoxious, your point- if you had one- is lost due to excessive volume and nastiness and I have to wonder why anyone would be self loathing enough to listen to the likes of your self indulgent ranting.
MLK did just fine. but you go ahead and substitute arrogance and bluster for discourse that is thought provoking, intelligent and stirring. And good luck shouting down people who distrust you, because you're going to need it.

[PeaceNikki]

17. blah, blah, blah

[TheKentuckian]

27. Ladies and Gentlemen, Lady Blah, Blah is in the house this mornin!

[lame54]

32. a bartcop fan

[bettyellen]

11. I think a fair amount of DUer love the down and dirty mud slinging just as much

as Fox news does. I noticed the attitude here when discussing sexist BS against women politicans. i remeber being bothered when someone here called Sarah Paline a slut for wearing red shoes, or making a big deal over O Donnells drinking and making out. To me, this was scary to hear becuase I have red shoes and like to drink and make out.
But the guys here that does this want to fling any shit at all, without looking at the bigger picture part of which is they make Democratics look equally tight assed and stupid. Some here are just itching for a fight, and they do say things they really do not believe too, and act in ways that are childish and embarrassing. Their excuse being "they did it first". I have met a lot of people over the years who are into politics solely because they like to argue. It's pointless to engage them. I'm pretty over it.

[PeaceNikki]

16. Yeah, this, also, too

:thumbsup:

[jpgray]

20. Exactly. Homophobic slurs have also made the rounds here

Which just... do people realize there is a relationship between ideology and insult? You can't be an Atwater for respect and dignity.

[bettyellen]

37. the sexism and homophobia is why I haven't been a donor here for years

I have noticed these mod don;t give a damn if it's someone they like doing it. Sorry for that sort of cryptic, sort of repetitive bit in the post. I was half asleep..ha ha.
Good to see you here, been enjoying lots of your OPs lately. But I'm not sure either of us can talk any sense into these people. God knows I have tried.

[Coventina]

19. K & R for one of the best things I've read on DU for a long time. n/t

[blondeatlast]

21. Need a super-duper, 3X kcick and rec for this one. That tribal mentality makes ratings for TV news,

but it's killing our nation and us.

And I freely admit to being guilty because I get caught up in the moment--which is just what the TVsters want me to do.

[terrya]

22. Kicked and recommended, sir

I watched Jon Stewart last night, and I thought he brought up some excellent points. I thought he sounded reasonable. As do you.

Thanks for the post. Food for thought.

[sufrommich]

23. Great OP . K&R. nt

[GrpCaptMandrake]

24. What then . . .

. . . do you propose as a solution?

Is it as simple as John Prine exhorting us to "blow up the teevee . . . "?

I'm rather at a loss to see how we get the TeaBaggers to stop paying exclusive attention to one source. It really is deeper than just FoxNews, however. The trope of "duh lib'rul meeja" has been around since at least Nixon. It's burrowed well into the ears of millions of Americans, rather like that nasty critter in one of the Star Trek movies.

We are talking about a group of people who were ripe for the picking. In other eras, they had other names. For instance, in the 80s, they were "Reagan Democrats." They share a certain demographic commonality of fear, mistrust and often outright ignorance. There are forces that both understand AND leverage those factors. The handy thing about fear-based politickin' is that it's so easy to do. As long as one can identify a "Them" to demonize, half the job is done. Most right-wing messaging is based on instilling fear of "them." It works, too. Far from feeling disenfranchised by the corporatocracy (as evinced in your Fromm quote), the TeaBaggers are quite full of themselves. They think they turned an election, since they're utterly unwilling to consider the horse-gagging loads of corporo-Cash that actually did the job.

[JVS]

25. This seems awfully distanced from talking about stewart's actual words.

[Gold Metal Flake]

28. Yes, agreed.

K&R

[KharmaTrain]

29. Politics As A Blood Sport

For most of us oldsters, we grew up with maybe 30 minutes of National and International news each evening. The era of Cronkite, Huntley/Brinkley, John Chancellor and so on...where time was precious and there was no room for opinion, just the "w"s and let the viewers decide. That all changed with 24/7 cables and a corporate mindset of "news" being a profit center...thus the need to make it "entertaining" and blurring the lines between real news and opinion and personality. Add to this the cheapening of the media where foreign bureaus have been dismantled, newsrooms have seen several rounds of firings and cost cutting and the void is filled with more personality and food fights that are cheap to do. The entire concept of news was scrambled with those attempting to manipulate the definition gaining the upper hand.

[sufrommich]

30. Very true. 24 hour news channels are to blame. nt

[Little Star]

34. So called "Cable news IS NOT news" It is opinion.

Lets get real!

I for one am grateful that KO decided to counter FOX's opinion.

[madfloridian]

35. Then call me a whiner. I think he is wrong to compare us with the far right.

I live among the far right of which he speaks. He is insulting to those of us on the left who intelligently present our cases.

Worst of all he was insulting to the few spokespersons we have on the left.

