WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Barack Obama's plan to raise taxes on wealthier people while preserving cuts for everyone else appears increasingly likely to founder before Election Day.
Senate GOP leaders declared on Monday that Republicans are, to a person, opposed to legislation that would extend only middle-class tax relief -- which Obama has repeatedly promised to deliver -- if Democrats follow through on plans to let tax rates rise for the wealthiest Americans. The GOP senators forcefully made their case one day after House Republican leader John Boehner suggested he might vote for Obama's plan if that ends up the only option.
Both Republicans and Democrats are using the looming expiration of Bush-era tax cuts as a defining battle in elections to determine control of Congress.
It would take numerous Democratic defectors to pass the Republicans' version -- extending all the Bush tax cuts -- or the issue could be left for a postelection congressional session if Republicans block the measure with a filibuster. Obama last week declined to say whether he would veto a bill that preserved the tax breaks for the wealthy.
On Sunday, Boehner said he would support renewing tax cuts for the middle class but not the wealthy if that was his only choice. Though Boehner was clear that he supports extending the full range of tax cuts, the White House jumped on his remarks as a possible change of heart.
But Sen. Jon Kyl of Arizona, the GOP whip, said Monday his party won't give ground.
''Just before the recess we had a meeting and we discussed this, and every Republican was absolutely supportive of the idea that there shouldn't be any increases in taxes,'' Kyl said.
Renewing the tax cuts for everyone would cost the government almost $4 trillion over the next decade, according to congressional analysts, who also assume that Congress won't allow the alternative minimum tax to hit millions of middle class taxpayers with eye-popping tax hikes.
With polls showing broad public anger over spiraling federal deficits, Obama wants to exclude individuals earning over $200,000 and couples making over $250,000 -- who account for $700 billion of that $4 trillion total. They represent about 3 percent of taxpayers, according to the Tax Policy Center, a Washington think tank.
''Only in Washington could someone propose a tax hike as an antidote to a recession,'' GOP leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said.
McConnell has said a bill extending the tax cuts for only low- and middle-income earners cannot pass the Senate, but he declined to reiterate that threat on Monday. Republicans control 41 seats, the minimum needed for a successful bill-killing filibuster, though McConnell spokesman Don Stewart declined to say whether all 41 Republicans would support a filibuster.
To amplify his point, McConnell on Monday introduced a bill to extend to Bush tax cuts indefinitely for all income ranges.
Some Democrats, like Sens. Kent Conrad of North Dakota, Evan Bayh of Indiana and Ben Nelson of Nebraska, are siding with Republicans against raising taxes on anyone during a fragile economic recovery.
''I don't think it makes sense to raise any federal taxes during the uncertain economy we are struggling through,'' Sen. Joe Lieberman, a Connecticut independent who aligns with Democrats, said Monday. ''The more money we leave in private hands, the quicker our economic recovery will be. And that means I will do everything I can to make sure Congress extends the so-called Bush tax cuts for another year.''
But Lieberman said he would not vote to hold up extension of the middle-class cuts to win leverage to extend those for wealthier people as well.
At issue is a year-end deadline to renew a variety of tax cuts enacted in 2001 -- when the federal government was running a surplus. They include lower rates, a $1,000 per-child tax credit, relief for married couples, and lower taxes on investments and large estates.
On Sunday, House GOP leader John Boehner said he would support renewing tax cuts for the middle class but not the wealthy if that was his only choice. Though Boehner was clear that he supports extending the full range of tax cuts, the White House jumped on his remarks as a possible change of heart.
Boehner has proposed a two-year extension of the Bush-era tax cuts, which would push the question into the 2012 presidential election. Obama has declined to say that he'd veto such a plan.
Democrats are worried that November elections could hand the GOP control of the House and perhaps the Senate. The White House and its Democratic allies hope to use the tax-cut fight to cast themselves as defenders of the middle class and Republicans as a party eager to revive the days of a still-unpopular former president, George W. Bush.
''We're going to take the next 50-some days to convince the public that's exactly what the Republicans would do -- back to the Bush policies,'' said White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said on NBC's ''Today'' show.
''We could get (tax cuts) done this week, but we're still in this wrestling match with John Boehner and Mitch McConnell about the last 2 to 3 percent'' of upper-income taxpayers, Obama said Monday during a backyard town hall in a Northern Virginia suburb.
Gibbs said the middle class should not be used as a political football by Republicans maneuvering to give tax cuts to wealthy taxpayers, who he said don't need the reductions. Republicans say paring taxes for the wealthy would encourage them and the businesses they operate to create jobs.
Republicans, for their part, say that it's not just the rich who would be hit by Obama's tax hike on upper-income people. Many small businesses -- that earn about half of all small business income -- would also face the tax hike.
''No American should face a tax increase in January ... not one,'' said Indiana Rep. Mike Pence, the No. 3 House Republican. ''We will not compromise our economy to accommodate the class warfare rhetoric of this administration.''
Monday, September 13, 2010
America Is a Joke The New Yorker Magazine
The worst of times for politics and media has been the best of times for The Daily Show’s host�and unfortunately things are getting even funnier.
It’s hard to top a kick in the nuts.
Especially when the kicker is Linda McMahon, the Connecticut Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate. Pure comedy gold.
Jon Stewart watches the tape and doubles over with laughter. He and fifteen of The Daily Show’s writers, producers, and performers are gathered around a 40-inch flat-screen TV inside the show’s Eleventh Avenue offices early on a Thursday morning in August. Creating a segment for tonight’s Daily Show around this footage, from one of World Wrestling Entertainment’s harmless little skits, would seem to be easy. Maybe they can just run the nut shot repeatedly. Along with another clip of McMahon, the co-founder and former CEO of WWE, chugging a beer and drooling foam down her cheek.
Except that the goal here isn’t simply topping the kick in the nuts�it’s using the scrotum slam in the service of a larger point. Oh, Stewart & Co. enjoy a lowbrow laugh as much as the folks over at South Park; heck, next week they’re publishing a book that includes some excellent masturbation jokes. But Stewart and The Daily Show became America’s sharpest political satirists by aiming at least a little bit higher.
�Slut! Slut! Slut!� The next clip shows McMahon’s daughter entering the wrestling ring to a booming chant from the crowd. Followed by McMahon’s deadly serious face, in a Nightline interview. �Oh my God,� Stewart interjects. �How do you answer that as a politician? �Well, you don’t know my daughter’? Or, �You know, the use of the term slut was obviously inadvertent’?�
This sets off a spasm of free-associative jokes from the other writers. �Or, �You don’t understand�Americans love this shit.’ �
�What if we ran the clip like Super Mario Brothers, and every time she kicks that guy in the nuts, a gold coin comes out?�
�Was McMahon endorsed by Triple H? Or was it Triple X?�
�That’s funny stuff,� Stewart says. �But let’s get a sense of where the media is trying to build the narrative and where the story lines are going to go.�
Associate producer Ramin Hedayati dials up a series of clips of everyone from Greta Van Susteren to George Stephanopoulos inveighing on the endorsement �proxy war� between Sarah Palin and Mike Huckabee, or Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, or maybe it’s�
�Somebody last night said there’s no story line here,� Kevin Bleyer says. �Was it Chuck Todd?�
They run the clip of NBC’s Todd saying, �The one thing we learned is that the candidates that got the most votes won.� The room erupts in laughter. Until Times reporter Jeff Zeleny tells Todd that the media would have blamed Obama if the results in Colorado had come out differently. �See, that’s very telling right there,� Stewart says, �where he says, �Had this happened, here’s what we would have done.’ �
�They’ve already read through the �Choose Your Own Adventure’ book on this,� John Hodgman says.
Stewart shakes his head in disgust. �Let’s take a stab at �Thank God these primaries are coming to an end, because as far as a news-media narrative, they’ve blown through so many ideas already��angry voters,’ �ladies’ night,’ �proxy war’�it’s like dresses that they feel like they can’t wear to more than one movie premiere. So they’ve got to come up with a new story line. Maybe this one is endorsements; is the next one height?�
It wasn’t exactly an innocent year, given the Monica Lewinsky scandal, Columbine, and the two frames of a topless woman hidden in Disney’s The Rescuers. But since 1999, when Stewart took over as host, the context in which The Daily Show operates has been radically altered. Terrorist attacks, two wars, and a global economic meltdown have charged the political atmosphere. More important for Stewart and his show has been the media transformation. Print is crumbling. The mainstream TV networks have steadily shed seriousness and viewers. The Internet, a minor player at the turn of the century, has become overcrowded with opinion silos. As the new century began, Fox News Channel was finding its fair-and-balanced footing and Glenn Beck, an itinerant radio shock jock, was trying on a new persona, �Limbaugh Lite.� Today, Fox News is an evil empire and Beck just led a messianic Washington rally. America’s politicians, willingly or not, often seem like they’re actors in scripts created by cable producers.
Stewart made himself into the leading critic and satirist of the media-political complex, starting with �Indecision 2000,� The Daily Show’s parody of that year’s presidential campaign. His comedy is counterprogramming�postmodern entertainment but with a political purpose. As truth has been overrun by truthiness and facts trampled by lies, he and The Daily Show have become an invaluable corrective�he’s Cronkite, the most trusted man in America, although in keeping with the fragmented culture, he’s trusted by many fewer people, about 1.8 million viewers each night. Years ago, Stewart lost out to Conan O’Brien and Jimmy Kimmel for late-night network jobs, but the shifting media fortunes have made him the long-run winner, with vastly more job security and cultural influence than his conventional talk-show competitors�and most conventional journalists.
�Jon has chronicled the death of shame in politics and journalism,� says Brian Williams, the NBC Nightly News anchor who is a frequent Daily Show guest. �Many of us on this side of the journalism tracks often wish we were on Jon’s side. I envy his platform to shout from the mountaintop. He’s a necessary branch of government.�
Glenn Beck is an even more frequent Daily Show presence�as a target. The Fox News star takes a different view�surprise, surprise�praising Stewart while dismissing him as mere entertainment. Even as he’s built an enviable political base, Beck knows he’s a showman, and he thinks that makes Stewart a kind of brother.
�Jon Stewart is very funny, and if I were in his position, I’d be doing a lot of the same things. In fact, a lot of the jokes I’ve heard before, either from my staff or myself,� Beck says by e-mail. �He takes things out of context (no worse than most of the other mainstream media) and is more interested in being funny than trying to actually understand the key messages in [my] show � But I don’t think he’s looking for a Pulitzer � People like Jon, his ratings are good. Good for him, keep doing what he’s doing. People seem to like watching my show as well, and hopefully that continues for both of us for a very long time.�
The Obama presidency was supposed to spell doom�or at least irrelevance�for Bush-satirizing comics like Stewart and his protégé Stephen Colbert. But a funny thing happened and is continuing to happen. Stewart is as essential as ever. Lately the show has been on a hot streak, exposing anti-mosque demagogues and carving up spineless Democrats. One of the lessons of the recent past is that the circus is in town no matter who is in the White House, which, while far from ideal for the state of our nation, has only increased the standing of a satirist like Stewart. Creating consistently funny and barbed bits four nights a week is extremely difficult, and not only because Stewart has to fend off the adulation of an audience that wasn’t entirely kidding with those STEWART/COLBERT ’08 bumper stickers. Constant exposure to the muck of politics can easily, and quickly, produce cynicism. Yet immersion in the political-media mess has left Stewart at once more bitter and more idealistic.
