Stewart on CrossFire
Posted on:: October 16th, 2004
I only caught the last five minutes, but it seemed like Stewart is pushing harder on his shtick: Blurting out the truth. He’s becoming our public conscience. Has a comedian played this role before? There certainly have been comedians who were funny because they were truth-tellers — Lenny Bruce on culture, Richard Pryor on race, Billy Connelly on his life. But have any had the political focus and cultural impact Stewart has?
Dave points to this transcript, these bittorrent captures in wmv and avi, and this mp3.
Categories: Uncategorized dw
Thanks for the link to the transcript. I’m a huge fan of Jon Stewart, almost the only person on TV who makes as much sense as JoHo. But I missed his Crossfire appearance for the very reason he attempted to chasten the hosts for. (Note that they never even tried to rebut his charge.) I can’t stand their obvious partisan pandering. While Stewart’s fake news show — which incidentally makes many wise and valid points — is hilarious entertainment, Crossfire’s fake debate show is just loud, predictable and obnoxious.
Also be sure to see the TalkLeft thread on this, which includes links to a good Salon piece and a good one by Dave Cullen about it.
In the UK, Bremner, Bird and Fortune
http://www.channel4.com/news/2003/special_reports/bremnerbirdfortune.html
Jon Stewart rocks
I just watched Jon Stewart on Crossfire. For those of you not familiar with Crossfire, it’s one of these BS programs on the cable news networks, in this case CNN, where a Liberal and a Conservative debate issue…
David, this is just sad. Stewart points out what seems like such an obvious truth to any observer of American politics: it’s strictly partisan. There is no dialogue and no problem solving, no collaboration and creativity. People are dying at home and overseas, and all we get is bickering.
Is anyone asking the right questions? Like “How would you two work together to solve the health care crises?” Is it in any of the candidates interests to actually propose solutions?
So Stewart comes on Crossfire and does his piece, and it comes off as a joke. He’s 100% right.
Turn off your TVs. THINK, have a bunch of real conversations and then vote.
Good luck, America. The world is awaiting your decision.
It’s only thanks to my Firefox feedreader (and BitTorrent) that I got to see the video, having given up on Crossfire long ago after writing a lot of letters along the same lines.
Stewart was brilliant. I loved how fast the audience tumbled to the way he was being funny by refusing to be funny (“I won’t be your monkey”) even as Carlson begged him to be funny [laughter]. It really gladdened my heart and bolstered my flagging faith in my fellow Murricans–which probably has been flagging because I only see them as backdrops in campaign events these days, or hooked up to those lame-ass debate-meters.
Our fellow Americans are not stupid or deluded, just busy with their lives. When they get a second to sit down and think this through, I feel more hopeful that people of all political persuasions–and there are a hell of a lot more than two, as we all know–are gonna find it’s a no-brainer.
Hey that CNN link is now bogus.
“THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED”
It’s not even close…
Nevermind; I didn’t scroll down far enough. I’m sorry…