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TUCKER CARLSON CALLED Stewart a "butt boy" for his soft interviews with John Kerry. His interviews with Obama show Stewart essentially giving Obama a thorough colonoscopy and enjoying it, to boot.
Just before the 2008 election, on October 29, Obama was a guest on the show via satellite in Florida. The cheers and applauses for Obama were so obvious that even Stewart acknowledged to Obama that "clearly our show is not a swing show, if you will." The questions were anything but tough, anything but inquisitive, anything resembling thought-provoking, and remember, this is the same Stewart who likes lecturing the media on integrity and Fox News for being a lapdog for the Republican Party.
The first question from Stewart: "How are you holding up? How are things going?"31
Whoa! Take that, Barack!
This happened to be the same night Obama ran his infamous thirty-minute infomercial, which had Stewart asking another powerhouse question, Greek-god style, this time about the infomercial. "Will it annoy us, or will we like it?" "Or will we feel comforted?"
Awww. "Will it comfort us?"
Still, Stewart managed to muster the tough questions: "So much of this [election] has been about fear of you: an elitist; a celebrity; a Muslim, terrorist sympathizer; a socialist; a Marxist; a witch . . . the whole socialism and Marxism thing, if you do win, is that a mandate for socialism in this country? . . . Has any of this fear stuff . . . do you think it has stuck with the electorate? Are you finding that on the trail?"
Stewart was there to offer Obama a venue and to assist him in batting down what they consider falsehoods. Obama's response:
I think there's a certain segment of certain hard-core Sean Hannity fans that probably wouldn't want to go have a beer with me [audience laughter]. But for the average voter, they're saying to themselves, "What's all this stuff about? I'm trying to figure out whether I can hang on to my house or who's gonna help me get a job. What about my health care? My premiums have doubled over the last couple of years." So I don't think they are paying too much attention to this stuff. And the whole socialism argument, that doesn't fly too well. The evidence of this seems pretty thin. I said today, they found proof that when I was in kindergarten that I shared some toys with my friends and that was clearly a sign of subversive activity. Now, Jon, I will say that being on your program is further evidence of these tendencies.
Stewart laughed on cue.
Stewart closed the segment with this cringe-worthy question, knowing full well that Obama was going to take it and turn it to a campaign stump speech: "Is there a sense that you have, you know, two years ago when you began this journey the country was not necessarily in the shape it's in now. Is there a sense that you don't want this?"
Obama:
I actually think this is the time you want to be president. If you went into public service thinking that you can have an impact now is the time you can have an impact. We tend to be a pretty conservative country. I don't mean conservative politically per se, but conservative in the sense, you know, that things are kind of going along pretty well and we don't want to mess with it too much. And then every once in a while you have these big challenges and big problems and it gives an opportunity for us to really move in a new direction. I think this is one of those moments, on things like energy and health care and the economy and education. I think people recognize that what we've been doing isn't working and that means people are going to be more open to change.32
Nice coordination, guys!
Prior interviews with Barack offered the same bro-mance ambience, including this probing one back in 2007: "There's a certain inspirational quality to you. Is that really something America is gonna go for?"33 Or this affirmation: "Here's to staying above the fray, and not having the red-blue divide anymore." Ha! How's that working out for you now, Jon? Obama has been the most politically divisive president in recent memory, but that matters not. It's feeling over fact, faith over hope for the Zombie. Really, entire chapters could be dedicated to Stewart's bro-mantic relationship to Obama during interviews.
Compare and contrast those man-crush sessions to any one of the interviews Stewart conducted with McCain. It was a grilling. It wasn't a lovefest. Stewart was playing liberal inquisitor, especially over the Iraq War.34 While duking it out with McCain over Iraq, Stewart defended Senator Harry Reid's proclamation that the war was lost (just before the famous and successful surge kicked into high gear).
"In fairness to Senator Reid," said Stewart, ". . . I think what he was saying . . . that militarily . . . you can't win it militarily. I think he said it clumsily but what he said was, it is a political solution not a military solution."