�Even if you’re eating delicious chocolate cake, there are moments you feel like, �I’ve had too much,’ � Stewart says. �Now replace �chocolate cake’ with �shit taco’ and you know what our day is like every day. But this is not a fragile country. I’m not suggesting we couldn’t find ourselves in deep conflict. But we had slaves, and we fought a civil war; now we’re down to Glenn Beck being hyperbolic with his audience about nostalgia. This too shall pass.� Which doesn’t mean that Stewart is so confident in the inexorable triumph of good and right that he’s going to stop ridiculing the evildoers and charlatans.
�Here’s something you always like to see,� Stewart says, scanning the front page of the Washington Post. � �U.S. Trade Deficit Startles Markets.’ Now, we’ve understood the U.S. trade deficit for a while. Are the markets small children that are easily startled? The next day, they’ll get an unemployment number and go, �Oh, I don’t know why we were startled and lost 200 points yesterday; today, we realized the shirt on the chair wasn’t a monster, so we’re going to put 300 points back on the Dow because we’re fucking 5 years old.’ �
Stewart sits behind his office desk, two brick walls forming a corner behind him. He wears the same off-camera outfit nearly every day: Black work boots, chinos, frayed gray T-shirt. He’ll read the New York dailies as well, plus Talking Points Memo, Andrew Sullivan, maybe the blogger Allahpundit, searching for interesting thinking and potential Daily Show material. But Stewart intentionally keeps his media consumption modest. �Mostly I look at sports websites, so my head doesn’t explode,� he says. �I’m saving that for home, when someone doesn’t pass the gravy.�
Downstairs, Daily Show staffers monitor every minute of Fox News and hundreds of political shows, at least until workplace-cruelty inspectors find out. Groups of writers and researchers assemble in Stewart’s office throughout the day, presenting revised scripts for the current show and updating him on the progress of longer-term segments, like a Wyatt Cenac search for Supreme Court contenders on Staten Island. There’s discussion of a possible Stewart-Colbert public event, a parody of Beck’s �Restoring Honor� rally. �Maybe we would do a �March of the Reasonable,’ on a date of no particular significance,� Stewart says.
The mix of satire-in-progress and office chitchat creates some strange juxtapositions. �There’s an elements meeting later for �Not the White Man’s Bitch,’ � co-executive producer Kahane Cooperman says. �Hey, you know Bee-Jones’s baby was born?� she says, referring to the latest spawn of Daily Show correspondents�and Canadian imports�Samantha Bee and Jason Jones.
�Yes!� Stewart says happily. �Seven pounds thirteen ounces!�
�Send ’em a six pack of Molsons,� says Josh Lieb, an executive producer.
�That’s what they should do,� Stewart says, building on the riff, �have a couple more kids and be known as �The Molsons.’ �
�Three kids under 5 years old,� says Cooperman, herself the mother of two children. �My God.�
�Well, four kids,� Stewart says�drawing laughs without having to spell out that Jason Jones is the additional toddler.
Stewart himself has a 6-year-old son and a 4-year-old daughter with his wife of ten years, Tracey. The family lives in Tribeca, and one morning Stewart strolls over to Bubby’s, a comfort-food neighborhood institution, where the owner greets him with a hug. A table of twelve calls out �We love you!� as Stewart walks past. He smiles and thanks them, but is happier to hide under his Mets hat, settle into a corner table in the back, and dig into a bowl of grits. �Jon is exactly the same guy he’s always been, only with money,� says Denis Leary, a friend since 1986. �He knows that the moment he really believes he’s important, the funny goes away and he becomes Bill O’Reilly, except shorter and Jewish.�
Stewart isn’t one of those comics who is always, exhaustingly, on. But he’s never entirely off, either, his mind and tongue moving quickly. This morning brings another round of stories trumpeting polls opposing the �ground-zero mosque,� which The Daily Show has gleefully reminded people is actually slated for a location about three blocks from the World Trade Center site, on the hallowed ground of a former Burlington Coat Factory. �The wisdom of the masses is not always � wise,� Stewart says. �You could put a lot of things to a vote�you could have put anti-miscegenation laws to a vote, and that would have passed pretty handily. Either all people are created equal�or they’re not. You’re either buying into the original premise of America�or you’re not.�
Beneath the many, many dick jokes, this was the message of America (The Book), the parody American-history textbook Stewart and The Daily Show writers published in 2004. This month brings Earth (The Book), a parody history of � Earth. The conceit this time is that before disappearing from the planet�owing to ecological catastrophe, nuclear holocaust, or a pandemic that killed Dr. Nicole Kidman�humankind has left behind a guide to our existence for alien visitors. Or, more likely, alien conquerors. Besides forever settling the chicken-or-egg conundrum, Earth is a densely packed tour through everything from milestones in human development (�Our conquest of fire made it possible to safely consume meat and commit insurance fraud�) to pornography (�It wasn’t very popular. Not at all�). �Doing the show is relentless in a very specific vein. The book is our same process but a very different kind of humor,� Stewart says. �I like that it’s not ephemeral and not part of the day-to-day conversation. It was nice for people to use different muscles in writing the book. And to not see their families.�
Stewart’s interests have always been ecumenical. He grew up in Lawrence Township, New Jersey, as Jonathan Stuart Leibowitz, the second son of a physicist father who once worked for RCA Labs and a mother who taught elementary-school special education; his parents divorced when Stewart was 9. He went to William & Mary, playing on the college soccer team and graduating without any particular career plan, eventually moving to New York and taking the stage on open-mike night at the Bitter End.
�I wish I could say there was a magic formula,� he says, �but I just kept working at it.� Trying to keep up with new comedy-club-circuit friends including Leary, Dave Attell, and Louis C.K. helped sharpen Stewart’s act, which was topical without being overtly political. Hosting a short-lived but clever MTV talk show in the early nineties put Stewart into the late-night derby, and in January 1999 he replaced Craig Kilborn, the original Daily Show host. The expectations weren’t especially high. Stephen Colbert remembers the reaction of his wife, Evelyn McGee, who’d been friendly with Stewart years earlier. �When Jon got The Daily Show, she said, �Wait a second�he wasn’t the funny one in our group,’ � Colbert says. � �He was the quiet one in the corner with a beer.’ �
One thing Stewart knew was that he wanted to give The Daily Show more weight. �Early on, we had a bit about the 40th anniversary of Barbie,� he says. �Some of the jokes were about how ridiculous a role model Barbie was for young girls, and the other jokes were about how ugly the girl in the Barbie commercial was. I’m not so sure that worked.� Stewart’s Daily Show really began with �Indecision 2000,� its �coverage� of the millennial electoral mess that gave the world President George W. Bush. Colbert joined the cast full-time right before the start of the Republican convention in Philadelphia. �I was never interested in political comedy: �Hey, Ted Kennedy’s hitting the bottle again!’ � Colbert says. �Jon taught me how to do it so it would be smart. He encouraged everyone to have a point of view. There had to be a thought behind every joke.�
The road trips to Philly and to the 2000 Democratic convention in Los Angeles reshaped The Daily Show, but not in the way Stewart had anticipated. �We were at that point merry pranksters�guys on a bus going, �That guy looks like Richard Gephardt!’ � he says. �The more we got to meet people [in the media], it was��Oh! You’re fucking retarded! You don’t care!’ The pettiness of it, the strange lack of passion for any kind of moral or editorial authority, always struck me as weird. We felt like, we’re serious people doing an unserious thing, and they’re unserious people doing a very serious thing.�
The Bush-Gore Florida recount was a gigantic gift to �Indecision 2000,� if not the country. �We all had such blue balls from the jokes we wanted to do when Gore eventually conceded,� Colbert says. �And the night it happened, here we were doing them. I turned to Jon and said, �This is the most fun job on TV right now.’ �
Media people’s lack of passion for moral or editorial authority always struck Stewart as weird.
After September 11, Stewart began to employ his newfound anger, becoming a voice of comic sanity in the whirlwind of real and manufactured fear. Segments like �America Freaks Out� and �Mess O’Potamia� punctured the false-patriotic sanctimony being peddled by the Bush administration. Yet as appalled as Stewart was by the politicians, his greater scorn was increasingly aimed at the acquiescent and co-opted news media. �I assume there are bad actors in society,� Stewart says. �It’s inherent in politicians to be disingenuous. And a mining company wants to own the company store�as it is in SpongeBob. Mr. Krabs just wants to make more money. He’s not concerned with SpongeBob’s working conditions�although SpongeBob is putting in hours that are not humane, even for an invertebrate. I assume monkeys are gonna throw shit. I get angrier at the people who don’t go �Bad monkey!’ or who create distraction that allows it to continue unabated. The thing that shocked me the most when I first met reporters was the people who would step aside and say, �Boy, I wish I could say what you’re saying.’ You have a show! You are a network anchor! Whaddya mean you can’t say it?� Stewart says. �It’s one reason I admire Fox. They’re great broadcasters. Everything is pointed, purposeful. You follow story lines, you fall in love with characters: �Oh, that’s the woman who’s very afraid of Black Panthers! I can’t wait to see what happens next. Oh, look, it’s the ex-alcoholic man who believes that Woodrow Wilson continues to wreak havoc on this country! This is exciting!’ Even the Fox morning show, the way they’re able to present propaganda as though it’s merely innocent thoughts occurring to them: �What is this �czar�? I’m Googling, and you know what’s interesting about a czar? It’s a Russian oligarch! Don’t you think it’s weird that Obama has Russian oligarchs, and he’s a socialist?’ Whereas MSNBC will trace the word and say, �If you don’t understand that, you’re an idiot!’ The mistake they make is that somehow facts are more important than feelings.�
What has separated Stewart from ordinary carpers, though, is his willingness to call bullshit to the face of the bullshitters. On The O’Reilly Factor this past February, he nailed Fox News as �a cyclonic, perpetual emotion machine� that gins up legitimate political disagreements into �a full-fledged panic attack about the next coming of Chairman Mao.� In October 2004, after months of Daily Show jibes at CNN’s Crossfire, Stewart appeared as a guest and delivered a nuanced, impassioned plea for Paul Begala and Tucker Carlson to �stop hurting America� by peddling mindless bickering as partisan debate. Well, and he called Carlson a dick. �I don’t disown any of the criticism, but I probably could have handled it in a lighter, less sanctimonious way,� Stewart says. �What’s been misconstrued is the idea that I’m saying I’m �just a comedian.’ I’m not saying I’m just a comedian. I think comedy is harder than what they do. We have to process things in a manner that’s more thoughtful.�
The right provides better raw material, but Stewart’s complaints are bi-partisan. �Obama ran as a visionary and leads as a legislator. That’s been the most disappointing thing about him,� he says. �People were open to major changes, and they didn’t get it. I mean, he was pretty clear about some shit: �We’re not gonna sacrifice values for safety. I’m closing Guantánamo.’ Jettisoning Shirley Sherrod showed he doesn’t quite understand this game yet, does he? He’s more than willing to sacrifice someone to the voraciousness of the news cycle than to any sense of what his narrative is. I can’t quite figure out who they are.�
Stewart is a somewhat left-of-center Bloomberg/Springsteen Democrat, but he’s avoided outright cause-mongering beyond emceeing charitable events. �We’re not provocateurs, we’re not activists; we are reacting for our own catharsis,� Stewart says. �There is a line into demagoguery, and we try very hard to express ourselves but not move into, �So follow me! And I will lead you to the land of answers, my people!’ You can fall in love with your own idea of common sense. Maybe the nice thing about being a comedian is never having a full belief in yourself to know the answer. So you can say all this stuff, but underneath, you’re going, �But of course, I’m fucking idiotic.’ It’s why we don’t lead a lot of marches.�
And he clings to the naïve hope that the legitimate news media will get its act together and become a resolute force for truth and good government. �You have to imagine someone is going to come along in a nonpartisan fashion and create a similarly tenacious organization as Fox,� Stewart says. �There’s got to be a way to translate people’s ability to be titillated into a way to inform them that’s not necessarily PBS. There’d be money in that.�
Tim Kaine called. The former governor of Virginia and current head of the Democratic National Committee volunteers to appear on The Daily Show. �How about we have him on when we go to Washington?� Stewart says to Hillary Kun, the supervising producer who books guests.
