Stewart and Colbert Plan Competing D.C. Rallies 696
Lev13than writes "In a direct retort to Glenn Beck's Restoring Honor rally, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert have announced competing rallies on October 30th. Stewart plans to host a 'Rally To Restore Sanity' on Oct. 30 on the National Mall in D.C. for the Americans he says are too busy living normal, rational lives to attend other political demonstrations. Colbert, meantime, will shepherd his fans in a 'March To Keep Fear Alive.' 'Damn your reasonableness!' Colbert said. 'Now is not the time to take it down a notch. Now is the time for all good men to freak out for freedom!' Stewart, meanwhile, has promised to provide attendees with signs featuring slogans such as 'I Disagree With You But I'm Pretty Sure You're Not Hitler' and 'I'm Afraid of Spiders.'"
Kudos (Score:5, Insightful)
Kudos to you, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert.
You make my world seem slightly less irrational with each and every day.
Re:Kudos (Score:5, Informative)
Also, Rally to Restore Sanity [rallytorestoresanity.com]
Also, Keep Fear Alive [keepfearalive.com]
Also, I love you, Jon (with one H).
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Kudos (Score:5, Insightful)
Instead of spending an hour joking about Sarah Palin and Rand Paul. How about Henry Waxman, Nancy Pelosi or Obama?
Yeah, you're right... they never lampoon those guys... ::rollseyes::
Hell, this rally has been specifically billed as non-partisan, with their message directed at anyone and everyone who would shriek and yell, frighten and intimidate in order to achieve their agenda, whether they be in the media or a politician, left-wing or right.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Stewart and Colbert are pretty clearly liberals, but they are willing to criticize Democrats, liberals, and others on the left, including those they generally support. That's something that's impressed me about them; during the Clinton administration, I was quite critical of Clinton from the left, and I found the way that liberals uncritically supported Clinton, even when he was directly attacking liberals, to be quite frustrating.
Re:Kudos (Score:5, Interesting)
Uh. Good for him?
Seriously, how is that remotely relevant to the current thread of conversation, exactly? The GP strongly implied that Stewart and Colbert only attack the right on their shows, suggesting they are partisan. I illustrated that this is clearly not the case (at least not to the extent he/she is suggesting... obviously they are left-wingers, but they certainly don't pull punches if the democrats give 'em good material to work with).
You then bring up Glenn Beck for reasons I can't really fathom... so, can you explain yourself, or are you just retreating to trolling because you lost the argument?
Re:Kudos (Score:5, Insightful)
Lately Stewart has been spending more and more time attacking Obama and democrats for not doing anything.
Colbert satirizes right wing talk shows, but many times he makes better arguments that the real conservative talk shows and gets a laugh while doing it.
Yeah when someone like Glean Beck says something completely stupid they mock him. Their primary goal is to get laughs, not be "fair and balanced" (as is such a thing exists).
If you watch these shows as closely as I do you'll notice that for the most part they're trying to get laughs, but there's a few moments here and there where they try to get a serious message across. Lately that message has been the democrats are incompetent and the republicans are being bullied by batshit insane teabaggers, neither option is very good.
This rally is an appeal to conservatives to start providing a real, sane, conservative opposition to the democrats. Even though these shows are liberal at heart, they know that if the opposition to the democrats is incompetent, then the democrats have no incentive to be anything other than incompetent themselves.
Saying that the democrats are socialist-nazis and obama is a secret muslim isn't going to change anything. Burning Korans isn't going to change anything. Be reasonable. Be sane. People might listen to your ideas and agree with you. When that happens you'll get representation. When you have representation you'll have real opposition to the democrats.
Re:Kudos (Score:5, Insightful)
If a republican didnt come out in support of these two activities in the past few months, they probably lost their primary to some crazy anti-masturbation homeless witch lady. You need to deal with the reality of the current situation in your preffered political party instead of attacking people who would comment honestly on it.
These people dominate the discourse, in fact this is kind of what the entire rally is all about. The rosy vision of intellectual conservatives that you hold in your head does not match up with teabaggers and the ideas they are pushing or the vile, racist brutes most of us see when we dare click on any comment section for a news item that is vaguely political. If you actually had a point, then the rally would likely not even exist in the first place.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
What's really frustrating is to not be represented by either party because they're both totalitarian and corrupt!
That's the situation most Americans are in, although they may be too distracted by irrelevant "left vs. right" cheerleading to recognize it. (Don't believe me? Ask people about their politics and see how often the phrase "lesser of two evils" come
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
oh I'm well aware of conservative and libertarian values. The problem is thats not what we're seeing.
What we're seeing is despite they fact that the democrats are incompetent idiots, they're still going to hold on to a majority because the GOP is being held hostage by the socialist-nazi fearing koran burners.
This rally is called the "Rally to Restore Sanity" for a reason. The idea is to show that the koran burners aren't the majority, that the news media is giving way too much attention to the dregs of soc
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
He wasn't talking about conservatives, he was talking about tea partyers.
conservative and libertarian values aren't the same thing. They share similar fiscal policy ideas, but libertarian social policy is liberal.
