Reply #55: With Stewart

[TabulaRasa]

I think his entire thing is that he wants to make a show of being fair. It's quite annoying when he does it, but I guess you have to put up with it to get any good stuff. (Colbert's usually on mark, and I think the Daily Show is suffering from his absence.) In these people's minds, having a passionate political opinion puts you in the same league as Republican party apparatchiks. It doesn't. They're repugnant because they lie, cheat and steal to support powerful interests, not because they have strongly held beliefs. Having strong opinions and going to bat for them makes you a human being, as oppose to a spineless turd. But I don't think some people understand this fine distinction. And Democrats too love to make a big show of being objective. ("We're laughing at ourselves.") Well if you're laughing at yourselves justifiably, that's admirable. However, if you're laughing at lame, dishonest jokes about Al Gore being an asshole and a liar, who can't get over the fact that he lost the election "fair and square", to demonstrate that you're fair-minded, then you are anything but fair, honest, or intelligent. You're a weak-minded fool who shouldn't be trusted to carry the progressive/left banner.

P.S. You're a better man than I am for boycotting SNL. It's like a train-wreck I just can't turn away from. The Stewart moment that got me the angriest was when he had an entire segment ridiculing the Cindy Sheehan anti-war protests, for such reasons as Jesse Jackson wiping his nose during the protest, and Cindy Sheehan announcing that they were gonna meet up later at a different location. It wasn't funny, and it was offensive because it seemed to express the ethos that if you care about the world and the direction it's taking, you're intrinsically ridiculous, unlike hipsters like Stewart and his crew. Dennis Miller used to have a similar schtick before he became a right-wing blowhard. I haven't caught TDS much since then.