The Daily Show hit full stride with its coverage of the 2000 Bush-Gore presidential campaign. Ten years later, the Supreme Court decision that broke the deadlock is still reverberating, especially in the dead-end partisanship of our nation’s capital. Stewart returns to D.C. next month for a week of shows pegged to one prime showcase of the dysfunction, the midterm elections. Small problem: Congress, along with most other professional pols, will be out on the campaign trail (Kaine came to New York last week for his grilling). �Yes,� Stewart says, �when you show up to stick it to The Man, you always want to do it when The Man is not home.�
A decade of bad politics has made for a lifetime of comedy fodder, however. Each day at four o’clock, Stewart ducks into his office bathroom and changes from T-shirt and chinos to black suit and a muted blue tie. In the early seasons of The Daily Show, Stewart looked as if he’d borrowed his older brother’s suit, his hairstyle bordered on a pompadour, and he was thin to the point of waifish. At 47 years old, he’s suave in Armani, his black hair is rapidly giving way to gray, and he’s quit smoking and gained a few pounds, most of it from the Swedish Fish stockpiled in bowls throughout the office.
Stewart bounds down two flights of stairs, navigates a series of twisting hallways, and emerges into the empty Daily Show studio for rehearsal. He sits behind his desk and reads rapidly through today’s script in a low mumble as cameramen practice their moves and video clips pop up on monitors. Then it’s time to really create the show.
For the next hour, Stewart paces diagonally across a windowless eight-by-eight-foot room, sucking on an iced coffee and grabbing handfuls of candy. Projected in front of him on one wall is the current script; beneath it, at two keyboards, sit Kristen Everman, a production assistant, and Kira Klang Hopf, an indefatigable senior producer. Head writer Steve Bodow and executive producers Josh Lieb and Rory Albanese perch on small couches. As the studio audience files into its seats down the hall and tonight’s musical guests, Arcade Fire, tune their guitars in the greenroom, Stewart and his team go on a nonstop, rapid-fire jag that tears up and rewrites nearly three-quarters of the script. The typist transcribes, cuts, and pastes; as visual gags pop feverishly into Stewart’s brain, Hopf calls down to the art department, ordering up new video montages and a collage of an �Anchor-Me Terror Baby� to go with a reference to the �birthright citizenship� debate. Many of the new ideas will be scrapped only moments later.
�We begin with results from Tuesday night’s exciting primaries�so exciting we needed a day to cool down so we could report it dispassionately. And also we didn’t know they’d happened,� Stewart dictates in his on-camera voice, as Everman types the words into the revised script and onto the wall. �Take out, �We didn’t know they happened,’ � Stewart says. �What was the theme? What narratives would emerge. If you remember, the May 19 primaries were known for their passion.�
�Check the date on the primaries,� Albanese says to Hopf, who Googles the facts.
�Can you find one more person using the word �anger’?� Lieb asks a video researcher.
Stewart’s pacing has switched to the Frankenstein monster’s stiff-armed lumber; now he’s doing the bolt-neck’s booming voice: �Ugh! Primary voter angry! School-funding referendum vote �no!’ �
Back to Stewart’s natural tone: �But by the June primaries the anger had dissipated.�
�Leaving nothing but the sweet smell of estrogen,� Lieb says, cracking up the room. Clips of real newspeople proclaiming �ladies’ night� are inserted. Stewart picks up the pace: �The June primaries�ladies drank free!� Now he’s singing, and dancing his pathetic white-man’s disco shuffle. �Oh, yes, it’s ladies’ night ��
As Stewart speeds along, hours of work by writers and producers are cut, replaced by improvised digressions. A clip of a Fox News host hyping Tuesday’s Senate primary as the thing that �put Colorado on the national scene� provokes Stewart to ask Hopf, �Will you look at the forces behind Colorado’s statehood?� He peers over Hopf’s shoulder at the Wiki answers, then starts riffing in his best mock-serious anchor tone: �Not to be a stickler, but I believe it was the Pikes Peak gold rush in 1861 that originally put Colorado on the national scene, leading to statehood, ratified in 1876.�
Lieb: �Then they discovered beer in 1901.�
Albanese: �Then a giant woman in a bikini tapped the Rockies.� A producer begins frantically searching for the relevant photo from a Coors Light ad.
Stewart: �Of course, tragically, three years after that, a 50-foot-woman stuck a beer tap into one of their mountains. In the ensuing floods, thousands were killed.�
Lieb: �The ensuing beer-valanche.� When the laughter dies down, Lieb tacks on one more inside-comedy beat. �That’s actually Bruce Vilanch’s brother, Beer Valanche.�
No matter how far the inspired silliness wanders, Stewart steers everyone back to the theme. When the media drumbeat was �rage at incumbents,� 98.5 percent of incumbents won their primaries; on �ladies’ night� a solid majority of male candidates triumphed. �The point is,� Stewart says, �that just because a media narrative is utter bullshit doesn’t mean we won’t get another one. So this month’s primary has a �proxy battle’ theme.� He stops. Something’s stumping him. �The kick-in-the-nuts thing�hmmm,� he murmurs.
Albanese knows what this means. �Are we losing the kick in the nuts?� He sounds depressed. �Wwwhew.�
�I think �slut, slut, slut’ is better,� Stewart says. Linda McMahon’s testicle-kick video and all the jokes associated with it are vanishing from the wall script. Albanese sighs. Stewart stares. �I have an idea,� he says, then starts dictating again. � �McMahon’s ability to overcome footage from her entire career was impressive’�now add a little piece of the kick in the nuts at the top of this,� he says. �Then, �Chuck Todd, help me out. What was the theme?’ �
Up comes a clip of the NBC political analyst saying, �There was no big theme.�
Now Stewart explodes in mock horror: �Wait�the theme is no theme? Why do I always fall for this? Every time I lean over and look in and what do I get?�
When that line, during taping, is followed by the full McMahon foot-to-crotch, it sparks the biggest laugh of the night, probably for the viewers at home too. And maybe everyone learned another little Daily Show lesson in media criticism�confronted with the spectacle of the media-political complex, the only possible response is laughter. The studio audience, though, got an extra sermon. Every night before starting the show Stewart takes a few questions. This time a woman asks what he likes most about living in the city.
Stewart pauses, looking at the floor for a few seconds. �I grew up in a smaller town in New Jersey,� he says quietly, �and even though we were only an hour outside New York, I remember telling people I wanted to live in the city, and they said��he puts on a belligerent dumb-ass voice�� �Okay, good luck in the gay-pride parade!’ �
When the laughs fade, he continues. �Very provincial. So the idea that everything was not only accepted, but appreciated, was my favorite thing about New York. But also that there was a certain energy, that people were like, �You know what, fuck it, I’m going to do something I want to do.’ �
The audience is silent. Stewart punctures the earnestness. �And now I just think, �Wow, this is crowded.’ � More laughs. �So, I got old.�
He made it here; hokey as it is, he wants to do his little part to ensure everyone�Muslim, gay, Sarah Palin�continues to have that same chance, not just in New York, but in America. �You want to add something to the world that is clarifying and not obscuring,� he’d told me earlier. �But I know the difference between real social change and what we do. You know what we are? Soil enrichers. Maybe we can add a little fertilizer to the soil so that real people can come along and grow things.� Somewhere here there’s a wisecrack to make about politics, journalism, and manure. But if there’s any clear and profound moral to be gleaned from our recent absurd era in American history, it's that we're better off leaving the jokes to Jon Stewart.
It’s hard to top a kick in the nuts.
Especially when the kicker is Linda McMahon, the Connecticut Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate. Pure comedy gold.
Jon Stewart watches the tape and doubles over with laughter. He and fifteen of The Daily Show’s writers, producers, and performers are gathered around a 40-inch flat-screen TV inside the show’s Eleventh Avenue offices early on a Thursday morning in August. Creating a segment for tonight’s Daily Show around this footage, from one of World Wrestling Entertainment’s harmless little skits, would seem to be easy. Maybe they can just run the nut shot repeatedly. Along with another clip of McMahon, the co-founder and former CEO of WWE, chugging a beer and drooling foam down her cheek.
Except that the goal here isn’t simply topping the kick in the nuts�it’s using the scrotum slam in the service of a larger point. Oh, Stewart & Co. enjoy a lowbrow laugh as much as the folks over at South Park; heck, next week they’re publishing a book that includes some excellent masturbation jokes. But Stewart and The Daily Show became America’s sharpest political satirists by aiming at least a little bit higher.
�Slut! Slut! Slut!� The next clip shows McMahon’s daughter entering the wrestling ring to a booming chant from the crowd. Followed by McMahon’s deadly serious face, in a Nightline interview. �Oh my God,� Stewart interjects. �How do you answer that as a politician? �Well, you don’t know my daughter’? Or, �You know, the use of the term slut was obviously inadvertent’?�
This sets off a spasm of free-associative jokes from the other writers. �Or, �You don’t understand�Americans love this shit.’ �
�What if we ran the clip like Super Mario Brothers, and every time she kicks that guy in the nuts, a gold coin comes out?�
�Was McMahon endorsed by Triple H? Or was it Triple X?�
�That’s funny stuff,� Stewart says. �But let’s get a sense of where the media is trying to build the narrative and where the story lines are going to go.�
Associate producer Ramin Hedayati dials up a series of clips of everyone from Greta Van Susteren to George Stephanopoulos inveighing on the endorsement �proxy war� between Sarah Palin and Mike Huckabee, or Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, or maybe it’s�
�Somebody last night said there’s no story line here,� Kevin Bleyer says. �Was it Chuck Todd?�
They run the clip of NBC’s Todd saying, �The one thing we learned is that the candidates that got the most votes won.� The room erupts in laughter. Until Times reporter Jeff Zeleny tells Todd that the media would have blamed Obama if the results in Colorado had come out differently. �See, that’s very telling right there,� Stewart says, �where he says, �Had this happened, here’s what we would have done.’ �
�They’ve already read through the �Choose Your Own Adventure’ book on this,� John Hodgman says.