He gets on my last nerve trying to equivocate until he stands for nothing.

[DirkGently]

36. No one's wrong here. Stewart's job is to target the ridiculous, not to conclude who is more so.

He whiffed a bit straining to find liberal examples to make a point, is all.

[UTUSN]

39. So "whiners" is the au courant word for those who "disagree" on any particular topic. n/t

[Johonny]

40. +1

[jpgray]

41. No, it's what the people who yell at each other most on DU call each other

"Whiners"/"pony-wanters" and "cheerleaders/loyalists," etc. I just found it interesting that many of both groups unite in finding so much to disagree with in Stewart. :)

[UTUSN]

42. O.K., so it's the au courant word that Cheerleaders call those who disagree with them. n/t

[jpgray]

43. It is, and one of Stewart's points is that these insults are not productive

Not if you want to understand where the other person is coming from. It's activism, not reaching out. Those two -can- certainly overlap, but there's a serious difference between throwing red paint and asking "So why are you wearing fur?" They both have important roles, but they are going to receive, and are designed to get, very different reactions.

"Cheerleaders" are no fans of my threads, by the way. A search for them in GD: P or here will show you that much, boy. :D

[UTUSN]

45. I'll take the "boy" as a previous version of "dude." But since "discussion" is Jon's grail,

discussion as a be-all and end-in-itself ain't that much of a goal. When somebody emotionally or physically attacks, and it is unmistakable what it's all about, there just ain't much to discuss, especially not civilly. I'm sure that some of the "discussions" about how many angels danced on a pin point could be very elegant, and I'm also sure that in the Existential scheme of things spending time "discussing" is just as valid as any other form of activity. It's what somebody chooses to do.

By the bye, I wasn't calling you a cheerleader or anything at all. I was amplifying, repeating and rephrasing for clarification------oh, wait, could it be I was "discussing"?!1

[jpgray]

46. Yeah that was meant in the "boy howdy" sense, not as an address

Which goes to show that we ought to be more careful with language, especially on the internet.

But there's more, for example, to the tea partier story on the rank and file level than that they are old, white and ignorant. What I miss on Olbermann and Maddow is any sense of empathy for people that are being horribly abused by their leaders. "Gov't hands off my Medicare" guy is ridiculous, but also tragic--I'm not interested in just pointing and laughing at him from a clubhouse with the other cool kids. I want to know why and how he comes to think that way.

[UTUSN]

48. One of my points is that sometimes it's not all that much of a mystery "why & how

he comes to think that way." But we're getting repetitive (therefore demonstrating that discussions vary in length and usefulness).

[jpgray]

49. Ha! So do posts. Sorry for talking your ear off

I'm looking to understand these people, not because I don't think they're bad, but because we need some of them to have a progressive majority. We can't fight the decay of all our major institutions if we remain a plurality of exclusive pugilists, right?

[CrawlingChaos]

44. I very strongly disagree that these were Stewart's motives

You are giving him far, far too much credit and this is a colossal reach. Not that I necessarily disagree with the points *you* make, it just bears little resemblance to what we actually got from Jon Stewart.

Jon Stewart's inability to express his alleged intentions in a coherent fashion only underscores my impressions.

[jpgray]

47. That's totally fair, but this was my take on it

Not only based on his comments on Maddow, but on interviews he's done in the past, etc. His defensiveness on the charge of his arguing equivalence between FOX and MSNBC wasn't clearly argued, but the best defense is that he made no such equivalence in the sense Maddow means. Any viewing of his show would show no equivalence in his attacks on FOX and MSNBC, or on the GOP and Democrats, or on protesters for Code Pink and the Tea Party. He doesn't draw that equivalence.

Maddow is exactly right that there is a huge difference between Code Pink and the Tea Party, and that extremism is actually represented in GOP leadership but not at all in the Democratic Party. But I don't think Stewart was making that argument.

[CrawlingChaos]

50. Thanks for your response

I was thinking, if the rally had conveyed the message outlined in your OP - if that had come through loud and clear - I could not have found fault with it.

The rally, as it was, depressed the heck out of me. Seeing all those people who traveled great distances just to hold signs with content-free snarkage - slogans like "boy are my arms tired" and "I'm with the Birthday Party" - utterly disheartening. Not everyone fell into that category, but in large part I think the audience picked up the subtext - activists are lame, protesters have no life, etc.

Meanwhile, at the same time in France they had millions of people in the street, putting up a spirited fight to keep what's being taken from them (a standard of living Americans can only dream of), but The Daily Show audience is receiving the message that such behavior indicates a need to have one's sanity restored.

And then the final straw for me were the suggestions that neocon war criminals meant well and should be treated with civility. Apparently I need my sanity restored because this makes me want to scream and/or smash crockery. I wouldn't even know how to overstate the evil that these people have done. This tone of Jon Stewart's, to me, is taking us further into some horrifying new 'normal' where atrocities are taken with a grain of salt.

Anyway, I appreciate your take on it. I have a feeling we're on the same page, but just saw the rally quite differently.