Jon Stewart enters Papa Bear’s den
By now even the casual observer of Fox News realizes Jon Stewart appeared on The O’Reilly Factor. Obviously, Fox News promoted the money-maker to death, Stewart has covered it on his show, Keith Olbermann has had his fun with it, bloggers have beat it to death, there are a huge number of YouTube videos ‘rebroadcasting’ it, and even some newspapers have covered the event. However, with all that attention something quite important, in my most humble opinion, has been largely missed.
Most of the media reviews I’ve read echo a theme of the interview being a bit dull, anti-climatic considering the hyped-up expectations. Jon entered Papa Bear’s den and, given home field advantage, a well-prepped O’Reilly loaded up on data-mined talking points to keep Stewart a bit off balance.
To be sure, that was my impression after watching the live broadcasts. Stewart, with his permanent frown etched into his eyebrows, kept his head cocked to one side and, like a scolded puppy dog, cast sheepish glances toward Bill. When I originally cut my video I found little of interest – despite the interview covering two nights – to use. In fact, I dug up video from his previous 2004 visit to the set of The O’Reilly Factor to use. After viewing it, the two broadcasts looked almost identical except for the political players they were debating. John Kerry fades to black and President Obama comes to the spotlight. Little did I realize I was missing the elephant in the room!
Bill O’Reilly – to his credit – posted the entire video on Fox News’ web site. Obviously, it was protection to claims he creatively edited the broadcast. Which is ironic since after viewing the uncut interview it has become an object lesson in creatively editing an interview. If you watched the broadcast version I can’t emphasize enough you have no clue about the true nature of Stewart’s torching of Fox News. There’s little doubt in my mind he wanted to repeat his performance on CNN’s Crossfire which he shamed off the air.
Briefly stated, Stewart wants viewers to take away the fact that Fox News is running a consistent conservative narrative. Fox News has been forced to concede its editorial content is conservative but fiercely denies this bias infects their hard news as well. Stewart skewers this notion. He points out how Fox & Friends kicks off this narrative and it is handed off to their news division to be carried throughout the day. He points out how Neil Cavuto shamelessly smears Obama by asking loaded questions. He absolutely destroys O’Reilly’s claims Obama’s on the road to Socialism by getting Bill to admit he wouldn’t abolish the biggest – but highly popular sacred cows – examples of Socialism: Social Security, Medicaid, and Medicare. It’s a brilliant point I’ve been praying someone would dump in Bill’s lap. Naturally, all of this got cut out.
O’Reilly can apologize until the end of times that he had non-political reasons for cutting out huge edgy swaths of the interview but it doesn’t wash. In an interview devoted to two nights it would be too easy to cut out all the pointless conservative punditry from Dennis Miller, Laura Ingraham, and especially his body language expert on the interview which adds nothing to our understanding of it. There’s no doubt in my mind that Bill O’Reilly’s tolerance for criticism of Fox News overloaded especially when Stewart violated the first law of Fox News: you do not criticize fellow Foxies. Bill was unable to mop up all the mess so he swept it under the rug.
Update
It appears I’m not the only one who caught the night and day difference between the dreadful live broadcast most Factor fanboys witnessed and the real deal, the unedited version posted on Fox News’ web site. Ken Tucker over at Entertainment Weekly has experienced a 180 degree opinion shift on what he originally viewed as a “love-fest.”
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You are just funny! Jon Stewart is only a comedian that liberals follow. Obama wants to socialize health care so yeah! He is a socialism. Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid are not socialized even though the gorvernment runs it. BTW, do you know they are bankrupting the gorvernment? Do you know for how much? I bet you don’t. So, my question is, why in hell does your lovely Obama wants to bankrupt the government even more?
As Stewart points out, Fox News puts out a consistent right-wing narrative that President Obama is a Socialist. It appears you’ve done a good job of memorizing their blarney.
It appears to me you don’t even have a fundamental understanding of Medicaid but let me prove you wrong with your own statements. If Medicaid, as you say, does not represent Socialism then how can Democratic health care reform be Socialism?
One plan would have expanded Medicaid to the uninsured for the public option so hated by Republiclans. That wouldn’t be Socialism in your view? The plan that passed the Senate (which had the greatest chance for passing) didn’t even involve the government to that extent. It mandated purchase through private heath insurance companies.