Jon Stewart on CNN's Crossfire

BoldAC writes "Instead of plugging his new book, Jon Stewart tonight on CNN's Crossfire used his time to slam the media's coverage of the election. Although Stewart leans left, he attacked political shows and begged them: 'Stop, stop, stop, stop hurting America.' Is it time to really stop all the political games that both sides play? Torrent of the event is available." And another set of .torrent links.

Comments

ifilm

[avageek]

video of it is also posted on ifilm

This was...

[Sheetrock]

One of the coolest things I've seen on TV since O'Reilly vs. Franken on C-Span BookTV.

Journalism standards have gone down the toilet. Kudos to Stewart for giving these folks a metaphorical kick to the nuts on live television -- wasn't a fan before, starting to become one now.

He's just so right; when a satirical news program on a minor cable channel meets or exceeds the journalistic bar in this country, to the point of winning awards and in many cases being the only news people will watch, you get an idea of just why things are so screwed and why so many people continue to buy into the two-party system. The media isn't conservative, and it certainly isn't liberal... it's simply profitable.

Re:Political torrents

[ivan37]

Suprnova had torrents of all of the debates a day or two after (although those are the only political torrents I've seen).

Re:Political torrents

[stevenrace]

Apple's iTunes Music Store offers free downloads of the presidential debates usually the day after.

Re:Best quotes

[AntsInMyPants]

What makes this even better is the tone, which you obviously can't get from the transcript.

Jon's was one of quiet exasperation coupled with legitimate anger, and just a dash of contempt.

Carlsons' tone was one of self-righteousness, followed quickly by stammering, defensiveness, and forced-incredulity.

Begala (who I otherwise despise) was at least wise enough to keep quiet through most of it. He seemed to understand that they were screwed.

Re:Attention Slashdot Laser:

[TheSHAD0W]

It'd take tens of thousands of downloaders to slashdot a tracker on even a marginal server.

Re:Carlson has a point though...

[gad_zuki!]

He was also softball with:

Henry Kissinger (most of the world considers him a war criminal)

Karen Hughes (Bush's campaign manager)

Ed Gillespie (RNC chairman/cheerleader)

Its just not a hard-news talk show. And its a comedy show which makes no promises about being fair, honest, or anything.

That said, you should watch the show more often as softball is all that goes on there, with a few exceptions.

Carlson doesnt have a point. Carlson needed to save face after he was exposed to be below the level of the daily show in terms of credibility. That's as low as you can get.

Re:Is it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Then contact CNN and let them know you fully agree.

http://www.cnn.com/feedback/forms/form1.html?21

Maybe that will wake up a few people.

Re:Lone Slashdot Conservative Responds...

[Idarubicin]

Now I am going to get pummled by Mods I know :) I see my comments go up and down from +4 to +0 in the course of a single hour as Slashdot is overwhelminingly a left-wing Noam Chomsky echo chamber...

This may, possibly, have something to do with prefacing your remarks with a tacit invitation to flamewar?

Actually, this is rather the point Jon Stewart was trying to make. Modern news/talk/interview programs very seldom engage in the actual debate that is so important to a functional political process. Shows like Crossfire epitomize the problem. In lieu of debate, one sees screaming heads parroting party-line talking points and engaging in as much intellectual dishonesty and name-calling as they think they can get away with.

If you get past the fact that Jon Stewart leans to the left and actually listen to what he said, you might find that you agree with him--he genuinely seems to believe in vigorous, honest debate, and he rightly calls the partisan hacks on Crossfire on their own lack of depth, substance, or independent thought.

Re:That guy sis damn funny.

[LuxFX]

I heard he was on the Factor

Actually, that interview led to a particularly amusing bit of research. Comedy Central, although open enough to the fact that O'Reilly was just joking in fun when he said that nothing but "stoned slackers watch your dopey show", didn't like the misconception it reflected. So, they had Nielson Media do some research....

It turned out that viewers of The Daily Show were more likely to have completed a four-year college than viewers of The Factor.

Atlantic Monthly article on Karl Rove

[maynard]

Don't miss this Atlantic Monthly article by Joshua Green on Karl Rove and his history of campaign dirty tricks. The story to which you refer is presented there in detail:

A typical instance occurred in the hard-fought 1996 race for a seat on the Alabama Supreme Court between Rove's client, Harold See, then a University of Alabama law professor, and the Democratic incumbent, Kenneth Ingram. According to someone who worked for him, Rove, dissatisfied with the campaign's progress, had flyers printed up--absent any trace of who was behind them--viciously attacking See and his family. "We were trying to craft a message to reach some of the blue-collar, lower-middle-class people," the staffer says. "You'd roll it up, put a rubber band around it, and paperboy it at houses late at night. I was told, 'Do not hand it to anybody, do not tell anybody who you're with, and if you can, borrow a car that doesn't have your tags.' So I borrowed a buddy's car [and drove] down the middle of the street ... I had Hefty bags stuffed full of these rolled-up pamphlets, and I'd cruise the designated neighborhoods, throwing these things out with both hands and literally driving with my knees." The ploy left Rove's opponent at a loss. Ingram's staff realized that it would be fruitless to try to persuade the public that the See campaign was attacking its own candidate in order "to create a backlash against the Democrat," as Joe Perkins, who worked for Ingram, put it to me. Presumably the public would believe that Democrats were spreading terrible rumors about See and his family. "They just beat you down to your knees," Ingram said of being on the receiving end of Rove's attacks. See won the race.

Or a whisper campaign against Alabama state supreme court justice Mark Kennedy, who was unjustly smeared as a peadophile:

Some of Kennedy's campaign commercials touted his volunteer work, including one that showed him holding hands with children. "We were trying to counter the positives from that ad," a former Rove staffer told me, explaining that some within the See camp initiated a whisper campaign that Kennedy was a pedophile. "It was our standard practice to use the University of Alabama Law School to disseminate whisper-campaign information," the staffer went on. "That was a major device we used for the transmission of this stuff. The students at the law school are from all over the state, and that's one of the ways that Karl got the information out--he knew the law students would take it back to their home towns and it would get out." This would create the impression that the lie was in fact common knowledge across the state. "What Rove does," says Joe Perkins, "is try to make something so bad for a family that the candidate will not subject the family to the hardship. Mark is not your typical Alabama macho, beer-drinkin', tobacco-chewin', pickup-drivin' kind of guy. He is a small, well-groomed, well-educated family man, and what they tried to do was make him look like a homosexual pedophile. That was really, really hard to take."

There's plenty more stories to read. all of which would make any honest person want to puke. Republicans only damage their own credibility by supporting this crap on the national stage. At some point these tactics will backfire and the GOP will wind up badly damaged as a result. JMO. --M

Re:Attention Slashdot Laser:

[Thing 1]

That's not entirely accurate, because not everyone is downloading. As I said in another response to the parent, I'm currently getting download speeds over 200 KB/s, and am connected to 4609 seeds and 902 peers.

So the number of people downloading is only 902, whereas there are 4609+902=5511 people uploading. So if upload speeds are 1/5 download speeds, everyone will be getting it at their maximum download rate.

That's the cool thing about BitTorrent; if people leave their torrents open when they're done, everyone else gets it much faster.