John Stewart completely 0WNZ Crossfire...

[Rausch]

Forget the politics, this guy HAMMERS BOTH commentators...

http://www.ifilm.com/ifilmdetail/265...o&refsite=6761

[KC Jones]

Originally Posted by Baby Lee

1. The 'dense' admonition referred solely to you confusing my initial remark about my stance on Jon's Crossfire performance not being about Bush/Kerry as stating that Bush/Kerry is also irrelevant when discussing the roles Crossfire and TDS repectively play in the media market.

No, it was an insult you levied at me likely because you contradicted yourself and didn't like having it brought to your attention.

Originally Posted by Baby Lee

2. TDS claims to be a parody. But the audience treats it as news, and TDS is aware of this and uses it to it's advantage when it sees an opportunity.

This is a ridiculous fabrication, please prove that the audience uses TDS as a news source or stop making it.

Originally Posted by Baby Lee

3. Crossfire is not a news program and I've never heard them claim to be. It is a political briefing and pundit confrontation show. The entertainment value of the show is watching spinners extemporize. The journalistic value is nil.

Yes, crossfire is not a news program, but it does claim to tackle the issues and it does run on a news network. I agree with you that the jounalistic value is nil. I guess the question is whether they have any responsibility to provide some journalistic integrity given that they claim to be a debate show tackling the issues and are running on a news network. It's pretty obvious you and I would disagree on that point. So were pretty much just left with an insult and a fabrication. Good job

[memyselfI]

Originally Posted by KC Jones

I'm being dense because I don't understand that TDS is a parody of news programs running on comedy central whereas xfire purports itself to be "tackling the issues" on a news network? You see no difference between being a parody of news programs and being a news program?

That's really quite amazing to me. You're being silly.

Oh give yourself a break...

if you haven't been a Faux News regular you wouldn't know that TDS is also a parody.

[Baby Lee]

Originally Posted by KC Jones

No, it was an insult you levied at me likely because you contradicted yourself and didn't like having it brought to your attention.

I am going to make this as simple and clear as I can.
Newchiefs said I was only pissed at Jon's tirade because he endorsed Kerry instead of Bush.
I said that my critique of Jon's tirade had nothing to do with whether he endorsed Kerry or Bush.
I later pointed out that if Jon can get a Kerry interview, then he is a news source and has some duty.
That is an altogether different issue than whether Jon endorsed one side or the other, and whether I'm pissed about the endorsement.
If you have any evidence that I contradicted my original point, that my critique of Jon had nothing to do with who he was endorsing, please lay it out.

Originally Posted by KC Jones

This is a ridiculous fabrication, please prove that the audience uses TDS as a news source or stop making it.

http://www.cnn.com/2004/SHOWBIZ/TV/0...ts.stature.ap/
http://www.hartfordadvocate.com/gbas...?oid=oid:53371
http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=...5-034411-8008r
http://www.dearjonstewart.com/

[NewChief]

Originally Posted by Baby Lee

I am going to make this as simple and clear as I can.
Newchiefs said I was only pissed at Jon's tirade because he endorsed Kerry instead of Bush.

Apologies, for derailing this thing. I, honestly, meant my statement as tongue in cheek or something. I didn't mean for it to be the basis for an argument. Anyway, here's some more interesting stuff on the whole Stewart backlash. BL definitely isn't alone in his condemnation. Journalists, from both sides of the spectrum, are going after Stewart. They're circling the wagons:

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/index.html

Inevitable Jon Stewart backlash



It's eight days till the election and the media has whipped itself into such a frenzy of cannibalistic blood lust that we have completely reversed the effects of our Paxil prescriptions and are charging blindly after anyone we can sink our teeth into.

Case in point: Jon Stewart.

We have had weeks of unrelenting, masturbatory press congratulating "Daily Show" host Jon Stewart for being the most trusted man in journalism. He's been deified in Newsweek, canonized in Rolling Stone, and his new volume, "America: The Book," is at the top of bestseller lists. Journalists and wisecracking couch-monkeys alike fantasize that he is just the kind of dry, observant political commentator they would be if they were good-looking and had their own show. By early October, the story that Jon Stewart was Aristophanes reborn -- by way of Edward R. Murrow's gene pool -- was about as revelatory as the news that bloggers were a major journalistic force on the election landscape.

But the moody chasm between early October and late October is vast. And in late October, the media is exhausted, frustrated, scared and eager to lash out. Conveniently, they also happen to be shocked, shocked by Stewart's dead-serious scolding of "Crossfire" hosts Tucker Carlson and Paul Begala last Friday. And so they have turned.

