The Daily Show is a comedy show and thus should be forgiven all of its sins — which have always been minor. I understand the urge to at least try to provide some level of balance — to not just turn into “that liberal show.” And the sad thing about America is that The Daily Show and Jon Stewart really aren’t liberal. They skew very slightly to the left, but what they really are is more in line with the reform Democrats who showed up in Congress after Watergate. And let’s remember: these were the beginning of the New Democrats — they were not at all about ideology. They just wanted government that was transparent and without corruption. That’s Jon Stewart; that’s The Daily Show.
So it was very much in this context that The Daily Show presented an epic take down of Fox News Wednesday night. Was it liberal bias? No. It wasn’t even political. It was just calling the network on its almost two decades of misinformation. One can be deeply conservative without being dishonest. But Fox News has never been interested in that. I have no doubt whatsoever that if an academic study were done comparing how accurate Pravda was in the Soviet Union during the 1970s, it would do as well or better than Fox News has done over the last decade.
Now that Jon Stewart is retiring, Fox News has used the opportunity to attack The Daily Show for it’s “selective editing.” I’ll admit, there have been a couple of times where The Daily Show played fast and loose with context. And that’s it: a couple of times. If most news sources were as scrupulous as The Daily Show, we would have a far improved media environment. If Fox News were half as scrupulous as The Daily Show, they would not be a national embarrassment.
Megyn Kelly said, “I can speak personally to a lot of the attacks that have been levied on me had no foothold in the facts.” Well, let’s start with the fact that Megyn Kelly is one of the most reasonable parts of the Fox News circus who rarely had attacks levied on her. But what about when last October, she said that a new Colorado law “literally allows residents to print ballots from their home computers, then encourages them to turn ballots over to ‘collectors'”? And remember: she’s one of the sane ones.
You would think after all this time that Fox News would just leave it alone. Why start a fight with Jon Stewart? There are various problems. First, he’s right. Second, he’s funny with a whole lot of funny writers. And third, in the end, he’s a comedian. It is like a big guy beating up a charming skinny guy: the big guy either wins and looks like a total jerk, or the big guy loses and looks both pathetic and like a total jerk. And guess what: the big guy is going to lose. The real “news network” will just look like a pathetic jerk. In fact, it already has.
In the video above, Stewart called out Fox News to a “lie off.” They created a vine of fifty Fox News lies. And PolitiFact has already listed them all out, The Fact-Checks Behind The Daily Show‘s 50 Fox News “Lies.” This is how it comes out: there were only two that PolitiFact hadn’t previously rated. Of the remaining 48, the best Fox News did was a single “Mostly False.” And there were two that Fox News later admitted to — one specifically because The Daily Show caught them on it. Then there were 34 “False” and 11 “Pants on Fire” claims!
This isn’t about politics. This is about a network that is simply an arm of the Republican Party that would say exactly the opposite things about an issue if the party flipped on it tomorrow. It is an outrage. Stewart summed it up, “Even watching it is killing me.” I don’t think that was a joke. And I think he speaks for the entire nation.
I’m not sure it is possible to be an honest and rational conservative in contemporary times. All of the virtues they claim – personal responsibility, personal freedom, and so on – are better expressed by other political positions. And in terms of the practical reality, the conservative politicians and businessmen don’t exhibit personal responsibility or loyalty to family.
You got that right. I remember when I was a libertarian, I used to think of myself as a “classical liberal.” Well, in a sense, I was. And I still am. The problem is not that modern day liberals have gone rouge. It’s the opposite. The modern American libertarians really have no history. Adam Smith wasn’t one of them — and certainly wouldn’t be one today. If I were to pick anyone who most symbolizes what libertarianism has traditionally been, it would be Thomas Paine. And now he’s rather to the left of most liberals.
There are no ideas about values left in conservatism. Followers have given all that up for the deification of markets and capital. Parents don’t will children money out of a sense of obligation — it’s just continuing the brand. They might as well be corporations. And in many cases, they are.