Stewart shakes his head in disgust. �Let’s take a stab at �Thank God these primaries are coming to an end, because as far as a news-media narrative, they’ve blown through so many ideas already��angry voters,’ �ladies’ night,’ �proxy war’�it’s like dresses that they feel like they can’t wear to more than one movie premiere. So they’ve got to come up with a new story line. Maybe this one is endorsements; is the next one height?�
It wasn’t exactly an innocent year, given the Monica Lewinsky scandal, Columbine, and the two frames of a topless woman hidden in Disney’s The Rescuers. But since 1999, when Stewart took over as host, the context in which The Daily Show operates has been radically altered. Terrorist attacks, two wars, and a global economic meltdown have charged the political atmosphere. More important for Stewart and his show has been the media transformation. Print is crumbling. The mainstream TV networks have steadily shed seriousness and viewers. The Internet, a minor player at the turn of the century, has become overcrowded with opinion silos. As the new century began, Fox News Channel was finding its fair-and-balanced footing and Glenn Beck, an itinerant radio shock jock, was trying on a new persona, �Limbaugh Lite.� Today, Fox News is an evil empire and Beck just led a messianic Washington rally. America’s politicians, willingly or not, often seem like they’re actors in scripts created by cable producers.
Stewart made himself into the leading critic and satirist of the media-political complex, starting with �Indecision 2000,� The Daily Show’s parody of that year’s presidential campaign. His comedy is counterprogramming�postmodern entertainment but with a political purpose. As truth has been overrun by truthiness and facts trampled by lies, he and The Daily Show have become an invaluable corrective�he’s Cronkite, the most trusted man in America, although in keeping with the fragmented culture, he’s trusted by many fewer people, about 1.8 million viewers each night. Years ago, Stewart lost out to Conan O’Brien and Jimmy Kimmel for late-night network jobs, but the shifting media fortunes have made him the long-run winner, with vastly more job security and cultural influence than his conventional talk-show competitors�and most conventional journalists.
�Jon has chronicled the death of shame in politics and journalism,� says Brian Williams, the NBC Nightly News anchor who is a frequent Daily Show guest. �Many of us on this side of the journalism tracks often wish we were on Jon’s side. I envy his platform to shout from the mountaintop. He’s a necessary branch of government.�
Glenn Beck is an even more frequent Daily Show presence�as a target. The Fox News star takes a different view�surprise, surprise�praising Stewart while dismissing him as mere entertainment. Even as he’s built an enviable political base, Beck knows he’s a showman, and he thinks that makes Stewart a kind of brother.
�Jon Stewart is very funny, and if I were in his position, I’d be doing a lot of the same things. In fact, a lot of the jokes I’ve heard before, either from my staff or myself,� Beck says by e-mail. �He takes things out of context (no worse than most of the other mainstream media) and is more interested in being funny than trying to actually understand the key messages in [my] show � But I don’t think he’s looking for a Pulitzer � People like Jon, his ratings are good. Good for him, keep doing what he’s doing. People seem to like watching my show as well, and hopefully that continues for both of us for a very long time.�
The Obama presidency was supposed to spell doom�or at least irrelevance�for Bush-satirizing comics like Stewart and his protégé Stephen Colbert. But a funny thing happened and is continuing to happen. Stewart is as essential as ever. Lately the show has been on a hot streak, exposing anti-mosque demagogues and carving up spineless Democrats. One of the lessons of the recent past is that the circus is in town no matter who is in the White House, which, while far from ideal for the state of our nation, has only increased the standing of a satirist like Stewart. Creating consistently funny and barbed bits four nights a week is extremely difficult, and not only because Stewart has to fend off the adulation of an audience that wasn’t entirely kidding with those STEWART/COLBERT ’08 bumper stickers. Constant exposure to the muck of politics can easily, and quickly, produce cynicism. Yet immersion in the political-media mess has left Stewart at once more bitter and more idealistic.
�Even if you’re eating delicious chocolate cake, there are moments you feel like, �I’ve had too much,’ � Stewart says. �Now replace �chocolate cake’ with �shit taco’ and you know what our day is like every day. But this is not a fragile country. I’m not suggesting we couldn’t find ourselves in deep conflict. But we had slaves, and we fought a civil war; now we’re down to Glenn Beck being hyperbolic with his audience about nostalgia. This too shall pass.� Which doesn’t mean that Stewart is so confident in the inexorable triumph of good and right that he’s going to stop ridiculing the evildoers and charlatans.
�Here’s something you always like to see,� Stewart says, scanning the front page of the Washington Post. � �U.S. Trade Deficit Startles Markets.’ Now, we’ve understood the U.S. trade deficit for a while. Are the markets small children that are easily startled? The next day, they’ll get an unemployment number and go, �Oh, I don’t know why we were startled and lost 200 points yesterday; today, we realized the shirt on the chair wasn’t a monster, so we’re going to put 300 points back on the Dow because we’re fucking 5 years old.’ �
Stewart sits behind his office desk, two brick walls forming a corner behind him. He wears the same off-camera outfit nearly every day: Black work boots, chinos, frayed gray T-shirt. He’ll read the New York dailies as well, plus Talking Points Memo, Andrew Sullivan, maybe the blogger Allahpundit, searching for interesting thinking and potential Daily Show material. But Stewart intentionally keeps his media consumption modest. �Mostly I look at sports websites, so my head doesn’t explode,� he says. �I’m saving that for home, when someone doesn’t pass the gravy.�
Downstairs, Daily Show staffers monitor every minute of Fox News and hundreds of political shows, at least until workplace-cruelty inspectors find out. Groups of writers and researchers assemble in Stewart’s office throughout the day, presenting revised scripts for the current show and updating him on the progress of longer-term segments, like a Wyatt Cenac search for Supreme Court contenders on Staten Island. There’s discussion of a possible Stewart-Colbert public event, a parody of Beck’s �Restoring Honor� rally. �Maybe we would do a �March of the Reasonable,’ on a date of no particular significance,� Stewart says.
The mix of satire-in-progress and office chitchat creates some strange juxtapositions. �There’s an elements meeting later for �Not the White Man’s Bitch,’ � co-executive producer Kahane Cooperman says. �Hey, you know Bee-Jones’s baby was born?� she says, referring to the latest spawn of Daily Show correspondents�and Canadian imports�Samantha Bee and Jason Jones.
�Yes!� Stewart says happily. �Seven pounds thirteen ounces!�
�Send ’em a six pack of Molsons,� says Josh Lieb, an executive producer.
�That’s what they should do,� Stewart says, building on the riff, �have a couple more kids and be known as �The Molsons.’ �
�Three kids under 5 years old,� says Cooperman, herself the mother of two children. �My God.�
�Well, four kids,� Stewart says�drawing laughs without having to spell out that Jason Jones is the additional toddler.
Stewart himself has a 6-year-old son and a 4-year-old daughter with his wife of ten years, Tracey. The family lives in Tribeca, and one morning Stewart strolls over to Bubby’s, a comfort-food neighborhood institution, where the owner greets him with a hug. A table of twelve calls out �We love you!� as Stewart walks past. He smiles and thanks them, but is happier to hide under his Mets hat, settle into a corner table in the back, and dig into a bowl of grits. �Jon is exactly the same guy he’s always been, only with money,� says Denis Leary, a friend since 1986. �He knows that the moment he really believes he’s important, the funny goes away and he becomes Bill O’Reilly, except shorter and Jewish.�
Stewart isn’t one of those comics who is always, exhaustingly, on. But he’s never entirely off, either, his mind and tongue moving quickly. This morning brings another round of stories trumpeting polls opposing the �ground-zero mosque,� which The Daily Show has gleefully reminded people is actually slated for a location about three blocks from the World Trade Center site, on the hallowed ground of a former Burlington Coat Factory. �The wisdom of the masses is not always � wise,� Stewart says. �You could put a lot of things to a vote�you could have put anti-miscegenation laws to a vote, and that would have passed pretty handily. Either all people are created equal�or they’re not. You’re either buying into the original premise of America�or you’re not.�
Beneath the many, many dick jokes, this was the message of America (The Book), the parody American-history textbook Stewart and The Daily Show writers published in 2004. This month brings Earth (The Book), a parody history of � Earth. The conceit this time is that before disappearing from the planet�owing to ecological catastrophe, nuclear holocaust, or a pandemic that killed Dr. Nicole Kidman�humankind has left behind a guide to our existence for alien visitors. Or, more likely, alien conquerors. Besides forever settling the chicken-or-egg conundrum, Earth is a densely packed tour through everything from milestones in human development (�Our conquest of fire made it possible to safely consume meat and commit insurance fraud�) to pornography (�It wasn’t very popular. Not at all�). �Doing the show is relentless in a very specific vein. The book is our same process but a very different kind of humor,� Stewart says. �I like that it’s not ephemeral and not part of the day-to-day conversation. It was nice for people to use different muscles in writing the book. And to not see their families.�
Stewart’s interests have always been ecumenical. He grew up in Lawrence Township, New Jersey, as Jonathan Stuart Leibowitz, the second son of a physicist father who once worked for RCA Labs and a mother who taught elementary-school special education; his parents divorced when Stewart was 9. He went to William & Mary, playing on the college soccer team and graduating without any particular career plan, eventually moving to New York and taking the stage on open-mike night at the Bitter End.
�I wish I could say there was a magic formula,� he says, �but I just kept working at it.� Trying to keep up with new comedy-club-circuit friends including Leary, Dave Attell, and Louis C.K. helped sharpen Stewart’s act, which was topical without being overtly political. Hosting a short-lived but clever MTV talk show in the early nineties put Stewart into the late-night derby, and in January 1999 he replaced Craig Kilborn, the original Daily Show host. The expectations weren’t especially high. Stephen Colbert remembers the reaction of his wife, Evelyn McGee, who’d been friendly with Stewart years earlier. �When Jon got The Daily Show, she said, �Wait a second�he wasn’t the funny one in our group,’ � Colbert says. � �He was the quiet one in the corner with a beer.’ �
One thing Stewart knew was that he wanted to give The Daily Show more weight. �Early on, we had a bit about the 40th anniversary of Barbie,� he says. �Some of the jokes were about how ridiculous a role model Barbie was for young girls, and the other jokes were about how ugly the girl in the Barbie commercial was. I’m not so sure that worked.� Stewart’s Daily Show really began with �Indecision 2000,� its �coverage� of the millennial electoral mess that gave the world President George W. Bush. Colbert joined the cast full-time right before the start of the Republican convention in Philadelphia. �I was never interested in political comedy: �Hey, Ted Kennedy’s hitting the bottle again!’ � Colbert says. �Jon taught me how to do it so it would be smart. He encouraged everyone to have a point of view. There had to be a thought behind every joke.�
The road trips to Philly and to the 2000 Democratic convention in Los Angeles reshaped The Daily Show, but not in the way Stewart had anticipated. �We were at that point merry pranksters�guys on a bus going, �That guy looks like Richard Gephardt!’ � he says. �The more we got to meet people [in the media], it was��Oh! You’re fucking retarded! You don’t care!’ The pettiness of it, the strange lack of passion for any kind of moral or editorial authority, always struck me as weird. We felt like, we’re serious people doing an unserious thing, and they’re unserious people doing a very serious thing.�
The Bush-Gore Florida recount was a gigantic gift to �Indecision 2000,� if not the country. �We all had such blue balls from the jokes we wanted to do when Gore eventually conceded,� Colbert says. �And the night it happened, here we were doing them. I turned to Jon and said, �This is the most fun job on TV right now.’ �
Media people’s lack of passion for moral or editorial authority always struck Stewart as weird.