Re:Kudos (Score:5, Insightful)
And for good measure they mock CNN for not being anything other than a retweet factory.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
yes, and thats wrong too.
this rally is for everyone who is tired of the hyperbole, slippery slopes, name calling, mod slinging, that goes on in politics and the news media. No matter which side is doing it.
Did you see the other night when Colbert had a liberal commentator from MSNBC as a guest and "congratulating" him on "keeping fear alive" by telling viewers to be afraid of conservatives?
If you're tired of liberals using fear as a weapon, then you probably should attend this rally. If you have time. If yo
Re:Kudos (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes this one is partisan. Its for all those that are against the party that uses fear and petty name calling to put down our party.
Its for those of us who are against that party that uses the media to brainwash people. You know the one I'm talking about.
Re:Kudos (Score:5, Insightful)
But this statement is pretty ridiculous:
"Their audience aren't concerned about things like big government because most of them pay no taxes. "
Got any demographics for that assumption?
But let's say that's true. Do you know how *hard* this economy is hitting those just out of high school, or college? Do you think the younger *want* to have a hard future? This is possibly the worst job market in decades. If they thought Big Government was the problem, they'd be all about getting Small Government to happen.
The people you are talking about may just have a better understanding of a) actual economics and b) history than you do - they know that:
a) government can and should step in to help American citizens in a time of economic crisis, when banks and corporations won't and
b) despite a lot of promises, no conservative President has **ever** brought America smaller government anyway
But you know, that's just a bunch of facts-y, head-y stuff. Go with your gut.
Re:Kudos (Score:4, Interesting)
b) despite a lot of promises, no conservative President has **ever** brought America smaller government anyway
This is probably the primary fact motivating the tea party. Note that the first 'victims' of tea party activism were all actually Republicans who didn't live up to the 'small government' name.
Personally I'm interested to see how the tea-party responds when they realize cutting government size means cutting programs you like. It's easy to say 'smaller government' but how serious are they about it really?
Re:Kudos (Score:5, Interesting)
Personally I'm interested to see how the tea-party responds when they realize cutting government size means cutting programs you like. It's easy to say 'smaller government' but how serious are they about it really?
It'll be beautiful.
Here's some quick math so you will be able to appreciate it:
The US brings in about $2,500 billion through taxes, tariffs, et cetera.
The US Federal Budget is around $3,500 billion.
Four department budgets, Defense, Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, constitute around $2,500 billion of the budget. (It's a bit less, so feel free to tack on interest paid on the debt to that, I just don't have the number handy.)
This means they can cut everything, including their favorite target, the Dept of Education (at $50 bil...now see why I kept writing those zeros?), except those items, and STILL have a deficit.
Oh, and then they want to cut taxes even more.
I'd love to see ANY politician go on national television and watch them say "We're cutting Defense, Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security." They'd be pilloried so fast, you'd hear sonic booms.
Re:Kudos (Score:5, Interesting)
To bolster your point, Ron Paul spoke about cutting Military spending, specifically by closing foreign bases. He was immediately labeled a loon and openly mocked in the debates that he was able to force his way into. In the first Republican debate, Huckabee was talking about sending Iranian sailors to meet their 70 virgins, and Paul retorted that we shouldn't be warmongering. The moderator actually interrupted him, claimed nobody was warmongering, and cut his response time short. Then they had that putz, Frank Luntz, doing one of those focal group nonsense things, where they all unequivocally decided that Ron Paul lost the debate.
Anytime a tea-party candidate mentions cutting ANY Federal program, they are labeled bat-shit insane, no matter how pointless or useless that program has proven itself. Test scores have been consistently dropping since the creation of the Dept of Education, with ample evidence of every increasing bureaucracy, yet any mention that it might need to go the way of a certain flightless bird is met with the same reaction you'd expect from someone suggesting the public flogging of Mother Theresa.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Nope. In every education catagory, Obama beat McCain.
http://elections.nytimes.com/2008/results/president/exit-polls.html [nytimes.com]
McCain did best in the categories in the college drop-out category ("some college") by only losing by 4 points, but got "pretty handily" beat in the college educated level by an 8 points.
d
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Oh, and Clinton also got us in and out of Kosovo and Bosnia without a single American soldier dying in combat. Not. One. But conservatives still hold onto the notion that Liberals are willing to callously disregard the lives of soldiers. Woo.
Re:Kudos (Score:5, Insightful)
I do wonder how much acclaim and praise these two would get if they were constantly poking fun at the other side. Instead of spending an hour joking about Sarah Palin and Rand Paul. How about Henry Waxman, Nancy Pelosi or Obama? Do you think there might be some rich material there?
If you did watch the shows more often, you'd be aware of the fact that they're both equal opportunity offenders.
They routinely poke fun at both sides.
Try audience replacing his studio audience with middle aged tax payers or people working two jobs to pay their mortgage and see how funny they are!
I'm middle aged. I pay taxes. My wife is disabled, so I work a crapton of hours to pay my mortgage (and my kid's tuition, and my wife's healthcare).
I think they're both hilarious.
