Gerard's on a roll about John Stewart, Bill Maher and the rest of the self-absorbed media who've decided that their jobs are just a stepping stone to cultural immortality. If you're entertaining then it's easy to conclude that you're also powerful and wise. (Didn't Plato warn us about the silly hubris of entertainers?) When things come together like this, it's the silver lining to the otherwise dreary pall that sometimes seems to hang over us:
Here they've given their boys a 15 point edge and they're still lagging, and lagging seriously. It's like betting on a shaggy nag in a horse race because you can put the fix in and then standing there and seeing your "sure-thing" horse come out the far turn and into the home stretch with only one leg. That while the cowboy on the Pinto is way out in front and opening up the distance with every stride. Not only is that no way to run a fixed-horse race, but it also seems that there's going to be a price to pay for fixing the race to begin with.
I wouldn't have thought so... but I'll be darned if the public hasn't gone and sussed this out, with a little help from the pajama people. This will be the first time that the illusion of the media following events in a collaborative partnership with the public has been broken. In fact, it has been smashed. The public in the US (if not yet in the status-starved-first-world-elsewhere) just isn't cooperating, and the tricks the magician used to play are suddenly as visible as the strings that worked the puppets in Team America. Liberalism 3.x is here.
I am having the same discussion with somone who insists that The Daily Show is more than entertanment.
Posted by: JThomas at October 20, 2004 01:36 PMI think that's a little unfair to Stewart. The point is he is not MSM, he's a comedian. Yes, he is pro-Democrat and I assume liberal, but that' in part because the GOP is in power. What is pretentious about him trashing Crossfire? Presumably, they asked him to go on the show. I think he was making a fair point and, at least there, it was not a partisan point, that such shows do nothing to raise the level of political discourse. Why is that objectionable? I also get tired of the self-importance of the Hollywood types but in this case, I thought Stewart was right.
Posted by: MWS at October 20, 2004 02:44 PMActually, that's one of the things I have found to be quite interesting. I speak with some folks who run in radically different circles than I do, demographically, politically, and geographically - and the thing that has struck me is the amount of credibility the media has lost in the rest of America.
Posted by: Bravo Romeo Delta at October 20, 2004 03:34 PM