Jon Stewart has (and I’ve often concurred with) raged against the media machine. Notably, he called the hosts of Crossfire hacks and dicks after he made a good point about the media failing to do its job. And The Daily Show’s coverage of blogs last week was excellent in its promotion of blogs and slamming the media coverage of blogs. Stewart, through humor and satire, cleverly berates the media establishment. Unfortunately for him, he’s guilty of doing the same thing they do. I’ve covered this before, noting:

Stewart assailed the media for their complacence in the media/corporate/political establishment, which is a good thing. He’s done that on his show before. He also called them both partisan hacks. And he was right.

However, Stewart was tossing rocks from his glass house. A while back, Kerry got some sand in his vagina or something and stopped doing media events because he didn’t want to address his Vietnam service (this marked the first time that I know of where he didn’t want to talk about his Vietnam service). Then, Kerry appears on Stewart’s show and, instead of tossing rocks, Stewart lobbed softballs. The Crossfire folks pointed this out. Stewart relied on his standard defense that his show is a comedy show, it follows puppets making prank calls, and that if the media wants to compare itself to his show then the media has some serious issues.

Bullshit, Jon. I’ve seen you on your show ask difficult questions and I’ve seen you drill your guests. I’ve seen you drill the media. Those are good things. The fact is Stewart gives certain folks a pass and these folks tend to be liberal. It’s your show, do what you want. I’ll still watch because it’s funny. The fact remains that you make fun of the Bush administration for all sorts of things (they probably deserve it) but the only thing you make fun of Kerry for is his boring, monotonous voice.

And he’s played hack again. The other night, I caught an episode of The Daily Show that dealt with Florida’s law that eliminates the duty to retreat with respect to self defense law. The coverage was exactly like I was reading the hysterical and misleading ramblings of the Violence Policy Center, the Brady Campaign or Oliver Willis. TDS referred to shooting first and asking questions later and how the police would be unable to investigate shootings. Both of these are completely unfounded. Additionally, they noted the NRA rep stating that they’d like to see more states adopt the same law. TDS, acting as though it was utter crazy talk, never pointed out that this law actually brings Florida in line with the majority of states in the country. The piece was misleading and anti-gun (though the Speedo Holster bit was quite funny other than Stewart asking his audience if the gun scared them more than the large guy in Speedos).

And all this is done given the TDS’s recent (and well-founded) attack on the media for not checking facts and asking tough questions.

Don’t get me wrong, I like TDS. It’s funny, entertaining and ruthlessly brutal. But it’s hypocritical to do the same things you criticize others for and rely on the we’re fake news bit when called on it.

Posted in uncategorized on May 17th, 2005 by SayUncle | RSS 2.0 |