Re:Kudos (Score:5, Informative)
My point is, the audiences of these shows are mostly young liberal and uninformed
Yes, yes, and demonstrably false. When polls were done a couple years ago, people that watched The Daily Show were more politically informed than people that got their news primarily from other cable channels. People who don't understand what Stewart and Colbert are making fun of probably won't find them funny and won't watch their shows.
Re:Kudos (Score:4, Insightful)
Everyone else's solid rebuttals aside for the moment, I wanted to hit this one specific point:
How about Henry Waxman, Nancy Pelosi or Obama? Do you think there might be some rich material there?
No, I really don't.
Obama, relative to pretty much any other president in my lifetime, does not make gaffes in public. He just doesn't. In response to that I guess you can say he's boring, but that's not exactly comedy gold.
And what the fuck funny can you say about Henry Waxman?
For bonus points, make it funnier than what you can come up with in five minutes about a man who writes conspiracy theories on a chalkboard and weeps about it.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Brief Waxman reference:
http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/tue-july-21-2009/greener-postures [thedailyshow.com]
Not sure about funny, but there's a Waxman quote here:
http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/mon-june-14-2004/war-on-error [thedailyshow.com]
The rest aren't jokes about Waxman (he's so goofy looking already... maybe they feel bad?) short segment here:
http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/tue-october-30-2007/the-house-of-wax [thedailyshow.com]
and he was a guest here:
http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/tue-august-4-2009/henry-waxman [thedailyshow.com]
Pelosi:
http://www.thedailyshow.com/wa [thedailyshow.com]
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Oh please... cry me a river.
She runs around the country "endorsing" people she agrees with, most of whom are either completely uninformed, completely dishonest, or complete lunatics.
She along with Jim DeMint and a few others are co opting the Republican party to gain power for themselves. And like clockwork the masses are falling for it... YET AGAIN!!!
MOST (I almost want to say all at this point) of these people want more power, and YOUR money, and that's about it...
Re:Kudos (Score:4, Insightful)
Stewart never worried about being reasonable before the Tea Parties and the other wingnuts took control of one of our major political parties; during the Bush era, it was moderate Right vs extreme Right. Nowadays it's starting to look more like moderate Right vs batshit crazy.
Now what's important is not so much to bring the discussion over to the left, but to bring the discussion back to reality.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Funny that you believe that President Obama is moderate right.
I would put him as left but not a left wing nut.
That is the problem the left and right wingnuts seem to be screaming the loudest.
And now that our news services have become more entertainment then news they feed them.
Conflict sells. Cooperation solves.
We have too much selling and not enough solving.
Re:Kudos (Score:5, Insightful)
USA has no left. If you want to see real left you should look at European social democratic parties.
Re:Kudos (Score:4, Interesting)
The US has a radical left, and from what I can make out, it's similar in scale to the radical left in European countries and elsewhere. However, there's not a significant social democratic left party in the US -- so the radical left has an even harder time getting a hearing in the US than elsewhere. Most people who would support a social democratic party grudgingly support the Democratic Party, a party of the center which routinely squelches its left-of-center wing. It's routinely said (I think Obama said this, for instance) that the Democrats need not pay any attention to the left, since the left will either vote Democratic or not vote at all.
The most likely candidate for a social democratic party in the US is the Green Party, which does have one thing going for it: whereas in most countries, there is a split in the left between the social democratic and green parties, there's the potential to unite both in one party in the US. However, the Green Party was rather viciously attacked in the 2004 presidential election, and while on paper the Green Party has become more coherent, in practice the Greens have been almost passive.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
This is all really very fundamental: People who believe outlandish things and try to get
Re:Kudos (Score:5, Insightful)
Given the response to Stewart's Crossfire interview - he embarrassed them enough that they cancelled the program soon thereafter - this could actually help restore a little rationality to the conversation. If nothing else, it should be entertaining for the tourists.
This.
If anyone doubts that Stewart was about "being reasonable" while Bush was in power his criticism of the 'left' and 'right' hosts of Crossfire as "partisan hacks" in 2004 should prove otherwise.
brilliant (Score:5, Insightful)
when you see the vicious, fear-addled, hysterical fearmongering and demagoguery going on in the usa, you can easily grow despondent and depressed about the future of this country
and then you see that the antidote to this vile sleaze, the ray of sunshine, is simple humor, and irony, and sarcasm
the antidote to the poisons of the lowest basest emotions and motivations from the human character are the fruits of the higher faculties, and simple cheerfulness and confidence
if the drek you see being assembled into herds of mindlessly angry propagandized partisan sheep on the far right depresses you, do not give up heart, nor give up hope: just give a good laugh, and smile, and beat the zombie horde back into the dustbin of history where they belong
Re:brilliant (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah cause the Glenn Beck rally was full of angry people
Uh, it was. Frightened, angry people. Were they polite about it? Yes, and good for them. But their politics is a politics of fear, whether it be fear of the Big Bad Government, fear of muslims, fear of gays, fear of latinos...
And incidentally, its worth noting that Glenn and his cohorts actively discouraged inflammatory signs and so forth, for fear of the bad press they would generate... who knows what that rally would've been like if the organizers hadn't gone out of their way to temper the reaction of their followers.