After September 11, Stewart began to employ his newfound anger, becoming a voice of comic sanity in the whirlwind of real and manufactured fear. Segments like �America Freaks Out� and �Mess O’Potamia� punctured the false-patriotic sanctimony being peddled by the Bush administration. Yet as appalled as Stewart was by the politicians, his greater scorn was increasingly aimed at the acquiescent and co-opted news media. �I assume there are bad actors in society,� Stewart says. �It’s inherent in politicians to be disingenuous. And a mining company wants to own the company store�as it is in SpongeBob. Mr. Krabs just wants to make more money. He’s not concerned with SpongeBob’s working conditions�although SpongeBob is putting in hours that are not humane, even for an invertebrate. I assume monkeys are gonna throw shit. I get angrier at the people who don’t go �Bad monkey!’ or who create distraction that allows it to continue unabated. The thing that shocked me the most when I first met reporters was the people who would step aside and say, �Boy, I wish I could say what you’re saying.’ You have a show! You are a network anchor! Whaddya mean you can’t say it?� Stewart says. �It’s one reason I admire Fox. They’re great broadcasters. Everything is pointed, purposeful. You follow story lines, you fall in love with characters: �Oh, that’s the woman who’s very afraid of Black Panthers! I can’t wait to see what happens next. Oh, look, it’s the ex-alcoholic man who believes that Woodrow Wilson continues to wreak havoc on this country! This is exciting!’ Even the Fox morning show, the way they’re able to present propaganda as though it’s merely innocent thoughts occurring to them: �What is this �czar�? I’m Googling, and you know what’s interesting about a czar? It’s a Russian oligarch! Don’t you think it’s weird that Obama has Russian oligarchs, and he’s a socialist?’ Whereas MSNBC will trace the word and say, �If you don’t understand that, you’re an idiot!’ The mistake they make is that somehow facts are more important than feelings.�
What has separated Stewart from ordinary carpers, though, is his willingness to call bullshit to the face of the bullshitters. On The O’Reilly Factor this past February, he nailed Fox News as �a cyclonic, perpetual emotion machine� that gins up legitimate political disagreements into �a full-fledged panic attack about the next coming of Chairman Mao.� In October 2004, after months of Daily Show jibes at CNN’s Crossfire, Stewart appeared as a guest and delivered a nuanced, impassioned plea for Paul Begala and Tucker Carlson to �stop hurting America� by peddling mindless bickering as partisan debate. Well, and he called Carlson a dick. �I don’t disown any of the criticism, but I probably could have handled it in a lighter, less sanctimonious way,� Stewart says. �What’s been misconstrued is the idea that I’m saying I’m �just a comedian.’ I’m not saying I’m just a comedian. I think comedy is harder than what they do. We have to process things in a manner that’s more thoughtful.�
The right provides better raw material, but Stewart’s complaints are bi-partisan. �Obama ran as a visionary and leads as a legislator. That’s been the most disappointing thing about him,� he says. �People were open to major changes, and they didn’t get it. I mean, he was pretty clear about some shit: �We’re not gonna sacrifice values for safety. I’m closing Guantánamo.’ Jettisoning Shirley Sherrod showed he doesn’t quite understand this game yet, does he? He’s more than willing to sacrifice someone to the voraciousness of the news cycle than to any sense of what his narrative is. I can’t quite figure out who they are.�
Stewart is a somewhat left-of-center Bloomberg/Springsteen Democrat, but he’s avoided outright cause-mongering beyond emceeing charitable events. �We’re not provocateurs, we’re not activists; we are reacting for our own catharsis,� Stewart says. �There is a line into demagoguery, and we try very hard to express ourselves but not move into, �So follow me! And I will lead you to the land of answers, my people!’ You can fall in love with your own idea of common sense. Maybe the nice thing about being a comedian is never having a full belief in yourself to know the answer. So you can say all this stuff, but underneath, you’re going, �But of course, I’m fucking idiotic.’ It’s why we don’t lead a lot of marches.�
And he clings to the naïve hope that the legitimate news media will get its act together and become a resolute force for truth and good government. �You have to imagine someone is going to come along in a nonpartisan fashion and create a similarly tenacious organization as Fox,� Stewart says. �There’s got to be a way to translate people’s ability to be titillated into a way to inform them that’s not necessarily PBS. There’d be money in that.�
Tim Kaine called. The former governor of Virginia and current head of the Democratic National Committee volunteers to appear on The Daily Show. �How about we have him on when we go to Washington?� Stewart says to Hillary Kun, the supervising producer who books guests.
The Daily Show hit full stride with its coverage of the 2000 Bush-Gore presidential campaign. Ten years later, the Supreme Court decision that broke the deadlock is still reverberating, especially in the dead-end partisanship of our nation’s capital. Stewart returns to D.C. next month for a week of shows pegged to one prime showcase of the dysfunction, the midterm elections. Small problem: Congress, along with most other professional pols, will be out on the campaign trail (Kaine came to New York last week for his grilling). �Yes,� Stewart says, �when you show up to stick it to The Man, you always want to do it when The Man is not home.�
A decade of bad politics has made for a lifetime of comedy fodder, however. Each day at four o’clock, Stewart ducks into his office bathroom and changes from T-shirt and chinos to black suit and a muted blue tie. In the early seasons of The Daily Show, Stewart looked as if he’d borrowed his older brother’s suit, his hairstyle bordered on a pompadour, and he was thin to the point of waifish. At 47 years old, he’s suave in Armani, his black hair is rapidly giving way to gray, and he’s quit smoking and gained a few pounds, most of it from the Swedish Fish stockpiled in bowls throughout the office.
Stewart bounds down two flights of stairs, navigates a series of twisting hallways, and emerges into the empty Daily Show studio for rehearsal. He sits behind his desk and reads rapidly through today’s script in a low mumble as cameramen practice their moves and video clips pop up on monitors. Then it’s time to really create the show.
For the next hour, Stewart paces diagonally across a windowless eight-by-eight-foot room, sucking on an iced coffee and grabbing handfuls of candy. Projected in front of him on one wall is the current script; beneath it, at two keyboards, sit Kristen Everman, a production assistant, and Kira Klang Hopf, an indefatigable senior producer. Head writer Steve Bodow and executive producers Josh Lieb and Rory Albanese perch on small couches. As the studio audience files into its seats down the hall and tonight’s musical guests, Arcade Fire, tune their guitars in the greenroom, Stewart and his team go on a nonstop, rapid-fire jag that tears up and rewrites nearly three-quarters of the script. The typist transcribes, cuts, and pastes; as visual gags pop feverishly into Stewart’s brain, Hopf calls down to the art department, ordering up new video montages and a collage of an �Anchor-Me Terror Baby� to go with a reference to the �birthright citizenship� debate. Many of the new ideas will be scrapped only moments later.
�We begin with results from Tuesday night’s exciting primaries�so exciting we needed a day to cool down so we could report it dispassionately. And also we didn’t know they’d happened,� Stewart dictates in his on-camera voice, as Everman types the words into the revised script and onto the wall. �Take out, �We didn’t know they happened,’ � Stewart says. �What was the theme? What narratives would emerge. If you remember, the May 19 primaries were known for their passion.�
�Check the date on the primaries,� Albanese says to Hopf, who Googles the facts.
�Can you find one more person using the word �anger’?� Lieb asks a video researcher.
Stewart’s pacing has switched to the Frankenstein monster’s stiff-armed lumber; now he’s doing the bolt-neck’s booming voice: �Ugh! Primary voter angry! School-funding referendum vote �no!’ �
Back to Stewart’s natural tone: �But by the June primaries the anger had dissipated.�
�Leaving nothing but the sweet smell of estrogen,� Lieb says, cracking up the room. Clips of real newspeople proclaiming �ladies’ night� are inserted. Stewart picks up the pace: �The June primaries�ladies drank free!� Now he’s singing, and dancing his pathetic white-man’s disco shuffle. �Oh, yes, it’s ladies’ night ��
As Stewart speeds along, hours of work by writers and producers are cut, replaced by improvised digressions. A clip of a Fox News host hyping Tuesday’s Senate primary as the thing that �put Colorado on the national scene� provokes Stewart to ask Hopf, �Will you look at the forces behind Colorado’s statehood?� He peers over Hopf’s shoulder at the Wiki answers, then starts riffing in his best mock-serious anchor tone: �Not to be a stickler, but I believe it was the Pikes Peak gold rush in 1861 that originally put Colorado on the national scene, leading to statehood, ratified in 1876.�
Lieb: �Then they discovered beer in 1901.�
Albanese: �Then a giant woman in a bikini tapped the Rockies.� A producer begins frantically searching for the relevant photo from a Coors Light ad.
Stewart: �Of course, tragically, three years after that, a 50-foot-woman stuck a beer tap into one of their mountains. In the ensuing floods, thousands were killed.�
Lieb: �The ensuing beer-valanche.� When the laughter dies down, Lieb tacks on one more inside-comedy beat. �That’s actually Bruce Vilanch’s brother, Beer Valanche.�
No matter how far the inspired silliness wanders, Stewart steers everyone back to the theme. When the media drumbeat was �rage at incumbents,� 98.5 percent of incumbents won their primaries; on �ladies’ night� a solid majority of male candidates triumphed. �The point is,� Stewart says, �that just because a media narrative is utter bullshit doesn’t mean we won’t get another one. So this month’s primary has a �proxy battle’ theme.� He stops. Something’s stumping him. �The kick-in-the-nuts thing�hmmm,� he murmurs.
Albanese knows what this means. �Are we losing the kick in the nuts?� He sounds depressed. �Wwwhew.�
�I think �slut, slut, slut’ is better,� Stewart says. Linda McMahon’s testicle-kick video and all the jokes associated with it are vanishing from the wall script. Albanese sighs. Stewart stares. �I have an idea,� he says, then starts dictating again. � �McMahon’s ability to overcome footage from her entire career was impressive’�now add a little piece of the kick in the nuts at the top of this,� he says. �Then, �Chuck Todd, help me out. What was the theme?’ �
Up comes a clip of the NBC political analyst saying, �There was no big theme.�
Now Stewart explodes in mock horror: �Wait�the theme is no theme? Why do I always fall for this? Every time I lean over and look in and what do I get?�
When that line, during taping, is followed by the full McMahon foot-to-crotch, it sparks the biggest laugh of the night, probably for the viewers at home too. And maybe everyone learned another little Daily Show lesson in media criticism�confronted with the spectacle of the media-political complex, the only possible response is laughter. The studio audience, though, got an extra sermon. Every night before starting the show Stewart takes a few questions. This time a woman asks what he likes most about living in the city.
Stewart pauses, looking at the floor for a few seconds. �I grew up in a smaller town in New Jersey,� he says quietly, �and even though we were only an hour outside New York, I remember telling people I wanted to live in the city, and they said��he puts on a belligerent dumb-ass voice�� �Okay, good luck in the gay-pride parade!’ �
When the laughs fade, he continues. �Very provincial. So the idea that everything was not only accepted, but appreciated, was my favorite thing about New York. But also that there was a certain energy, that people were like, �You know what, fuck it, I’m going to do something I want to do.’ �
The audience is silent. Stewart punctures the earnestness. �And now I just think, �Wow, this is crowded.’ � More laughs. �So, I got old.�
He made it here; hokey as it is, he wants to do his little part to ensure everyone�Muslim, gay, Sarah Palin�continues to have that same chance, not just in New York, but in America. �You want to add something to the world that is clarifying and not obscuring,� he’d told me earlier. �But I know the difference between real social change and what we do. You know what we are? Soil enrichers. Maybe we can add a little fertilizer to the soil so that real people can come along and grow things.� Somewhere here there’s a wisecrack to make about politics, journalism, and manure. But if there’s any clear and profound moral to be gleaned from our recent absurd era in American history, it's that we're better off leaving the jokes to Jon Stewart.
