Comedy Central's Jon Stewart has gained the reputation, in recent years, as something of a truth-teller. That is, sort of the wise fool, who couches sometimes cruel truth in humor.
And The Cable Gamer will freely admit that "The Daily Show" is a powerful product: Stewart and his team are smart, and they use video editing extremely well to catch politicians in their contradictions. Of course, most of the politicians so caught tend to be Republicans--most obviously, George W. Bush.
Now TCG doesn't regard our current president as a great genius, but then, neither are most politicians, or, for that matter, most people. With clever technique, it's easy to make anyone look stupid.
Once again, that's fair enough--free speech, and all that.
But Stewart chose to travel to the Denver, site of the Democratic National Convention, to unload on cable news, and Fox News, in particular. No doubt liberals and Democrats will lap it up.
But Stewart might have thought through his argument a little better: The Washington Post's Howard Kurtz quoted Stewart as saying, "I'm stunned to see Karl Rove on a news network as an analyst." That network, of course, is Fox.
Continues Kurtz:
Stewart, who voted for John Kerry in 2004, said he didn't see CNN's James Carville, the former Bill Clinton aide, in the same category because "I don't think he's being passed off as a sage."
Well, there you have it. Stewart, a Democratic voter, sees a crucial distinction between Republican pundit Rove and Democratic pundit Carville. And just last night, TCG was watching coverage of the convention, and there, on CNN, was Donna Brazile, a CNN analyst, talking about what she was doing as a DNC superdelegate. That's right: Right there on air, she was doubling as a politico and as a political analyst. Does that bother Stewart? Evidently not.