Just like a G-8 anarchist rally
Yeah, those guys are enormous douchbags, too. What's your point?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:brilliant (Score:5, Insightful)
>>>The anger and fear that corporations will take over is silly.
You've just not read enough. Like the 1970s manslaughter committed by Ford (using Pinto cars), or the blatant poisoning of water by various chemical corporations over the years. While they are not as dangerous as government (which sucks money direct from your wallet) (or drafts you to die in Nam), megacorps are still a danger to individual consumers and workers, and must be watched just like any other predator that is more powerful than you are.
no very familiar with american history huh? (Score:5, Insightful)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinkertons [wikipedia.org]
blackwater anyone?
i'm not a paranoid, but corporations have a lot of money, that can buy a lot of influence, and that's something reasonable to fear, because it is very genuinely pointed against the rights and desires of the general public. do you know what it took to win a 40 hour workweek in this country? vacations? outlaw indentured servitude? outlaw child labor? safe work conditions? these are not jokes, these were all about corporations who would be very happy we be uneducated machines without rights existing only to make them profit. just look at china, the suicides at foxconn
and there are people who actively argue against government regulation of industry? they call themselves libertarians, they champion the rights of individuals, but the real world effect of their agenda is to merely unleash corporatism
corporatism!=capitalism. i am NOT attacking capitalism. in fact, in all of economic history, socialism and communism are not the greatest enemies of capitalism, monopolies and oligopolies are: corporatism. the greatest enemy of small struggling businesses in this country are not government taxes or socialist healthcare: it is large entrenched businesses who don't want the competition and rig the market to work for them. it is perhaps the greatest trick of corporate propaganda that capitalism and corporatism has been conflated as the same thing in some minds, and socialism demonified as the enemy (because it might mean a corporation somewhere has to spend more on the well-being of their workers), when the truth is socialism is merely a few social safety nets, and corporatism sucks the life out of marketplaces and genuinely free and fair capitalist competition
the freedoms and rights of corporations!=the freedoms and rights of individuals. except in all the speechifying and demonizing going on in the political right in this country about immigrants, the poor, homosexuals, etc., NO ONE TALKS ABOUT THE THREATS TO LIBERTY AND FREEDOM FROM CORPORATIONS
why is that?
i don't hate the right, i think some forces from the right, like religious organizations, have, in the past, spoken out and fought against corporatism, out of concern for the welfare of the people. but so many on the right i think are just duped into not seeing the real enemy of the american people: corporations that will ship your job to china and india in the name of the bottom line, and yet claim the mantle of patriotism
corporations, hands down, are the greatest threat to the well-being of our democracy with their financial influence, and i really wish i saw more voices on the right see this to be the truth of the matter, and stop with the scapegoats and willfully know nothing simpleminded appeals to the government being the enemy, when there is an obvious puppeteer behind the government pulling the strings in their favor
never become a battlefield general (Score:4, Interesting)
because your strategic thinking sucks
the government is supposed to represent the people. it doesn't: its warped by corporate influence to stack the deck in their favor. we both agree on that
then we radically part ways
you say: lets trash the government. ok, then what happens? now the corporations gleefully completely abuse you in every way you listed above, plus 50 more unseemly and degenerate ways you haven't even imagined yet that you can be abused, because YOU DESTROYED THE ONLY THING WHICH CAN STANDS BETWEEN YOU AND COMPLETE DOMINANCE BY CORPORATIONS: the government
i say: you should want to FIX the government, and have it work for you, which it what it is supposed to do and was made to do! not trash it and remove the only thing that can protect you from unhindered corporate abuse
i really don't understand people like you: you openly admit to the corporations and their financial influence being the ultimate source of the problem, but you still don't understand that the government, which is supposed to be of the people, is being corrupted to work against your interests rather than for your interests. so you should remove the corruption, right? no, you go "ok, let's finish the job and destroy the government completely so i can be completely butt raped by corporations in a world where they don't even have to pretend and work secretly by destroying my government"
wtf?!
obamacare (Score:4, Insightful)
you don't have to like it, but you have to admit it is clearly positioned to deliver higher quality healthcare cheaper than the bullshit we have right now
that's the thing that amazes me: so many people are angry about obamacare, but on every single criticism they have of it, the current healthcare system we have IS OBVIOUSLY WORSE. pricing: are you kidding? paperwork and bureaucracy? and most definitely: government (sic corporate) death panels?
all of the critics of obamacare: its as if they have had a lobotomy and are unable to recognize the COMPLETELY broken reality of our OBVIOUSLY WORSE healthcare system we have right now when formulating an opinion on obamacare
they look at obamacare, and its a house with boarded up windows and a hornets nest above the front door and they scream "hell no!"... when currently, they are living in a house sinking into a swamp
obamacare critics: any of you want to defend our current health care system?