NEWT Top Wingnut reports!
Gingrich: Obama is engaged in "Kenyan, anti-colonial behavior"
Since the beginning of the Obama presidency, right-wing media -- especially those who work at Fox News -- have been carrying out a campaign of not-so-subtle race-baiting.
Today, Fox News contributor Newt Gingrich took this campaign to new levels, reportedly telling the National Review that Obama has pretended to be "normal" but that Obama actually seems to be engaged in "Kenyan, anti-colonial behavior":
Citing a recent Forbes article by Dinesh D'Souza, former House speaker Newt Gingrich tells National Review Online that President Obama may follow a "Kenyan, anti-colonial" worldview.
Gingrich says that D'Souza has made a "stunning insight" into Obama's behavior -- the "most profound insight I have read in the last six years about Barack Obama."
"What if [Obama] is so outside our comprehension, that only if you understand Kenyan, anti-colonial behavior, can you begin to piece together [his actions]?" Gingrich asks. "That is the most accurate, predictive model for his behavior."
"This is a person who is fundamentally out of touch with how the world works, who happened to have played a wonderful con, as a result of which he is now president," Gingrich tells us.
"I think he worked very hard at being a person who is normal, reasonable, moderate, bipartisan, transparent, accommodating -- none of which was true," Gingrich continues. "In the Alinksy tradition, he was being the person he needed to be in order to achieve the position he needed to achieve . . . He was authentically dishonest."
Here's the completely ridiculous D'Souza article Gingrich is referencing. D'Souza's thesis -- backed up by an impressive combination of factual distortions and twisted logic -- is that Obama is using the Oval Office to push anti-colonial policies championed by his father half a century ago.
Here's one particularly inflammatory portion of what Gingrich calls D'Souza's "stunning insight":
Incredibly, the U.S. is being ruled according to the dreams of a Luo tribesman of the 1950s. This philandering, inebriated African socialist, who raged against the world for denying him the realization of his anticolonial ambitions, is now setting the nation's agenda through the reincarnation of his dreams in his son. The son makes it happen, but he candidly admits he is only living out his father's dream. The invisible father provides the inspiration, and the son dutifully gets the job done. America today is governed by a ghost.
Fox's race problem just keeps getting worse.
UPDATE: Gingrich was interviewed on the September 12 edition of Fox News Sunday, but host Chris Wallace did not ask him about his racially-charged assertion that Obama might have a "Kenyan, anti-colonial" worldview.
Since the beginning of the Obama presidency, right-wing media -- especially those who work at Fox News -- have been carrying out a campaign of not-so-subtle race-baiting.
Today, Fox News contributor Newt Gingrich took this campaign to new levels, reportedly telling the National Review that Obama has pretended to be "normal" but that Obama actually seems to be engaged in "Kenyan, anti-colonial behavior":
Citing a recent Forbes article by Dinesh D'Souza, former House speaker Newt Gingrich tells National Review Online that President Obama may follow a "Kenyan, anti-colonial" worldview.
Gingrich says that D'Souza has made a "stunning insight" into Obama's behavior -- the "most profound insight I have read in the last six years about Barack Obama."
"What if [Obama] is so outside our comprehension, that only if you understand Kenyan, anti-colonial behavior, can you begin to piece together [his actions]?" Gingrich asks. "That is the most accurate, predictive model for his behavior."
"This is a person who is fundamentally out of touch with how the world works, who happened to have played a wonderful con, as a result of which he is now president," Gingrich tells us.
"I think he worked very hard at being a person who is normal, reasonable, moderate, bipartisan, transparent, accommodating -- none of which was true," Gingrich continues. "In the Alinksy tradition, he was being the person he needed to be in order to achieve the position he needed to achieve . . . He was authentically dishonest."
Here's the completely ridiculous D'Souza article Gingrich is referencing. D'Souza's thesis -- backed up by an impressive combination of factual distortions and twisted logic -- is that Obama is using the Oval Office to push anti-colonial policies championed by his father half a century ago.
Here's one particularly inflammatory portion of what Gingrich calls D'Souza's "stunning insight":
Incredibly, the U.S. is being ruled according to the dreams of a Luo tribesman of the 1950s. This philandering, inebriated African socialist, who raged against the world for denying him the realization of his anticolonial ambitions, is now setting the nation's agenda through the reincarnation of his dreams in his son. The son makes it happen, but he candidly admits he is only living out his father's dream. The invisible father provides the inspiration, and the son dutifully gets the job done. America today is governed by a ghost.
Fox's race problem just keeps getting worse.
UPDATE: Gingrich was interviewed on the September 12 edition of Fox News Sunday, but host Chris Wallace did not ask him about his racially-charged assertion that Obama might have a "Kenyan, anti-colonial" worldview.
Friday, September 10, 2010
Media Matters Weekly UPDATER! Fox News thinks you're all idiots
Editors (note): Fox News thinks(knows)you're all idiots
Though the conservative media are fueled by overhyped, often-false, phony "scandals," every so often a story comes along that is so mind-bogglingly absurd that it exposes in no uncertain fashion the entire conservative media for what it is: a propaganda machine far more interested in pushing pre-determined narratives than conveying accurate information.
For much of the summer, conservatives have been aggressively working to blur the lines between the radicals who attacked us on September 11 and the moderate Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf in order to claim his planned Islamic center in lower Manhattan is some sort of "victory mosque." This week, when conservatives were not busy trying to equate Rauf with lunatic pastor Terry Jones and his plan to burn Qurans, they were suggesting that Rauf literally commands the forces of Al Qaeda.
On Wednesday, Rauf went on CNN's Larry King Live and warned of the dangers of perceived anti-Islam sentiment in the United States, especially as it relates to his Park51 project. Specifically, Rauf said that outspoken opposition to his project creates "danger from the radicals in the Muslim world to our national security." Before we get to the resulting epic conservative freak-out, it's important to point out that Rauf's comments track closely with comments from national security experts -- including Gen. David Petraeus -- who have repeatedly warned of the security implications of anti-Muslim protests.
Undeterred by reality, conservatives claimed Rauf was "threatening" America when he made this entirely non-controversial statement of fact.
Fox Nation broadcast as its top story that "Imam Threatens U.S., Says If Mosque Moves, Terror Will 'Explode.'" Pam Geller -- whose anti-Muslim bigotry leads her to view the world as a Magic Eye book filled with hidden Islamic crescents --announced in a headline that "Ground Zero Supremacist Imam Rauf Threatens America." Jim Hoft claimed in a post about Rauf's "threat" that the "radical" Rauf "warned that if America did not get down on its knees and allow the victory mosque to be built on the bones of dead Americans that ...'They will attack.'" Hoft instructed Rauf to "take your victory mosque and shove it."
Rush Limbaugh, Charles Krauthammer and Media Research Center's Brent Baker speculated that Rauf may be engaging in "blackmail." Fox News hosted Debra Burlingame to say that Rauf had given an "ultimatum" and that his comments represented a "form of extortion." Fox also gave a 9-11 firefighter a platform to smear Rauf as a "tax-evading, terrorist sympathizing, Armani-wearing slumlord" who is "try[ing] to extort America" and "wants to build a Towe r of Triumph on the graveyard of my friends." Bill O'Reilly fearmongered that Rauf's warning about violence may be a "self-fulfilling prophecy."
This morning, the Fox & Friends hosts (and the accompanying on-screen text) referred to Rauf's comments as a "threat" at least ten times. Gretchen Carlson interpreted his "troubling" statement as "If you move it now, we're gonna attack you."
The lone voice of sanity in the conservative wilderness was Chris Wallace, who twice stated that he did not hear Rauf's comments as a "threat." As always, this acknowledgment of reality made him the exception, not the rule.
There is no gray area here: by pushing this story, conservative media figures have revealed -- as they do pretty much every week -- that they are either completely oblivious to reality, or they think their viewers/listeners/readers are. And they do this all the time -- remember the forty-eight hours during the 2008 presidential campaign when conservatives decided to pretend Barack Obama had compared Sarah Palin to a pig when he said "you can put lipstick on a pig; it's still a pig" to describe McCain's policies?
When the top-rated cable news organization in the country joins with leading conservative bloggers and radio hosts to smear someone as "threatening" to attack America for stating something that is widely agreed-upon by security experts, their dishonesty should be news. Unfortunately, since media conservatives seem to have a knack for escaping consequences for their serial mendacity, their role in the unwarranted demolition of Rauf's character will likely disappear down the memory hole.
The damage will already be done, and conservatives' perpetual dishonesty machine will roll on.
Glenn Beck's Black Robe Republican Regiment
Two weeks ago, Glenn Beck capped his shift into hyper-religiosity by unveiling the "Black Robe Regiment." The formation of the group and our culture's alleged "turn back to God" at his "Restoring Honor" rally were supposed to mark the "beginning of the end of darkness." While hyping the group, Beck has repeatedly stressed that they are non-political. Like most other things he says, this does not hold up to scrutiny. In fact, it's becoming increasingly clear that the Black Robe Regiment is simply a thinly-veiled get-out-the-vote push for the GOP.
Beck announced last week that he was working with James Dobson to help form the Regiment. In the past, Dobson and his organizations have repeatedly used churches to attempt to influence elections. The Alliance Defense Fund, which Dobson co-founded, sought preachers who were willing to challenge the IRS over whether tax-exempt churches could explicitly endorse or oppose candidates. Last month, Beck promoted the ADF's "Pulpit Freedom Sunday" initiative. During the segment, David Barton - whom Beck has credited with helping hatch the idea of the Regiment -- described the movement as "several hundred preachers" saying to the IRS, "come after me. I d are you." Additionally, as reported byThe Washington Post in 2006, Dobson's Focus on the Family group announced that it would "work with affiliated groups in eight battleground states to mobilize evangelical voters in the November elections."
Speaking of mobilizing voters, Dr. Richard Lee, Black Robe Regiment member and pastor at First Redeemer Church in Atlanta, told Media Matters last week that part of the Regiment's mission is to return to their places of worship and boost voter involvement. Lee's words were echoed by fellow Black Rober Richard Land, who explained that the Regiment mission entails "Energizing all of our members to register to vote, to be informed as to where the country stands on issues and leave it to them to connect the dots."
The Black Robe Regiment's connections to partisan politics run even deeper. At least two members of the group areclosely tied to former Speaker of the House and putative 2012 presidential candidate Newt Gingrich and his Renewing American Leadership group. Barton, who "spearheaded the Republican National Committee's rigorous outreach to pastors in 2004," is listed as a board member. Joining Barton is Black Rober Dr. Jim Garlow, who serves as the group's chairman.
So what is the goal of Renewing American Leadership? As explained on their "Who We Are" page, the group is "dedicated to educating, organizing, training, and mobilizing people of faith to renew American self-government and America's role in the world." When the group launched last year, Founding Director Rick Tyler described the group toU.S. News in explicitly political terms, saying that they wanted to "prove" to Republican donors that "mobilizing evangelical voters leads to the best economic policies."
As we documented this week, numerous members of the supposedly nonpolitical Black Robe Regiment share a fervent opposition to the "homosexual agenda" and are strident opponents of gay marriage. Included in this anti-gay army of God is Maggie Gallagher, whose association with the Black Robe Regiment further makes a mockery of the idea that this group is non-political. Gallagher, who confirmed her involvement with the group to Media Matters, is neither a pastor nor a religious figure; she's an anti-gay activist. Her organizations, National Organization for Marriage (NOM) and the Institute for Marriage and Public Policy, both revolve around "protecting marriage" - by which, of course, they mean denying gays t he right to marry.
