This is somewhat outside the purview of what I normally post about but it’s just too important to ignore. Jon Stewart went on Crossfire this week and did a wonderful, passionate, incisive job of ripping the show to shreds.
Here’s a sample from the transcript:
STEWART: Here’s just what I wanted to tell you guys.
CARLSON: Yes.
STEWART: Stop.
(LAUGHTER)
STEWART: Stop, stop, stop, stop hurting America.
BEGALA: OK. Now
(CROSSTALK)
STEWART: And come work for us, because we, as the people…
CARLSON: How do you pay?
STEWART: The people — not well.
(LAUGHTER)
BEGALA: Better than CNN, I’m sure.
STEWART: But you can sleep at night.
(LAUGHTER)
STEWART: See, the thing is, we need your help. Right now, you’re helping the politicians and the corporations. And we’re left out there to mow our lawns.
BEGALA: By beating up on them? You just said we’re too rough on them when they make mistakes.
STEWART: No, no, no, you’re not too rough on them. You’re part of their strategies. You are partisan, what do you call it, hacks.
There’s also a Windows Media stream here (which I found via Lawrence Lessig’s blog).
Stewart is right. We despately need good journalistic coverage of our politics and we’re not getting it. This is one of the reasons why blogs are taking off as a political information source; the mainstream media outlets have created a huge opening for them by doing such a bad job. People are desparate for a news source that is not utterly controlled and manipulated by the political parties, even if that news source is flawed, inaccurate, etc.
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