(crickets)
of course obamacare will have problems. it will have LESS problems than our current system. welcome to reality: the choice isn't black and white, don't let the corporate propaganda fool you
i never said any of that at all (Score:3, Interesting)
thank you for the red herrings, i'm glad you like yelling at phantom bogeymen that exist in your head and not in my words. would you like actually address my point at some point?
its a simple point:
"I don't support forcing people to buy healthcare"
let me be perfectly clear:
you HAVE to buy health insurance
if you are in perfect health, but you break your arm, it is not possible for an ethical society to turn you away from treatment. therefore, you will be saddled with a large bill if you don't have insurance.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
>>>Rest assured, the majority of Americans are either going to work, or looking for work, and don't have time for panicking or freaking out like a few celeb's and their dominions. Most Americans just want a decent job and time with the family. Throw in reasonable taxes and gas prices, most everyone is happy. The freakshow on TV is a very small minority. >>>
False. Recent polls show over 60% of Americans disapprove of Obama's accomplishments.
That's as high as the disapproval was for Bush. To claim the average american is just fine-and-dandy-and-happy, is simply not true.
I think you misread what the GP was trying to say. GP was saying that IF Americans had a decent job, time with family, and reasonable taxes and gas prices, then they would be happy. I'm pretty sure that the GP was not trying to say that Americans necessarily had all of that at the time.
The point is that most Americans want a few simple things, but instead the "freakshow on TV" ends up spinning the debate into a much more extreme showdown between viewpoints that don't really match what the "silent majorit
no permit yet (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:no permit yet (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Limited? What, they're going to wall off the National Mall and block the 25,001st person to attempt to enter?
Because we've all got shit to do ... :) (Score:4, Informative)
Love them for not doing the not-from-our-country crap. Probably the only newstertainment show I watch from the US for the same reason.
Let's get our political opinions from entertainers (Score:4, Interesting)
What do Beck, Stewart and Colbert have in common?
They're entertainers, not political scientists.
I don't want actors writing mission critical code for our spacecraft, and by the same token, we the voters shouldn't get our opinions from people who are paid to make us laugh, not make us see truth.
If you want to know what's wrong with democracy in America, it's that a huge mass of useful idiots (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Useful_idiot) are voting wherever their emotional impulses lead them, at the behest of a few privileged media elites.
That's not politics, it's mob rule.
Re:Let's get our political opinions from entertain (Score:5, Insightful)
What do Beck, Stewart and Colbert have in common?
They're entertainers, not political scientists.
I don't want actors writing mission critical code for our spacecraft, and by the same token, we the voters shouldn't get our opinions from people who are paid to make us laugh, not make us see truth.
Labels labels labels... you hear that, NASA? If your coders are in a theater troop in their spare time, they shouldn't be allowed to write mission-critical code, because actors shouldn't be allowed to do that.
And what you can accomplish in life is limited by the title that someone is willing to bestow you upon hiring, not by who you are and what you can do; your identity and your potential are defined by the title you hold. If your paycheck says "make jokes", then anything you do that isn't a joke should be ignored.
So believes hessian, who is a slashdotter and therefore should not be allowed to have a girlfriend. Because labels define you and everything about you.
Credit where credit is due... (Score:3, Insightful)
"Competing" like WWF (Score:5, Insightful)
Both rallies are funded by Comedy Central (Viacom). They are only "competing" if you think organized wrestling is a competition.
The sad thing is, Stewarts rally could have had a decent point to it, but when paired with the "Rally for Fear" how can you take either seriously? The whole thing as it is turns to a vapid joke, the intent simply to ridicule people they wish to brand as extremist even though most are the 70% Stewart spoke of.
I admire Stewart for calling out Truthers and Birthers as equally ignorant, but he wants to paint the whole Tea Party movement with the brush of a few fringe members when it wouldn't make sense to claim the Democrats are all Truthers just because a few of them usually show up at democratic rallies.
Re:"Competing" like WWF (Score:5, Insightful)
And it would be nice to know some rational Tea Part leaders. It is those that want to cut taxes, without a plan to fund the war and protect our citizens. Or is the one's that want to ban sharia law, but are happy to continue to force free enterprise to shut down on sundays. Is it those that waste tax payers money to see a birth certificate that is already on line, Or those that want to ban Mosques, but allow christian to gloat next to the centennial olympic park. Or perhaps it is palin and her death panels.
Honestly, if the Tea Party would official expel Palin and Beck, most of my problems with them would evaporate. Most everyone else are mostly rational.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
how can you take either seriously?
I think you're missing something.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Kooks like Christine O'Donnell don't get nominated by "a few fringe members".
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he wants to paint the whole Tea Party movement with the brush of a few fringe members
The tea party is composed of pretty much ALL fringe members. Otherwise they'd be Republicans.
PEW Research Study (Score:5, Informative)
In 2009 the PEW research study asked individuals where they got their news then 23 factual questions about US politics and wold affairs. Below is the list of news sources, correlated with percentage of correct answers:
From this can we pretty definitively site that the fans of The Daily Show and the Colbert Report are more likely to be knowledgeable about what's going on in the world than Glen Beck;s rally attendees?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
From this can we pretty definitively site that the fans of The Daily Show and the Colbert Report are more likely to be knowledgeable about what's going on in the world than Glen Beck;s rally attendees?
