Stewart and Colbert: Lampooning
the right on both sides.
Jornal de Negocios, Portugal
Jon Stewart: 'Good F#@king Questions Demand
Good F#@king Answers!'
"Stewart
knows that exposure is the best medicine and, with a sense of unique civic
trust, he allows the interviewee - and the public - room for free opinion, not
reacting; but, as he does when faced with a misunderstanding based on the error
of sterile exaggeration, he eventually shoots back."
The conversation begins on
the subject of a cowboy hat provided by the guest on that night for the host,
comedian Jon Stewart. The prop had been made for Ronald Reagan, one of the
"enlightened" fathers of self-regulating market and grandfather of
the subprime crisis. Dick Armey, former Republican congressman and author of
the book Give
Us Freedom - The Tea Party Movement Manifesto, defines himself as a
defender of the Second Amendment and says that "for a desert island, I
would choose to take a gun;" Said Stewart, "I would choose to take a
boat."
Throughout
the interview, Armey argues that the political class (he doesn't say if he
means all of it) has usurped "the people" by taking office (again, he
doesn't mention if he means all of them), and that taxes "the people"
pay aren't being properly spent (he has already said he means all taxes). Inspirationally
prudent, Stewart listens until the end of this rant: his humor redeems us from
these fools who, taken with the seriousness they demand, would in fact incite
anarchy and the end of post-Civil War American Federalism.
Making use of the credibility
garnered by his enduring and successful program, he scheduled the "March
to Restore Sanity" for October 30; He says that the march is meant to
give the floor to the "80 or 85 percent of Americans who are not
extremists" and to compensate them for the "15 to 20 percent who are
- and who dominate the national political debate." With a familiar sense
of anticipation and timing, this "showman" scheduled the event for
two days before the mid-term elections - perhaps the most important one of its
kind in recent years.
Arsonists in sheep's clothing
who are ensconced in the system and blame its bankruptcy on the dangerous back-and-forth
between bonhomie and Peronism, cool in the presence of pragmatism
and lucidity. A few years ago, on the same program, I watched another interview
with a radical conservative named Ann Coulter, who, oscillating between
bipolar communal love and sectarian hate, found liberals and liberalism guilty for
almost everything, from the financial crisis to the moral crisis (she didn't
say which moral crisis nor who was involved). Her theory: "There may be
bad Republicans, but there are no good Democrats."
Stewart knows that exposure
is the best medicine and, with a sense of unique civic trust, he allows the
interviewee - and the public - room for free opinion, not reacting; but, as he
does when faced with a misunderstanding based on the error of sterile exaggeration,
he eventually shoots back: "that's curious, because the old liberal-conservative
battle almost seems like an older paradigm; in reality, it feels like the real battle
is extremism against moderation."
Posted
by WORLDMEETS.US
There's nothing more fun than
seeing the saga transform puppets into scarecrows. "Good f#@king questions
deserve good f#@king answers" is a great slogan.