"Has Jon Stewart jumped the shark?" Tina Brown asked on last night's episode of "Topic A." Brown's plummy query sounded downright cheerful, though that might have been her relief at having finished an interview with anal sex memoirist Toni Bentley, which Brown had concluded by darkly predicting that Bentley would "meet some very interesting new friends after writing this book." Brown was practically licking her lips as she played a clip of Stewart on "Crossfire" and asked her panel of media experts, "Is he taking himself a bit too seriously?"

New York Times reporter David Carr thrashed Stewart in response, cracking that he would have been better dressed for his "Crossfire" appearance had he shown up in a nun's habit. "His decision to go church lady start to finish, absent any sort of levity and humor ... was a little hard to figure out and probably not good in the end for his own personal franchise," said Carr.

A Sunday New York Times "Week in Review" story by Damien Cave led with the question, "Is Jon Stewart being coy?" and quoted the Boston Pheonix's Dan Kennedy, a Stewart fan who has criticized the "Crossfire" appearance. On Oct. 19, Kennedy wrote that Stewart "came off as something of a bully and a bore" as well as "slippery and disingenuous." Kennedy also argued that in the confrontation, "Stewart became what he criticized."

In Saturday's Washington Post, Howard Kurtz quoted Wonkette – aka Ana Marie Cox -- saying that Stewart had painted a target on his own chest, and that "The Jon Stewart backlash should start right about now." "To say his is just a comedy show is a cop-out in a way," Cox told Kurtz. "He's gotten so much power."

But in case you weren't sure that Cox's predicted backlash was upon us as of this weekend, we woke up this morning to a damning piece in the new issue of New York magazine. "The notion of Stewart as the Joker Who Speaks Truth to Power has now gotten away from the joker himself. His cult success on Comedy Central has become bloated and excessively esteemed," wrote Ken Tucker, going on to argue that Stewart's postmortem rehash of the "Crossfire" fight on his own show was just "nyah-nyah, can't catch-me baiting." Tucker writes that Stewart "tries so hard to be the anti-anchorman that he ends up being a disdainfully mediocre one, tossing verbal Twinkies and Ho Hos at everyone from John Kerry to Ralph Reed, ending up with sugary, jittery segments." Tucker also writes that Stewart "has developed this bad habit of wanting it both ways: Hey, I just tell jokes! and You can't handle the truth!"

Everyone has a point, and it seems that everyone -- including War Room -- has a blog, or a column or a guest spot on a talk show.

But maybe we should all just ratchet back the blood lust, rechannel the aggression. I strongly doubt that Stewart -- a man whose show I do not regularly watch because I do not have real cable -- ever asked to become the biggest story of this election season. He has seemed fairly content to host his show, publish books and nurture a comparatively literate fan base by squeezing this blood-chilling political climate for all the laughs the rest of us are too ethically bound to milk.

It's been his fans -- or at least his ideological fellow travelers, the culturally privileged and socially alienated media -- who have hoisted him into the stratosphere of political commentary, where he apparently now makes a fat, juicy goose at which to aim our shotguns. New York's Tucker admits to agreeing with Stewart's politics; the Pheonix's Kennedy to being a devoted fan. And yet they just can't help themselves.

None of us can. We are all jittery and bloated ourselves, overfed on coverage, statistics, polls, trends, heroes, villains, conspiracies, lies and anger. We have overfeasted on our own cleverness, on our own ability to gather information and process it instantly. We are sick of ourselves and sick with worry about what will happen next week. We can barely stomach the idea of the eight more days -- or God knows how long -- to come before we know who the next president will be. And so, wandering aimlessly, crazily looking for any piece of fresh meat to rip from the bone, the addled, self-loathing media have caught our own tail and are dumbly gnawing on it.

So let's just breathe in and breathe out. Drink a cool glass of water and maybe throw back a stiff drink. Head home early and get a good night's sleep. We are a week away from this thing. Jon Stewart is no one's enemy any more than he was anyone's savior: He is a funny guy with a funny show who happens to be a smart guy who had a smart point to make on a not-funny show. I think that most politically interested people -- including that "dick" Tucker Carlson, who has admitted as much -- have enjoyed a few belly laughs thanks to Jon Stewart. That doesn't make him Walter Cronkite; but it doesn't make him Jayson Blair either.

So let's chill out a bit before we condemn our only decent jester to death.

-- Rebecca Traister

[KC Jones]

Originally Posted by Baby Lee

http://www.cnn.com/2004/SHOWBIZ/TV/0...ts.stature.ap/
http://www.hartfordadvocate.com/gbas...?oid=oid:53371
http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=...5-034411-8008r
http://www.dearjonstewart.com/

Oh, I see. Because 1/5th of 18-29 year olds listed TDS among their news sources for "campaign news", you get to extrapolate that out to mean their entire audience (or presumably a majority) uses TDS as a news source.