McCain gave his normal line about winning, and not surrendering to the enemy. But what's striking is how Stewart was feeding liberal line after liberal line back to McCain's stance on Iraq.
"Shouldn't we get away from the language of win or lose in Iraq and get more to a descriptive success; metrics; deadlines if you will; timetables [laughter, applause, from the circus animals]."
McCain said sure, if you want to set a timetable for surrender. Stewart called that assertion "unfair" and added: "Isn't the president saying I don't want to set timetables, but our patience is not unlimited, so what he's saying is we're not going to pull our troops out between now and the end of time." How can you say we need a deadline, "but I don't want to pin it down because that's surrender?" Stewart concluded.
Think to yourself, what's funny about this exchange? Stewart likes to pawn off his program as just comedy and throwing spitballs, but where's the punch line? If this brother is not on the DNC's payroll, he's getting gypped!
Stewart to McCain: "Supporting the troops: They say that asking for a timetable or criticizing the president is not supporting the troops. Explain to me why that is supporting the troops less than extending their tours of duty from twelve months to fifteen months, putting them in stop-loss, and not having Walter Reed be up to snuff. How can the president justify that? How can he have the balls to justify that?"35
McCain is booed by Stewart's audience after he says the men and women in Iraq are fighting for a worthwhile cause; they're fighting for freedom, and they're proud to be there.
Stewart: "The majority of [military] guys I talk to say that the political scene is not my scene. I'm a soldier." (As though McCain doesn't know what soldiers think, and recall the deafening silence from the left at the time when Obama's plan to escalate troop levels in Afghanistan was identical to the rhetoric of President Bush.)
Stewart adds this gem: "You cannot look a soldier in the eye and say questioning the president is less supportive to you than extending your tour for three months; you should be coming home with your family. And that's not fair to put on people that criticize.
"This is not about questioning the troops and their ability to fight and their ability to be supported. That is what the administration does, and that is almost criminal."36
And this is just part of one interview with John McCain, as Stewart has gone toe-to-toe in plenty of others. He goes after conservatives, and did so constantly during the 2008 election. After the election, the New York Times asked J. R. Havlan, a writer for The Daily Show, if Obama's victory was a "mixed blessing," to which Havlan said, "It's probably no secret where our politics lie."37 Clearly it's not a secret, J.R., and that's the point. Little people of the world, unite!
STEPHEN COLBERT
In 2006, the Republicans in Congress took a beating. They lost both the Senate and the House. The result didn't seem that surprising, given an unpopular war waged by an unpopular president, and with a Republican majority that acted like Democrats and spent tax dollars as though they were Monopoly bucks. But was there more to this drubbing? And by more, did Jon Stewart's partner in crime, Stephen Colbert, have anything to do with the Republican implosion at the polls? Why am I even mentioning Stephen Colbert in a discussion about the election and defeat of candidates? We'll call it the "truthiness" factor, the famous term coined by Colbert
to reflect making up facts and relying on feeling to reach conclusions . . . rather than reaching conclusions based on facts and analysis. But Stephen Colbert actually may have influenced the election, and liberals praise him for it. After the 2006 election, the liberal New York Times columnist Frank Rich wrote about his "favorite moment from the fabulous midterms of 2006,"38 and that was Colbert's now-infamous gig at the White House Correspondents Dinner. Colbert began:
Wow! Wow, what an honor! The White House Correspondents Dinner. To actually--to sit here at the same table with my hero, George W. Bush, to be this close to the man. I feel like I'm dreaming. Somebody pinch me. You know what? I'm a pretty sound sleeper; that may not be enough. Somebody shoot me in the face. Is he really not here tonight? Damn it! The one guy who could have helped.
Colbert, in his buffoonish way, playing an idiot, continued:
. . . it is my privilege to celebrate this president, 'cause we're not so different, he and I. We both get it. Guys like us, we're not some brainiacs on the nerd patrol. We're not members of the factinista. We go straight from the gut. Right, sir? [to President Bush] That's where the truth lies, right down here in the gut. Do you know you have more nerve endings in your gut than you have in your head? You can look it up. Now, I know some of you are going to say, "I did look it up, and that's not true." That's 'cause you looked it up in a book. Next time, look it up in your gut. I did. My gut tells me that's how our nervous system works.
