I cleaned up the F-word and the H-word (hate), and I apologize to DU for having named DU in the original e-mail to Rachel as being where I posted because of the possible appearance that I was SPEAKING FOR DU (what a joke THAT would be).
http://ccinsider.comedycentral.com/2010/11/12/jon-stewart-on-the-rachel-maddow-show/comment-page-1/#commentsThe age of Jon STEWART is over for me. And I’m going to confess that, while I loved the small doses when his brilliance was breathtaking in skewering particular wingnuts I am a better sniper against wingnuts than I am a fan in any echo chamber of my Lefty side. This means I have only watched snippets of STEWART-COLBERT and whatever other few “Libs” (in-quotes, since I don’t now know anymore whether STEWART is a Lib) there are, while I spend tons of time monitoring wingnuts and fulminating against them, helplessly. It’s more needed to gig than to fawn. The good people don’t need that much minding while the bad ones need SLAPPING DOWN, NOW! Idolatry rubs me wrong, and when I do it, it’s for a few who are long dead like FDR, or way way back.
Now, whenever something WAY exceptional happened, like COLBERT’s turn at the White House Correspondents Dinner, I go WOW! Whenever somebody mentions an exceptional segment, I watch the YouTube as much as my machine or Windows 7 allows, but no full shows.
He said, “I held the rally to show who I really am.” Well, I for one sort of thought I knew who Jon was, not that I had exactly pigeon-holed him before, but now that I think about what or who I thought he really was, I would say he was sort of what might be called “a Liberal gadfly,” and a really smart one, who could skewer wingnut ignorance, racism, and hatred like nobody else, but also those on the Left who committed some hypocrisy of their own: Really, a force for (purity?).
Instead, what we’re getting is somebody like a cartoon hermit/sage in a cave, an almighty PONTIFF talking down to us all about showing kindness towards ‘Baggers and Shrubs. My antennae actually went up back when he did the hit job on Crossfire, and at the rally where he featured the doofus from L.A. Law who wants a namby-pamby Third Way instead of clarity, my stomach tightened up.
His gripes are supposedly about (GRIPE 1) both the Wingnuts and the Left, that both “close down debate/discussion”, but he danced around when Rachel asked for specifics about the Left and he claimed that he was talking about EXTREMISTS on both sides who shout down speakers, but when she made the point that the Lefties who do that are “like, TWELVE ladies in Code Pink, compared to the entire (Faux) network,” he totally danced away and gave credence to the age-old canard of LIMBOsevic’s that the loudest Wingnuts are JUST ENTERTAINERS, not serious political types! Yeah-right.
(GRIPE 2) He gripes that we on the Left try to marginalize/delegitimate ‘Baggers by calling them ‘Baggers instead of stopping to wonder, Who are they, are they angry, why are they angry, let me talk to them. That we say we hate and demonize Shrub and CHEENEE, claiming (I would say “reporting”) that they lied us into the Iraq Attack and committed torture and other such things, while (Jon claims: ) Shrub didn’t stop with saying Saddam actually HAD WMD but rather went on to add the words, “is trying to RECONSTITUTE” his WMD resources so he didn’t totally LIE. He said Shrub is no Pol Pot. Oh, well then. But I would add that those twelve ladies in Code Pink are no Faux Network or LIMBOsevic either.
No, Jon, we suspect all too well what the ‘Baggers, Rethugs, and wingnuts are all about beyond their surface claims: Things like racism, xenophobism, and the logical extensions of all these really WOULD end up in something like Pol Pot. And as for Shrub-CHEENEE, if there are little words to nitpick about, that’s what footnotes are for, not for LEAVING OUT the WHOLE FREAKING SCREW JOB. There just doesn’t need to be that much PAUSING to meditate and reach out. There just doesn't need to be that much debate and discussion.
(GRIPE 3) Faux “is ideological but not partisan.” Wait, what?! He says Faux has been excellent at executing and marketing their product, which O’LOOFAH et al. have been saying for years in contrast to Lefty products, and that’s true.
(GRIPE 4) We and the media have been sold on “Liberal vs Conservative, Red vs Blue. It’s not about that, it’s about corruption vs not-corruption.” Umm-‘Kay. That’s fairly indisputable. We’ve always known that if every eligible voter actually did so there wouldn’t be a Rethug in office anywhere and that those maps of a “Red” continent with tiny pockets of “Blue” means geographic empty miles vs pockets of crammed actual population.
(GRIPE 5) But his big thing is that he deplores the 24 hour cycle of cable news that is built for earth shaking events like 9-11 or the O.J. murders but these events don’t happen every day so the cycle magnifies or augments/ every little thing that comes down the pike into SOUNDING like the big enchilada things. Fine. So would Jon propose dismanteling all the 24 hour outlets, INCLUDING Faux? What, exactly, does he propose, something like a czar of appropriateness?! It sounds like he’s bucking for THAT position himself.
But, repeating because it’s important, he ignores and diminishes the disproportion and inequality of the wingnut propaganda machine compared to the Left’s. His bottom line seems to be the Third Way B.S. No, Jon, I really DO believe there are enemies and pretty much understand them. And I’ll call them “HITLER” as shorthand.
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