I'll give you some credit though since you are an admitted member of their audience and so you must also use it as a news source. It must be very frustrating for you when their investigative reporters ask silly questions or cover bizarre topics.

Interestingly enough a poll found TDS viewers to be better educated than average and better informed about political topics than average. Now this could mean many things:

1) It could be damning evidence of the failure of our education system as all of these relatively well educated people don't understand the difference between a news program and a parody of a news program.

2) It could mean that the Daily Show is actually a news source as you propose and actually a much better one than newspapers and or the news networks.

3) It could mean that most of their audience gets their news elsewhere but enjoys a good parody of television news programs - especially those of the news magazine variety.

[Baby Lee]

Originally Posted by KC Jones

Oh, I see. Because 1/5th of 18-29 year olds listed TDS among their news sources for "campaign news", you get to extrapolate that out to mean their entire audience (or presumably a majority) uses TDS as a news source.

You got me, when I said the audience viewed it as news, I didn't make clear that I wasn't referring to EACH and EVERY single viewer. The point is, those numbers are nearly on par with the number of people who view the network news and newspapers of record, which pretty much negates the premise that everyone views TDS as a comedy show and nothing more.

I'll give you some credit though since you are an admitted member of their audience and so you must also use it as a news source. It must be very frustrating for you when their investigative reporters ask silly questions or cover bizarre topics.

I watch the show, usually already aware of the news they are reporting, and enjoy their satirization and spinning of it. In that sense, I watch it for much the same reason I watch Crossfire.

Interestingly enough a poll found TDS viewers to be better educated than average and better informed about political topics than average.

Thank you.

Now this could mean many things:

1) It could be damning evidence of the failure of our education system as all of these relatively well educated people don't understand the difference between a news program and a parody of a news program.

2) It could mean that the Daily Show is actually a news source as you propose and actually a much better one than newspapers and or the news networks.

3) It could mean that most of their audience gets their news elsewhere but enjoys a good parody of television news programs - especially those of the news magazine variety.

Don't disagree with any of those possibilities. But my point is that Jon wants to be news when he thinks he can make a difference, and wants to be comedy when his takes don't stand up to scrutiny.

Tucker summed it up well

Tucker also writes that Stewart "has developed this bad habit of wanting it both ways: Hey, I just tell jokes! and You can't handle the truth!"

[Rausch]

Originally Posted by Baby Lee

I am going to make this as simple and clear as I can.
Newchiefs said I was only pissed at Jon's tirade because he endorsed Kerry instead of Bush.
I said that my critique of Jon's tirade had nothing to do with whether he endorsed Kerry or Bush.
I later pointed out that if Jon can get a Kerry interview, then he is a news

There is the flaw in your logic. His intent is not to provide factual information, only to entertain. His questions are to steer the conversation towards comedy or funny responses.

Now, is it informative to find out a specific person's sense of humor? Sure, but that's pretty much all the info it provides, and by trying to extrapolate any more than that from a TDS segment is silly...

[Kylo Ren]

Why is this thread not in the DC forum?

[Baby Lee]

Originally Posted by Rausch

There is the flaw in your logic. His intent is not to provide factual information, only to entertain. His questions are to steer the conversation towards comedy or funny responses.

Now, is it informative to find out a specific person's sense of humor? Sure, but that's pretty much all the info it provides, and by trying to extrapolate any more than that from a TDS segment is silly...

I would agree, if that were true.

[Ebolapox]

who's john stewart??

I know of a jon stewart who hosts a faux news show on comedy central, and a former actor/comedian who had a secondary role in the movie 'big daddy' with adam sandler--

-EB-0

[Baby Lee]

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/goss...p-213612c.html

President Bush managed to wipe the smirk off Jon Stewart's face - at least for one night.
Having voted for Sen. John Kerry, America's most-trusted name in fake news couldn't conceal his disappointment Tuesday night when he arrived at Comedy Central's "Indecision 2004" party at The Park.

Despite the twinkling donkey-and-elephant-shaped disco balls, "spin-control" roulette wheels with Bush and Kerry's faces, and adoring girls in torn-up "Daily Show" T-shirts, the comic stayed only for a few minutes at the party.

"He's in a really bad mood," one "Daily Show" correspondent told a young staffer.

"Why?" asked the dim minion.

The correspondent pointed to a TV screen with the election returns.

To paraphrase from Artie Lange "My monkey show didn't change the world WAH-WAHHHH!!!!"