Um, probably not since Beck's show isn't listed and there are several relatively high-scoring sources whose audiences might also have attended Beck's rally in high percentages (O'Reilly and Limbaugh). I would guess the difference between those sources and Colbert's show is not outside the margin of error.
So you could try to use this as evidence supporting your claim (thus inferring that people at Beck's rally are morons), but I certainly don't see any "definitive" conclusions that can be drawn from this
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I would have to see the questions...
Take a look: http://people-press.org/reports/pdf/319.pdf [people-press.org]
The questionnaire is starts on page 21 of the PDF. They all seem to be uncontrovertibly facts. I don't see that who the governor of California, or what the new minimum wage is can be "interpreted" to change the results of the study.
Re:Probrem! (Score:5, Insightful)
but JS and SC are doing the EXACT same thing they're bitching about Glen Beck doing...
Comedy often is about doing the exact same thing - just in a context or with a small twist that reveals how ridiculous it is.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
You do know that Stewart and Colbert work together, right?
DG
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
To be more precise, Colbert always says they are the same show, split in two half-an-hour segments. Jon Stewart is the executive producer of The Colbert Report. While Stewart's character is actually Jon Stewart, Colbert's character is Colbert (with a silent "t"), the opposite of the artist, and almost all of his lines are full of sarcasm. If you agree with Colbert (silent "t") the joke is on you.
Re:Probrem! (Score:4, Informative)
The Irony of Satire [sagepub.com]: "Additionally, there was no significant difference between the groups in thinking Colbert was funny, but conservatives were more likely to report that Colbert only pretends to be joking and genuinely meant what he said while liberals were more likely to report that Colbert used satire and was not serious when offering political statements."
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Re:Probrem! (Score:5, Insightful)
That's not a problem with him - that's a problem with the American news media.
And then the Media wonders why they're losing to the Internet. Getting news from reliable sources on the Internet is like reading the news a day, a week or sometimes even years early. The trick is, reliable sources. But that's the trick with the mass media as well - and it is slippery to find a site that dispenses mostly facts, as opposed to mostly confirmation bias.
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One of the big problems with "The Media" (and benefits to getting your news via Stewart) is that they seem to have a short attention span.
When a politician says one thing and then, a few months later, completely reverses course for no good reason, few news agencies will hold them to their past words. They will just take the new sound bites and play them over and over. Jon Stewart's team will unearth the old sound bites and play them along with the new ones showing the viewer the shift.
It is one thing if n
Re:Probrem! (Score:5, Insightful)
Why didn't he do this when there was a Million man march, or any of the other "rallies" that have taken place by well known left leaning organizations?
Well for starters, the Million Man March was in 1995. The Daily Show didn't exist until 1996 and Jon Stewart didn't host it until 1998. So unless he has some sort of time machine, it was nigh impossible to do it at the time. As for other rallies, he's made fun of both "truther" and "tea party" rallies. Why hasn't he done an anti-rally rally? I suppose it has more to do that Glen Beck did one more than anything else.
Stewarts just pissed because the Tea Party (and conservative libertarians) have taking the playbook from Leftwingers .THAT is why he's having the rally, it isn't about comedy at all for him. His rally is seriousness dressed up as comedy, just like his TV show. This rally only shows how petty he really is.
From what I can tell he's making fun of the hypocrisy. When the liberals where having these rallies opposed to the Bush administration and the war, they were called "unpatriotic" and "un-American". Liberals were hurting America by opposing the President it was argued simply by exercising their right to free speech and protest. Now that the conservative party is no longer in power, these rallies are "expressing freedom" and "restoring honor". Problem is that they are doing the exact same things. And Stewart is making fun of that.
Re:Probrem! (Score:5, Informative)
Where are those people who oppose the war now? We're still at war in Afghanistan, and yet those people have all but disappeared. Oh because it is THEIR guy running the war it must be okay.
Obama lied, and people died!
We're still at war, where are the war protesters?
They weren't protesting the war, they were protesting the president under the guise of protesting the war. Now that their guy is in office, code pink is all but gone and where is Cyndi Sheehan? How come she isn't camping out in front of Obama's vacation houses?
There's enough hypocrisy to go around, quit pretending it is only one sided.
People were opposed to the Iraq war (a war without a reason), not against the war in Afghanistan (a war justified by the events of 9/11.) People were opposed to the Iraq war because it prevented the US from completing the mission in Afghanistan. Had the Iraq war never started, chances are we would have been out of Afghanistan quite a while ago.
For someone who complain about the war opponents, you don't seem to have much of a grasp of the events they were opposing, do you?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
from your wikipedia link: "So far, however, the protests have not been as prominent as Protests against the Iraq War"
protests against the Afghanistan war numbered in the tens of thousands. Protests against the Iraq War numbered in the millions.
Yes there are some people against the war in Afghanistan, but there are a bout a hundred times as many against the war in Iraq.
Obama is more or less keeping his promises of ending the Iraq War and is trying to find a peaceful way to manage the Iran situation. So many
Re:Probrem! (Score:5, Informative)
They weren't protesting the war, they were protesting the president under the guise of protesting the war. Now that their guy is in office, code pink is all but gone and where is Cyndi Sheehan? How come she isn't camping out in front of Obama's vacation houses?