So if Beck is serious that his followers should "run from any pastor, priest or rabbi" advocating that "any one policy God says is the right thing," then he apparently thinks people need to flee from his Black Robe Regiment.
This weekly wrap-up was compiled by Media Matters' Ben Dimiero.
Though the conservative media are fueled by overhyped, often-false, phony "scandals," every so often a story comes along that is so mind-bogglingly absurd that it exposes in no uncertain fashion the entire conservative media for what it is: a propaganda machine far more interested in pushing pre-determined narratives than conveying accurate information.
For much of the summer, conservatives have been aggressively working to blur the lines between the radicals who attacked us on September 11 and the moderate Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf in order to claim his planned Islamic center in lower Manhattan is some sort of "victory mosque." This week, when conservatives were not busy trying to equate Rauf with lunatic pastor Terry Jones and his plan to burn Qurans, they were suggesting that Rauf literally commands the forces of Al Qaeda.
On Wednesday, Rauf went on CNN's Larry King Live and warned of the dangers of perceived anti-Islam sentiment in the United States, especially as it relates to his Park51 project. Specifically, Rauf said that outspoken opposition to his project creates "danger from the radicals in the Muslim world to our national security." Before we get to the resulting epic conservative freak-out, it's important to point out that Rauf's comments track closely with comments from national security experts -- including Gen. David Petraeus -- who have repeatedly warned of the security implications of anti-Muslim protests.
Undeterred by reality, conservatives claimed Rauf was "threatening" America when he made this entirely non-controversial statement of fact.
Fox Nation broadcast as its top story that "Imam Threatens U.S., Says If Mosque Moves, Terror Will 'Explode.'" Pam Geller -- whose anti-Muslim bigotry leads her to view the world as a Magic Eye book filled with hidden Islamic crescents --announced in a headline that "Ground Zero Supremacist Imam Rauf Threatens America." Jim Hoft claimed in a post about Rauf's "threat" that the "radical" Rauf "warned that if America did not get down on its knees and allow the victory mosque to be built on the bones of dead Americans that ...'They will attack.'" Hoft instructed Rauf to "take your victory mosque and shove it."
Rush Limbaugh, Charles Krauthammer and Media Research Center's Brent Baker speculated that Rauf may be engaging in "blackmail." Fox News hosted Debra Burlingame to say that Rauf had given an "ultimatum" and that his comments represented a "form of extortion." Fox also gave a 9-11 firefighter a platform to smear Rauf as a "tax-evading, terrorist sympathizing, Armani-wearing slumlord" who is "try[ing] to extort America" and "wants to build a Towe r of Triumph on the graveyard of my friends." Bill O'Reilly fearmongered that Rauf's warning about violence may be a "self-fulfilling prophecy."
This morning, the Fox & Friends hosts (and the accompanying on-screen text) referred to Rauf's comments as a "threat" at least ten times. Gretchen Carlson interpreted his "troubling" statement as "If you move it now, we're gonna attack you."
The lone voice of sanity in the conservative wilderness was Chris Wallace, who twice stated that he did not hear Rauf's comments as a "threat." As always, this acknowledgment of reality made him the exception, not the rule.
There is no gray area here: by pushing this story, conservative media figures have revealed -- as they do pretty much every week -- that they are either completely oblivious to reality, or they think their viewers/listeners/readers are. And they do this all the time -- remember the forty-eight hours during the 2008 presidential campaign when conservatives decided to pretend Barack Obama had compared Sarah Palin to a pig when he said "you can put lipstick on a pig; it's still a pig" to describe McCain's policies?
When the top-rated cable news organization in the country joins with leading conservative bloggers and radio hosts to smear someone as "threatening" to attack America for stating something that is widely agreed-upon by security experts, their dishonesty should be news. Unfortunately, since media conservatives seem to have a knack for escaping consequences for their serial mendacity, their role in the unwarranted demolition of Rauf's character will likely disappear down the memory hole.
The damage will already be done, and conservatives' perpetual dishonesty machine will roll on.
Glenn Beck's Black Robe Republican Regiment
Two weeks ago, Glenn Beck capped his shift into hyper-religiosity by unveiling the "Black Robe Regiment." The formation of the group and our culture's alleged "turn back to God" at his "Restoring Honor" rally were supposed to mark the "beginning of the end of darkness." While hyping the group, Beck has repeatedly stressed that they are non-political. Like most other things he says, this does not hold up to scrutiny. In fact, it's becoming increasingly clear that the Black Robe Regiment is simply a thinly-veiled get-out-the-vote push for the GOP.
Beck announced last week that he was working with James Dobson to help form the Regiment. In the past, Dobson and his organizations have repeatedly used churches to attempt to influence elections. The Alliance Defense Fund, which Dobson co-founded, sought preachers who were willing to challenge the IRS over whether tax-exempt churches could explicitly endorse or oppose candidates. Last month, Beck promoted the ADF's "Pulpit Freedom Sunday" initiative. During the segment, David Barton - whom Beck has credited with helping hatch the idea of the Regiment -- described the movement as "several hundred preachers" saying to the IRS, "come after me. I d are you." Additionally, as reported byThe Washington Post in 2006, Dobson's Focus on the Family group announced that it would "work with affiliated groups in eight battleground states to mobilize evangelical voters in the November elections."
Speaking of mobilizing voters, Dr. Richard Lee, Black Robe Regiment member and pastor at First Redeemer Church in Atlanta, told Media Matters last week that part of the Regiment's mission is to return to their places of worship and boost voter involvement. Lee's words were echoed by fellow Black Rober Richard Land, who explained that the Regiment mission entails "Energizing all of our members to register to vote, to be informed as to where the country stands on issues and leave it to them to connect the dots."
The Black Robe Regiment's connections to partisan politics run even deeper. At least two members of the group areclosely tied to former Speaker of the House and putative 2012 presidential candidate Newt Gingrich and his Renewing American Leadership group. Barton, who "spearheaded the Republican National Committee's rigorous outreach to pastors in 2004," is listed as a board member. Joining Barton is Black Rober Dr. Jim Garlow, who serves as the group's chairman.
So what is the goal of Renewing American Leadership? As explained on their "Who We Are" page, the group is "dedicated to educating, organizing, training, and mobilizing people of faith to renew American self-government and America's role in the world." When the group launched last year, Founding Director Rick Tyler described the group toU.S. News in explicitly political terms, saying that they wanted to "prove" to Republican donors that "mobilizing evangelical voters leads to the best economic policies."
As we documented this week, numerous members of the supposedly nonpolitical Black Robe Regiment share a fervent opposition to the "homosexual agenda" and are strident opponents of gay marriage. Included in this anti-gay army of God is Maggie Gallagher, whose association with the Black Robe Regiment further makes a mockery of the idea that this group is non-political. Gallagher, who confirmed her involvement with the group to Media Matters, is neither a pastor nor a religious figure; she's an anti-gay activist. Her organizations, National Organization for Marriage (NOM) and the Institute for Marriage and Public Policy, both revolve around "protecting marriage" - by which, of course, they mean denying gays t he right to marry.
So if Beck is serious that his followers should "run from any pastor, priest or rabbi" advocating that "any one policy God says is the right thing," then he apparently thinks people need to flee from his Black Robe Regiment.
This weekly wrap-up was compiled by Media Matters' Ben Dimiero.
An Invisible Chief Justice By LINDA GREENHOUSE
The Pew Research Center asked people this summer to identify the current chief justice of the United States from among four possibilities: John Roberts, Thurgood Marshall, John Paul Stevens and Harry Reid. Only 28 percent correctly picked Chief Justice Roberts. The late Thurgood Marshall came in second, with 8 percent. Fifty-three percent could not make a selection, answering “don’t know.”
The result was surprising; after all, people weren’t asked to pull a name out of thin air. And the alternatives to the real chief justice were scarcely plausible: Justice Thurgood Marshall died 17 years ago (or maybe people thought the question referred to Chief Justice John Marshall — he died in 1835); Senator Harry Reid has never been a justice at all; and Justice John Paul Stevens was prominently in the news this summer not for being chief justice, but for retiring.
To anyone who spends a few minutes a week thinking about the Supreme Court, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. is far from invisible. Political scientists and legal scholars debate whether the court under his leadership has become a whole lot more conservative or scarcely more conservative at all. A Roberts court decision earlier this year, the Citizens United campaign-finance ruling, prompted President Obama to criticize the chief justice and his colleagues to their faces in the middle of the State of the Union speech. And an unusually rapid pace of personnel change, with three additional new justices since Chief Justice Roberts took his seat on Sept. 29, 2005, has kept the court and its members under a brighter than usual spotlight. So the chief justice’s low public profile is a bit of a mystery.
Thinking about both the Pew poll result and the approaching fifth anniversary of John Roberts’s first day on the bench brings back memories of the strangely disquieting summer of 2005 that ushered the Roberts court into existence. On the eve of the July 4 weekend that summer, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor surprised nearly everyone by announcing her retirement. Two months later, on the Saturday night of a quiet Labor Day weekend, Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist died at the age of 80. It was hard to call his death unexpected, because he had been seriously ill with thyroid cancer for nearly a year. But just six weeks earlier, to counter rumors of his imminent retirement that had grown so frenzied that news photographers were camped out day and night on his front lawn, the chief justice had issued a statement denying that he planned to step down.
He had privately told Justice O’Connor the same thing. Had she anticipated that the chief justice would not serve out the next Supreme Court term, she told me after his death, she would have delayed her own retirement for a year rather than burden the court with two simultaneous vacancies. An affecting memoir published last year of Chief Justice Rehnquist’s life and death, titled “Rehnquist,” by a close friend, Herman J. Obermayer, recounts how optimistic the chief justice was in midsummer about his chances for recovery, and how he handled the news only weeks before he died that despite radiation and chemotherapy, the tumor had started to grow again.
As another first Monday in October approaches and the history of the Supreme Court takes still another turn with the arrival of Justice Elena Kagan, it’s worth revisiting these events if only as a reminder of how tricky and contingent history can be. Experience shows how easily even the recent past can take on a retrospective aura of inevitability, and the advent of the Roberts court is no exception. It’s easy to forget, for example, that John Roberts was an accidental chief justice.
President George W. Bush first chose him for the O’Connor vacancy. After Chief Justice Rehnquist’s death, with the approach of a new term placing an extra premium on speed, the president switched his fully vetted associate-justice nominee to the new vacancy.
Experience shows how easily even the recent past can take on a retrospective aura of inevitability, and the advent of the Roberts court is no exception.
At 50, John Roberts became the youngest chief justice since John Marshall, in 1801. He had been William Rehnquist’s law clerk during the court’s 1980-81 term. He was a well-known and widely admired member of the Supreme Court bar who had served two years and written 49 opinions as a federal appeals court judge but who, unlike his mentor or other recent chief justices, had never run any institution. Whether he would have otherwise have been an obvious choice for chief justice is a question I don’t have to be able to answer in order to suggest that his trajectory was hardly inevitable.
