One could interpret Stewart's appearance on The Nightly Show last night as an
oblique acknowledgement of the dust-up. But since it could also be a turnabout
over Wilmore's role on The Daily Show, I'm likely reaching.
David
From: PGage <[email protected]>
To: "[email protected]" <[email protected]>
Sent: Wednesday, July 29, 2015 11:42 AM
Subject: Re: [TV orNotTV] Wyatt Cenac on blow up with Jon Stewart
On Wed, Jul 29, 2015 at 2:50 AM, Steve Timko <[email protected]> wrote:
Interesting recap of the attention TDS is a receiving plus a video of Stewart's
pre-show Q&A.
http://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2015/07/jon-stewart-white-house-wyatt-cenac-daily-show-secrets
Stewart addressed this last night (I guess I will leave it at that for now) -
after responding to viewer Twitter questions in a scene in which I thought he
might address the Cenac stuff, but didn't. It was in the context of a comic
bit, but had his unmistakeable serious voice ("I don't know if they were secret
- I mean, I'm in the visitor's log and they took pictures of the meeting" -
that last is a set up for a visual joke, but I can not find the picture online
yet).
Politico proves yet again that it is the worst, and Vanity Fair does not do
much better - continuing the breathless tone in discussing these two meetings.
It is a by now unsurprising comment on the state of American journalism that
two short meetings in seven years between a fake news-reader and the president
are presented as part of some secret conspiracy or conflict of interest, while
the regular schmoozing and back-massaging that goes on between supposedly real
journalists and the high level politicians they are supposed to be covering is
treated as simply the necessary grease that provides "access".
In his opening segment Stewart may have gone a bit out of his way to
demonstrate what is clear to anyone who has watched his show during the Obama
years - he has been a fairly tough critic of this president. Last night he used
what in the eyes of most people not under the influence of FN has been a wildly
successful and morally courageous African trip by Obama to make a point about
American arrogance (Obama telling saying that policies that discriminate
against women are "stupid") leading up to the kicker - pointing out that while
Obama has been willing to make a show of his courage in lecturing African
countries, when he visited Saudi Arabia during his first year in office he
never raised concerns about their human rights abuses (punchline "let that be a
lesson to Africa - you want to fuck with people, you have to lube them up
first" - over a graphic of a barrel of oil). True Stewart's recent interview
with Obama was mostly a mutual congratulation society, but Stewart has been
extremely tough on Obama in the past, consistently taking the view that all the
"hope and change" rhetoric of his first campaign was BS, that Obama caved on
health care reform (Stewart was one of those who made a fetish of the "Public
Option"), and that his inability to close Gitmo, ongoing surveillance of
Americans and over reliance on drone strikes makes him not substantively
different that his predecessor.
Jon Stewart has "covered" three US Presidents. I think most current viewers and
TV and political pundits forget just how tough he was on Clinton during the
last two full years of his administration - tougher than Dave or Leno (and Dave
was pretty tough, I will have to leave it to others to comment on Leno). If he
was tougher on Bush than Clinton (and he was) it was because he had 8 years of
the latter, and, by any standard that would make even a pretense at being
objective, the problems of the Bush administration were more serious than
fellatio in the Oval Office. I think it would be fair to rank the presidents in
order of how critical Stewart has been as Bush, Clinton, Obama, but it would be
unfair to suggest either that he has not been critical of Obama (he has been,
at times very harshly, and at critical points in his presidency) or that two
short meetings with Obama are the reason he has been less harsh than he was on
the guy who finger fucked his 19 year old intern or the guy who led the country
into both the worst foreign policy and the worst financial crises in living
memory while laughing his way over a devastating hurricane in the process of
killing 1800 Americans.
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