I don't watch the Chris Wallace Show, but did watch the Stewart interview this morning (apparently taped a few days ago?) online (see links below). Stewart just blows Wallace away - who seemed to think his own best argument was that Reno 911 and the Roast of Pamela Lee should make Stewart at least as embarrassed of his network as Wallace is of Fox.*
*Wallace also argues that former Nixon aide Diane Sawyer is as actively liberally biased as Fox News because she did not go into as much detail about the Arizona Immigration law as Wallace (and Stewart, and me) thought she should. Stewart was really masterful at not letting Wallace control the interview, but mostly he was just clear and reasonable. I have given up trying to figure out if Chris Wallace is really as stupid as he sounds in clips like this, or if he is just pandering to his audience (about which, in response to JS's comment that the public gives him credibility because of how disappointed they are in the work of television journalism, Wallace retorted "I don't think our audience is disappointed in us" - opening himself to an easy roundhouse knock-out hook from JS citing the study that viewers of Fox News are the most poorly informed portion of the public). It seemed that most of Wallace's problem was that he was prepped to attack JS for saying that he is nothing but a comedian, but JS early and repeatedly said he was a comedian first, and acknowledged that he was informed by a political POV (as a human being, how could he not be), but not driven to actively support and shape his message to that POV. Perhaps because all of his gotcha video clips were pre-stacked for his "nothing but a comedian" assumption, or perhaps because he really does not understand the difference (and genuinely accepts the Manichean position that there are only two kinds of people in the world, those that actively support and defend a conservative extremist POV, and everybody else. who he defines as liberals) or because he only cares about communicating with his true believer core audience, Wallace was simply unable to switch gears and engage JS about what he was actually saying, resulting in many sequences that were just embarrassing for Wallace. * *JS comes across as the mildly center-left independent gadfly that he really is (the real liberal at Comedy Central has always been Colbert), who voted for Bush the father in '88 (in what must have still been JS heavy MJ smoking days) and is unhappy with Obama. He also clearly makes the central comparison and contrast between himself and Fox News (apart from the fact, which he mentions earlier, that he is a clown and they are journalists), which is that while they are both critical of the "main stream media", it is for different reasons He is critical because he sees the MSM as lazy and sensationalistic, they are critical because they see the MSM as relentlessly partisan for liberal ideology.* http://tinyurl.com/3fzlg9c http://www.theatlanticwire.com/entertainment/2011/06/jon-stewart-makes-rare-appearance-fox-new-call-its-viewers-misinformed/38985/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheAtlanticWire+%28The+Atlantic+Wire%29 * -- TV or Not TV .... The Smartest (TV) People! You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TV or Not TV" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/tvornottv?hl=en
