Thursday, September 30, 2004

Too clearly, obviously

After my little rant about the campaigns, I was driving to lunch and thought, you know this is all because I watch too much of The Daily Show. I' m just too cynical about all this. But then, lo and behold, I switch on NPR (since Bay Area radio music SUCKS, NPR is about the only bearable thing on the air, even during the lunch hour) and Jon Stewart was being interviewed on Fresh Air. (I actually don't like Terry Gross too much so I'm glad someone was filling in for her and asking Stewart some interesting questions.)

In any case, here's a link to the archived interview. The entire interview is about 30 minutes, but if you don't have time for the entire thing, I think the first 15 minutes are quite worthwhile. Stewart gets into some insightful comments about the media and the role anchorpeople should play when it comes to political representatives and their "talking points". Stewart loves to play the smart-ass and he definitely does that when it asked about politicians, the press, and his show.

So anyways, Stewart's comments about all of this relate directly back to my previous post. Basically, he talks about how politicians take advantage of the loopholes and the weaknesses of the media. That's what they're supposed to be doing, afterall they run campaigns of persuasion. Stewart has problems with media-folk who don't take the opportunity to call these politicians (and their handlers) on their BS by asking questions about fact. Stwerat acknowledges that not everything needs to be a fact, but if people called into be interviewed are purporting to state facts, shouldn't the interviewer verify the veracity of these claims?

Moreover, Stewart makes a great point about the few media-folk who dare call into question the veracity of such statements. It's gotten to the point that when an anchorperson dares ask a 'devil's advocate' (or even-keeled) question to a guest, the guest gets mad and accuses the anchorperson of being an operative for the other side.

So this all comes back to the same thing. The whole circus is a charade where everyone wants to blur what's going on behind the hand-waving and curtain-pulling. Many in the public, I'm sure, can see right through it, but nobody paid to play the game cares to acknowledge that there's anything behind charade. Those who should be trying to pull back curtains and stop the hand-waving are in on the game as well.

Thus those of us who can imagine what's really going on back there can only laugh and become more cynical. Great stuff.

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