Are you referring to the Cindy Sheehan who protested at Martha's Vineyard when Obama was staying there in August of 2009? The same Cindy Sheehan who was arrested last October while protesting Obama's continuation of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan outside the White House? The very same person who went to Norway to protest Obama's receipt of the Nobel Peace Prize, and who was arrested again this past March outside the White House?
Yeah, you're right. It's all about Bush, and has nothing to do with the war.
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Where are those people who oppose the war now? We're still at war in Afghanistan, and yet those people have all but disappeared. Oh because it is THEIR guy running the war it must be okay.
.
. .
We're still at war, where are the war protesters?
People were against the Iraq war. Many believed it was unnecessary and unjustified. They were not against the Afghan war. Obama pledged to end the war in Iraq during his campaign. The government has slowly pulled back from Iraq. Some people don't think it happened fast enough; some people think it's happening too fast. However people don't protest Obama as much because he didn't start the war; he got stuck with it and is trying to fulfill his campaign promise to end it.
They weren't protesting the war, they were protesting the president under the guise of protesting the war. Now that their guy is in office, code pink is all but gone and where is Cyndi Sheehan? How come she isn't camping out in front of Obama's vacation houses?
There are two main points for th
Re:Probrem! (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem with Stewart (not so much Colbert), is that too many people get their news from him, a comedian (or is he??).
Then explain why people who watch The Daily Show have been shown (via objective tests and surveys and the like) to know more about what's going on in the world than people who watch CNN. Jon would be the first to point out that there's something wrong with this picture, but that doesn't mean that he's doing a disservice to his audience.
His rally is seriousness dressed up as comedy, just like his TV show.
Most great comedy has a serious point wrapped inside of it. For instance, George Carlin did a spiel on rape, where he made quite offensive jokes ("Hey, she [a 90-year-old] was asking for it, she had on a tight bathrobe.") as a way of pointing out that rapists are horrible scum and that "Hey, she was asking for it" is no excuse.
Now Colbert, he's making fun of Stewart just as much as he's making fun of GB.
And now we get to the real truth: You're not concerned about whether Jon is being serious or comic, or even providing useful news. You're just upset because he's targeting somebody you agree with, and by extension, you.
Re:Probrem! (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem with Stewart (not so much Colbert), is that too many people get their news from him, a comedian (or is he??).
- no no no no no no no no no, the problem is not that Stewart is encroaching into the domain of news, the problem is that news as it is delivered by 'main stream news media' became indistinguishable from comedy.
Re:Probrem! (Score:4, Informative)
The problem with Stewart (not so much Colbert), is that too many people get their news from him, a comedian
Jon Stewart's response when the first polls were done that showed how large and politically informed his audience is: "People, we make stuff up! We follow a show about puppets making prank phone calls."
Re:Probrem! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Probrem! (Score:5, Informative)
No, they're not. John Stewart and Steven Colbert are satirizing Glen Beck. Glen Beck is serious. That's the difference. The point of this type of satire is to draw attention to the absurdity of the thing/person/event being made fun of by imitating its form and taking the ridiculous characteristics ad absurdam.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, I think the point is also to get a bunch of people out to try and send a message to the politicians and the mainstream media to, as Jon put it, tone it down a notch for America.
Re:Probrem! (Score:4, Interesting)
"Glen Beck is serious."
I wouldn't take Beck so seriously. He's a carnival huckster who's tapped into a segment of the population who don't exactly care to tow the liberal line. So what? Beck was an alcoholic morning dj for a very lone time. He then discovered "God" and success and went the Limbaugh route. If you watch him for any length of time on his show he makes incredible, "sky is falling" assertions about crazy things he reads in the news, interviews conspiracy theory cranks, and says "Now watch this..." (referring to conspiracies and strange events around the world), and the very next night is on to some other conspiracy. And it all ends up being a big nothing. Watch him, sooner or later he'll retire, and that will be it. Then you've have some new guy (or gal) come in that you'll feel you have to be careful about. Its all a big media circus nothing designed to keep you worked up. Your best defense against these types is to simply ignore them.
Re:Probrem! (Score:4, Insightful)
You do realize that Colbert more fully skewers the right than Stewart does, right? Stewart is fairly non partisan. Colbert, on the other hand builds his whole shtick on mocking the right. Colbert is very serious, but he is so good at what he does that idiots on the right think he is on their side! Amazing.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Really? Because the show I saw was levelling the same accusations at *both* sides of the American political spectrum. As an outside observer, US political discussion is laughable; it's fear-mongering soundbite after soundbite. Everything is about how terrible the other side is and how they'll sneak into your house and kill your children unless you make sure they don't get into power. There's nothing intelligent about it and the news networks simply parrot the talking points they're given by the parties' PR
Re:Probrem! (Score:5, Funny)
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With a sign like that you are just Stalin the inevitable...
Re:Probrem! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:LOLZ (Score:4, Interesting)
It's not mandated. You're free to bring your own signs, but they'll have some if you're not funny. And thank God for that, because most people are not funny. Sadly, people that aren't funny and people that think they're not funny have a very small overlap on the Venn diagram, so we'll still be forced to read some very unfunny things.
