Whatsthatsmell?

What a butthead...Delayed reaction...

I watched the Daily Show last Friday on More4.  They usually show it here in the UK a couple of days after showing it in the States. 

Most of the time, I completely disagree with the editorial slant taken by the Daily Show, but I still find it extremely funny.  Jon Stewart, the host, is a funny guy, and his delivery is tops, and most of the stuff he pokes fun at is fair game, and can often have me laughing hysterically, despite his mostly ripping into "my side".

Since the announcement of Sarah Palin as Vice Presidential candidate, however, it just hasn't been funny.  I am open-minded enough to appreciate good comedy even when it "offends" one's beliefs and sensibilities.  But most of the shows since the day after the Democratic Convention have been nothing but angry, ugly, sneering, elitist ranting.  The Manhattan bien pensants ripping into someone from Middle America because she isn't like one of them, is the impression I get.  The underlying implication being that as she is from outside their rarefied world then she must be ignorant and not as worldly as the clever clogs that are writing the material on the show.

Well, Friday night's interview with Tony Blair showed just how knowledgeable and worldly Jon Stewart is when no one is writing his lines.  Within the space of five minutes, he made, in my eyes, two of the stupidest "ignorant" American mistakes about geography and history.

First, when Tony Blair explained that he was now teaching at Yale, Stewart asks, "So, do you prefer getting paid in Dollars or Euros?"  Blair politely informed him he prefers British Pounds.

Later, when Blair explained that no two democracies had ever gone to war, Stewart, with a clever smarmy tone, asked "Aren't Britain and Argentina democracies?"

Blair pretended not to hear it, yet Stewart pressed on.  Blair had to inform Stewart that at the time of the Falklands War, Argentina was a dictatorship.

You know, I don't mind people being slightly ignorant of these things, in the grand scheme of American life and culture, these things don't matter.  What I do take issue with is people like Stewart pretending they are more clever than they actually are and making unfounded assumptions about other people's levels of ignorance on the basis of ideology and calling it comedy.

What a tosser.

Actually, that is the problem with many on the Left (I should know, too, I used to be one).  They assume that they are smarter than EVERYONE on the other side of the aisle.  They use smarmy tones to talk down to people they don't agree with, and then they can't figure out why they lose elections.  We're in store for another four years of liberal bleating about stolen elections.

The economy's tanking, George Bush is low in approval ratings, the Republicans are on the backfoot in Congress, the Iraq War is not particularly popular as a political issue, and 80% of the population think the country is going in the wrong direction.

And Obama is only leading by a few percentage points in the polls?  At this point, he should be 15-20 points ahead of McCain.  Who's clever now?

Sent to the Newsnight Editorial staff...

I am writing regarding the Jerome Corsi interview the other night. 

I was extremely disappointed by the refutations of Corsi's assertions.  Your only source for the refutations seemed to be the Obama campaign's own poorly constructed 50-page tome which was economical (to say the least) with the truth in many places.

When that didn't seem to refute Corsi's assertions effectively, Ms. Wark reverted to ad hominem attacks on Corsi.  I am not a fan of Corsi's at all; in fact I understand him to be a conspiracy nut and an anti-Catholic bigot. 

However, there is a very good reason the mainstream American press is going nowhere near his book or the book by David Freddoso: they are afraid of what they will find under those rocks when they do something as simple as a Lexis-Nexis search on local Chicago newspapers -   something that anyone who claims the mantle of journalist should know how to do.  A secondary school teacher would have failed an expository essay which used only the candidate's word as a refutation.

If serious allegations of corruption were levelled against a British politician, I am certain that you would have done more research than taking the politician's word for it.  Your interview and treatment of Corsi betrayed nothing but shear partisanship and a lack of journalistic integrity in covering the American elections.  I've come to expect this from the rest of the "serious" British press (with the notable exception of the Times' editorial page), but for some reason, I was expecting more from Newsnight.

Obama is not an agent of change and, instead, comes from two of the most unpalatable persuasions of American political life: Chicago machine politics and '60s radical chic.  And a cursory inspection of those people with whom he associated on his rise would throw up some serious questions about his integrity, particularly when he claims to be a uniter.

I am warning you now, please do not be upset, like the rest of the press pack was in 2000 and 2004, when those rednecks in America vote for the "wrong" person in November.  There has been very little scrutiny of Obama, his past, and his record, and the next couple of weeks will throw up a lot of mud that will probably stick to him.

Regards,
James G-

I've just been reacquainting myself...

with the genius that was The Animaniacs.  Me and the daughter have been cycling through the complete series Volumes 1-3.  So far, we are on the last of the five DVDs that make up Volume 1.

and

Pure Genius!