Every night on my show, The Colbert Report, I speak straight from the gut, okay? I give people the truth, unfiltered by rational argument. I call it the "No Fact Zone." Fox News, I hold a copyright on that term.39
Is he funny? Yes. I think he's more funny than Stewart. But the two are cut from the same leftist cloth. His faux reality is one jab at conservatives after another. It has made Colbert heroic to the left. His "comedy" to liberals is a takedown of conservatives. There weren't too many laughs at the White House Correspondents Dinner. Many of the attendees thought the jokes were too over-the-top and highly disrespectful. But with the speech live on C-SPAN, it quickly went viral and became a rallying cry for liberals nationwide. Liberal bloggers dubbed the routine as the "turning point in revealing that the emperors of the media often wear no clothes." Or as Vanity Fair put it, "the speech turned Colbert into a kind of folk hero for the left."40
And you know what? It's true. Colbert's salvos wrapped up in "comedy" included "I believe the government that governs best is the government that governs least. And by these standards, we have set up a fabulous government in Iraq." On President Bush's low approval rating, Colbert said, "Guys like us, we don't pay attention to the polls. We know that polls are just a collection of statistics that reflect what people are thinking in 'reality.' And reality has a well-known liberal bias."
President Bush was obviously uncomfortable. And liberals were beside themselves. How couldn't they be with lines like this: "I stand by this man. I stand by this man, because he stands for things. Not only for things, he stands on things, things like aircraft carriers and rubble and recently flooded city squares. And that sends a strong message, that no matter what happens to America, she will always rebound with the most powerfully staged photo-ops in the world."
In 2005, Colbert spun off from The Daily Show. He played virtually the same character, but served mostly as one of Stewart's fake correspondents. Colbert's role is the "blindly egomaniacal, Bill O'Reilly-esque talk-show host," as Vanity Fair described it.41 His role was to embody what he called conservatives who "know with their heart," but don't "think with their head"--the oh-so-famous "truthiness." Liberal writer Steven Daly of the Sunday Telegraph in London praised Colbert as the "titular host [who] offers a funhouse-mirror reflection of the bellicose Right-wing opinionizers of Rupert Murdoch's Fox News" who dominate political discourse with "lengthy and obnoxious opinion-slots that are somehow passed off as 'news.' "42
Colbert's lines may be funny, but the message is calculated to eviscerate conservatives. At the correspondents' dinner, he continued his shtick, painting conservatives as a bunch of baboons:
I'm sorry, I've never been a fan of books. I don't trust them. They're all fact, no heart. I mean, they're elitist, telling us what is or isn't true or what did or didn't happen. Who's Britannica to tell me the Panama Canal was built in 1914? If I want to say it was built in 1941, that's my right as an American! I'm with the president. Let history decide what did or did not happen.
And there's the Fox-bashing, of course. He is a fake Fox correspondent, after all! "Fox News gives you both sides of every story: the president's side, and the vice president's side." But it's not contempt for Washington per se that drives Colbert, it's contempt for conservatives. His whole persona is to mock conservatives. It's to make conservatism so unpalatable that no one from his audience, TV or rival, would back a Republican. The left realizes this. In an article for the Huffington Post called "Obama owes presidency to . . . Stephen Colbert," Greg Mitchell, editor of Editor & Publisher, opined on how the "faux rightwing blowhard" has "filtered into our political/media consciousness."43
Colbert rarely gets out of character. In fact, he spends nearly his entire day in it, by his own admission, and he looks forward to driving home and listening to his playlist, so that he can be normal again (conservatism to him is abnormal) when he gets to his wife and kids.44 Colbert is a sitcom taken seriously. But there are rare glimpses into what motivates Colbert.