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Re:LOLZ (Score:4, Informative)
Apparently you didn't see the signs in question.
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You mean just like a union rally where the sloganeering is handled not by the people attending but the people rallying them up....
Yes. Also the way Tea Party rallies provide signs to attendees, and the way political party conferences provide signs .... pretty much the way all political rallies work in the US nowadays. What did you expect? if you're going to mock something this way, you'd better provide a reasonable facsimile.
Re:Not a single moderate will attend (Score:4, Insightful)
Stewart never said that in context to the rally. He said a few days before about why there is a lack of opinion from the majority of Americans and how it is only a small percentage on both sides that are directing the tone of any debates. His entire quote was:
But why don't we hear from the 70-80 percenters? Well, most likely, because you have shit to do. And quite frankly, even if you didn't have shit to do, you may lack the theatrical flair necessary for today's 24 hour a day, 7 day a week news media.
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The guy hates his own name and his proud heritage.
If he hated his heritage, I doubt he'd refer to jews as 'my people' quite so often. It seems more likely that he has a realistic estimation of the great American public's ability to pronounce and spell Leibowitz. That, or he's worried about being confused with the guy with the canticle...
Re:John Stewart rocks! (Score:4, Insightful)
The guy hates his own name and his proud heritage.
Where do you get that? Lots of showbiz people change their names to something they think will be easier to remember or increase their chances to be successful. In his case, the very entry you link suggests he probably did it because he doesn't get along with his father. He's never hidden his Jewish heritage and it features prominently in several bits I've seen him do (and I don't even watch the show much).
Re:Who? (Score:5, Insightful)
But you do apparently have the internet, through which one can view their shows.
For someone who trots out his "I don't watch TV and therefore am better than you" sign as often as you do you either are very bad at doing feigned ignorance well or are doing willful ignorance very well.
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So you didn't know who they were but knew they were on cable and don't watch domestic TV but according to post (#33637932):
"Now I substitute it with Chicago's Progressive Talk radio streamed over the net, plus MSNBC.com streams of Rachel Maddow"
you watch MSNBC online?
Stewart and Colbert are mentioned in foreign news, and I doubt MSNBC has neglected mentioning them.
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The first web browser, Mosaic, was developed for Amiga
The first web browser, WorldWideWeb, was developed for NeXTSTEP. The second web browser ran in a terminal and was developed for UNIX.
What did you expect? (Score:3, Funny)
It starred Mel Gibson and Robert Downey Jr, what did you expect?
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Something having to do with broomsticks and bodily orifices.
I was with you up until this. What the fuck?
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What makes you think Fox provides "news?" It is the propaganda arm of the Republican party.
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Not even close. MSNBC has not directly contributed to the DNC, while Fox has given millions directly to the RNC. No Democratic former politicians work for MSNBC, while several Republican former politicians work for Fox.
There is nothing like Fox News on the left.
Re:Why? (Score:5, Informative)
They know their relevance is ending when the 20 somethings that used to watch them while eating cheetos are now turning 30 and are bored with their childish humor.
Got a source for that? My Googling turned up this [tvbythenumbers.com]:
Vs. last summer, ratings for “The Daily Show” were up +10% among Adults 18-49, +22% among Adults 18-34, up +20% among Men 18-34 and up +15% among Men 18-24. Viewership grew +9% to 2.2 million Total Viewers (P2+)
Vs. last summer, ratings for “The Colbert Report” were up +9% among Adults 18-49, +18% among Adults 18-34, up +13% among Men 18-34 and up +12% among Men 18-24. Viewership grew +9% to 1.5 million Total Viewers (P2+)
Unless that's factually incorrect, it would appear that they're relevance is increasing rather than decreasing and these rallies may be an attempt to publicly show their relevance to a country that's gotten the impression that the tea party groups are much more relevant than they actually are.
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A large part of their popularity has nothing to do with the juvenile humor - it's because they're more accurate and honest when reporting on current events than the other news outlets, from the blatantly fictional reports of Fox news, to the subtly slanted reports CNN gives. The Daily Show and Colbert Report lay it out as it is, and most of their humor comes from pointing out the absurdity of the actual happenings.
It's pretty sad when a show that is supposed to be dedicated comedy is considered a more trus
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
It's pretty sad when a show that is supposed to be dedicated comedy is considered a more trustworthy news source than CNN.
What makes it more sad, is that they are actually right to consider it more trustworthy. It's not just people believing it and wanting it to be true. They actually are more trustworthy. What does that say about the rest of our sources of "news"?
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Compare this to most right wing radio, which is entirely devoted to mocking and complaining. If anything, Air America
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Oh please - always trying to play the victim while on the attack at the same time. Just like the group of Digg gamers claimed a vast conspiracy against them and their beliefs, while they themselves were perpetrating by far the largest and worst conspiracy.
Totally agreed on the animosity being on both sides though. We're in the "Bush is a nazi, anti-war protest, green party liberals" phase of the Obama administration. Where dems lost votes due to the green party extremists, republicans are going to lose vo