Most revealing was an interview he had with Daly of the Sunday Telegraph in May 2008.45 The interview occurred in Colbert's Manhattan office, and since Daly is a fellow lib, Colbert let his hair down. Daly, like most on the left, affirmed the character of Colbert as the pretend "Fox News Bill O'Reilly" who "takes great pride in shouting down unpatriotic," or as Daly wrote, "dissenting" guests and "occasionally having their microphones switched off mid- sentence."46
Explaining the inspiration, Colbert noted: "At the heart of this is America as the chosen country of God. It's conflation of the Statue of Liberty and the crucifix: American religiosity and American destiny are one and the same. That's why George Bush was chosen by God to lead the world. Manifest destiny is an old idea, but now it's just expressed in different ways."
Continuing his rare expression out of character, Colbert said,
The odd thing about the triumphalism of the character is that it works best in an atmosphere of victimhood. These characters [aka conservatives] say people have personal responsibility and they attack people for playing victims. But an ongoing theme with the Christian Right in the U.S. is the "War Against Christmas." That somehow there are sinister forces--read Jews, Muslims, lesbians--that wish to destroy Christmas. It ignores the fact that Christianity is more dominant with our culture than in any other Western society. In a way, they're very much in line with language an Islamic fascist might use, talking about the decadence of the West.
Not so funny, eh? Colbert is earning his leftist street cred with statements like that. It's a peek into the worldview that drives the character that is Stephen Colbert. Like Stewart, Colbert offers an apologia for liberalism. He attempts to bat down conservative arguments. Colbert is giving us a line that we hear from liberal outlets such as the Daily Kos and MoveOn.org.
Daly noted that the day the interview took place was also the day when Susan Jacoby, author of The Age of American Unreason, was booked on the show. Jacoby, a liberal, offers a blistering critique of "the same pathology that Colbert embodies," wrote Daly. That pathology the liberal author defined as "bullet-headed, patriotic incuriosity."
"Knowing things that other people don't know is the definition of elitist," Colbert said in character while interviewing Jacoby. Before the cameras were rolling, Colbert told Daly that his "conservative" persona has more trust in "the invisible hand of the free market" than in "knowledge" and "facts." "The market will take care of poverty. I call it dribble-down economics," he said mockingly. "The rich eat everything--and don't get me wrong, I'm rich--and some of it crusts on their beard, an
d the poor are allowed to feed on their beard. You can't say they're not being provided for--that's class warfare."
Much of his material is funny. Conservatives aren't humorless, as the false cliche goes. But we understand, and we've seen the effects, of the man who will address a Hollywood audience as "godless sodomites." We understand his worldview. And, more importantly, so does Colbert. Speaking of his "mentor" Bill O'Reilly, Colbert says, "I have a genuine admiration for O'Reilly's ability to do his show. I'd love to be able to put a chain of words together the way he does without much thought as to what it might mean, compared to what you said about the same subject the night before."47 By turning conservative ideas into satire and jokes, he and his merry band of eighty-six staffers48 have helped lobotomize a generation of Zombies who have written off the successful ideas of limited government and free markets. Colbert even warns his guests that "he's willfully ignorant of everything we're going to talk about."49
YOUNG PEOPLE ARE increasingly getting their news from Colbert and Stewart.50 A poll released by Rasmussen Reports found that 30 percent of those ages 18-29 say that both The Daily Show and The Colbert Report are replacing more traditional news outlets;51 35 percent disagree and another 35 percent are undecided.52 Amazing! Nearly a third view the dynamic throne sniffers as legitimate news outlets, and another third are not sure what to think? America, your future is not looking good.
Many young people even boast of their fondness for news delivery via liberal comedians. Jen Jablow, an anthropology major at the University of Pennsylvania, said during the campaign that "I think of watching network newscasts as something my parents do. I can't imagine my friends sitting down to watch an actual network newscast at 6:30 because we're doing other things at that time. It's a lot quicker to go online. I customize my news." Like many her age, Jablow is hooked on Comedy Central's fake news shows.53