And had Chief Justice Rehnquist learned of his dire prognosis a month sooner than he did, I think there is at least a fair chance that Sandra Day O’Connor would still be on the court. Her reason for leaving was that her husband, suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, needed her care at home. But John O’Connor’s rapidly progressing dementia soon made that plan unrealistic, and he spent his final years in a nursing home in Phoenix. He died last November at 79. Had Justice O’Connor waited a year to resign, as she was prepared to do, it might have become clear to her that there was little she could do to help her husband, on or off the bench.
Now a vigorous 80 — a decade younger than the recently retired John Paul Stevens — Sandra Day O’Connor is constantly on the road, sitting as a senior judge on federal appeals courts around the country and speaking in support of her twin causes, judicial independence and civics education. This week found her in Des Moines. Had she remained on the court, she would be beginning the new term as the senior associate justice.
Now back to the mystery of the chief justice’s public invisibility. It’s the opposite of what I expected. After his masterly performance at his confirmation hearing, I anticipated that he would become the new young public face of the Supreme Court. I admired Chief Justice Rehnquist, but with his ungainly shuffle and often distracted and slightly demonic air, no public relations expert would have picked him to help personalize a remote and forbidding institution. John Roberts seemed the opposite, with his cute young children and a ready smile that made the television camera his friend. Not that I expected him to go on a barnstorming tour or to turn the Supreme Court into the People’s Court. But I did think he might air the place out a bit, demystify it, make it more approachable through some well-placed public outreach.
Instead, that role seems to have fallen to Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who in her public appearances speaks readily about her life and who will soon publish a pre-court memoir. In her native New York City, she has even become a bit of a rock star, her visits to favorite restaurants deemed worthy of public attention. I’m not suggesting that she seeks publicity, but she enjoys people, and people respond to her.
The chief justice’s hard-wiring is simply different. I suspect that the Pew poll, if he learned about it, came as welcome or at least not disappointing news. He is an intensely private person, and it may not be too unfair to suggest that in his heart of hearts, he’d like to take the Supreme Court private as well. After all, it was his decision, rich in unfortunate symbolism and imposed over vigorous internal opposition, to take a step that seems as amazing now as it did when it was announced four months ago: to keep the public from entering the Supreme Court by the front door.
Linda Greenhouse on the Supreme Court and the law.NY Times
The result was surprising; after all, people weren’t asked to pull a name out of thin air. And the alternatives to the real chief justice were scarcely plausible: Justice Thurgood Marshall died 17 years ago (or maybe people thought the question referred to Chief Justice John Marshall — he died in 1835); Senator Harry Reid has never been a justice at all; and Justice John Paul Stevens was prominently in the news this summer not for being chief justice, but for retiring.
To anyone who spends a few minutes a week thinking about the Supreme Court, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. is far from invisible. Political scientists and legal scholars debate whether the court under his leadership has become a whole lot more conservative or scarcely more conservative at all. A Roberts court decision earlier this year, the Citizens United campaign-finance ruling, prompted President Obama to criticize the chief justice and his colleagues to their faces in the middle of the State of the Union speech. And an unusually rapid pace of personnel change, with three additional new justices since Chief Justice Roberts took his seat on Sept. 29, 2005, has kept the court and its members under a brighter than usual spotlight. So the chief justice’s low public profile is a bit of a mystery.
Thinking about both the Pew poll result and the approaching fifth anniversary of John Roberts’s first day on the bench brings back memories of the strangely disquieting summer of 2005 that ushered the Roberts court into existence. On the eve of the July 4 weekend that summer, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor surprised nearly everyone by announcing her retirement. Two months later, on the Saturday night of a quiet Labor Day weekend, Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist died at the age of 80. It was hard to call his death unexpected, because he had been seriously ill with thyroid cancer for nearly a year. But just six weeks earlier, to counter rumors of his imminent retirement that had grown so frenzied that news photographers were camped out day and night on his front lawn, the chief justice had issued a statement denying that he planned to step down.
He had privately told Justice O’Connor the same thing. Had she anticipated that the chief justice would not serve out the next Supreme Court term, she told me after his death, she would have delayed her own retirement for a year rather than burden the court with two simultaneous vacancies. An affecting memoir published last year of Chief Justice Rehnquist’s life and death, titled “Rehnquist,” by a close friend, Herman J. Obermayer, recounts how optimistic the chief justice was in midsummer about his chances for recovery, and how he handled the news only weeks before he died that despite radiation and chemotherapy, the tumor had started to grow again.
As another first Monday in October approaches and the history of the Supreme Court takes still another turn with the arrival of Justice Elena Kagan, it’s worth revisiting these events if only as a reminder of how tricky and contingent history can be. Experience shows how easily even the recent past can take on a retrospective aura of inevitability, and the advent of the Roberts court is no exception. It’s easy to forget, for example, that John Roberts was an accidental chief justice.
President George W. Bush first chose him for the O’Connor vacancy. After Chief Justice Rehnquist’s death, with the approach of a new term placing an extra premium on speed, the president switched his fully vetted associate-justice nominee to the new vacancy.
Experience shows how easily even the recent past can take on a retrospective aura of inevitability, and the advent of the Roberts court is no exception.
At 50, John Roberts became the youngest chief justice since John Marshall, in 1801. He had been William Rehnquist’s law clerk during the court’s 1980-81 term. He was a well-known and widely admired member of the Supreme Court bar who had served two years and written 49 opinions as a federal appeals court judge but who, unlike his mentor or other recent chief justices, had never run any institution. Whether he would have otherwise have been an obvious choice for chief justice is a question I don’t have to be able to answer in order to suggest that his trajectory was hardly inevitable.
And had Chief Justice Rehnquist learned of his dire prognosis a month sooner than he did, I think there is at least a fair chance that Sandra Day O’Connor would still be on the court. Her reason for leaving was that her husband, suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, needed her care at home. But John O’Connor’s rapidly progressing dementia soon made that plan unrealistic, and he spent his final years in a nursing home in Phoenix. He died last November at 79. Had Justice O’Connor waited a year to resign, as she was prepared to do, it might have become clear to her that there was little she could do to help her husband, on or off the bench.
Now a vigorous 80 — a decade younger than the recently retired John Paul Stevens — Sandra Day O’Connor is constantly on the road, sitting as a senior judge on federal appeals courts around the country and speaking in support of her twin causes, judicial independence and civics education. This week found her in Des Moines. Had she remained on the court, she would be beginning the new term as the senior associate justice.
Now back to the mystery of the chief justice’s public invisibility. It’s the opposite of what I expected. After his masterly performance at his confirmation hearing, I anticipated that he would become the new young public face of the Supreme Court. I admired Chief Justice Rehnquist, but with his ungainly shuffle and often distracted and slightly demonic air, no public relations expert would have picked him to help personalize a remote and forbidding institution. John Roberts seemed the opposite, with his cute young children and a ready smile that made the television camera his friend. Not that I expected him to go on a barnstorming tour or to turn the Supreme Court into the People’s Court. But I did think he might air the place out a bit, demystify it, make it more approachable through some well-placed public outreach.
Instead, that role seems to have fallen to Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who in her public appearances speaks readily about her life and who will soon publish a pre-court memoir. In her native New York City, she has even become a bit of a rock star, her visits to favorite restaurants deemed worthy of public attention. I’m not suggesting that she seeks publicity, but she enjoys people, and people respond to her.
The chief justice’s hard-wiring is simply different. I suspect that the Pew poll, if he learned about it, came as welcome or at least not disappointing news. He is an intensely private person, and it may not be too unfair to suggest that in his heart of hearts, he’d like to take the Supreme Court private as well. After all, it was his decision, rich in unfortunate symbolism and imposed over vigorous internal opposition, to take a step that seems as amazing now as it did when it was announced four months ago: to keep the public from entering the Supreme Court by the front door.
Linda Greenhouse on the Supreme Court and the law.NY Times
Maybe O J needs a roomate?! MAYWEATHER out of control.
Mayweather arrested for grand larceny
Floyd Mayweather Jr. has been booked on charges of grand larceny related to Thursday's domestic violence incident against an ex-girlfriend, Las Vegas police confirmed Friday.
He was booked into the Clark County Detention Center at about 10:45 a.m., police said.
The charge stems from personal items Mayweather took from ex-girlfriend Josie Harris' house Thursday morning. Police have not arrested Mayweather for domestic violence because the charge is a misdemeanor and the alleged crime happened more than 24 hours after the arrest. Police will submit that case to the District Attorney's office.
A temporary protection order filed by Harris, who has three children with the boxer, says he punched her in the head, pulled her hair and tried to break her arm after entering her home as she slept.
Harris said Mayweather "let himself in" to her home in the 3800 block of Tropical Vine Street at about 2 a.m. and began searching through her belongings.
After she confronted Mayweather, he accused her of dating another man, she wrote in the report.
"He would 'have me and my guy friend taken care of,'" she said Mayweather told her.
Harris called Las Vegas police and officers escorted Mayweather from the home about 3 a.m., she said.
Several hours later, Mayweather returned to the home, knocked on their son's bedroom door and asked to be let in.
Harris, who was sleeping on a couch, awoke to find Mayweather standing over her, she said. Mayweather pulled her off the couch and began assaulting her in front of their children, she said.
Harris said she told the children to call 911 or run outside to get help, but Mayweather said "if they ran or tried to call the police he would beat them the same way," she said.
Mayweather followed the children outside and Harris fled to the garage, she said. Mayweather yelled he was going to kill Harris and her boyfriend and "make sure we are taken care of," she wrote. He then fled the residence in his car.
Harris said Mayweather also visited her home a week and a half before the incident and threatened her about a new boyfriend. Police were called, but Mayweather had left the home before officers arrived, she wrote.
After the incident she was taken to Southern Hills Hospital and Medical Center, where she was treated and released for minor injuries.
MIKE BLASKY and BRIAN HAYNES
LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL
Floyd Mayweather Jr. has been booked on charges of grand larceny related to Thursday's domestic violence incident against an ex-girlfriend, Las Vegas police confirmed Friday.
He was booked into the Clark County Detention Center at about 10:45 a.m., police said.
The charge stems from personal items Mayweather took from ex-girlfriend Josie Harris' house Thursday morning. Police have not arrested Mayweather for domestic violence because the charge is a misdemeanor and the alleged crime happened more than 24 hours after the arrest. Police will submit that case to the District Attorney's office.
A temporary protection order filed by Harris, who has three children with the boxer, says he punched her in the head, pulled her hair and tried to break her arm after entering her home as she slept.
Harris said Mayweather "let himself in" to her home in the 3800 block of Tropical Vine Street at about 2 a.m. and began searching through her belongings.
After she confronted Mayweather, he accused her of dating another man, she wrote in the report.
"He would 'have me and my guy friend taken care of,'" she said Mayweather told her.
Harris called Las Vegas police and officers escorted Mayweather from the home about 3 a.m., she said.
Several hours later, Mayweather returned to the home, knocked on their son's bedroom door and asked to be let in.
Harris, who was sleeping on a couch, awoke to find Mayweather standing over her, she said. Mayweather pulled her off the couch and began assaulting her in front of their children, she said.
Harris said she told the children to call 911 or run outside to get help, but Mayweather said "if they ran or tried to call the police he would beat them the same way," she said.
Mayweather followed the children outside and Harris fled to the garage, she said. Mayweather yelled he was going to kill Harris and her boyfriend and "make sure we are taken care of," she wrote. He then fled the residence in his car.
Harris said Mayweather also visited her home a week and a half before the incident and threatened her about a new boyfriend. Police were called, but Mayweather had left the home before officers arrived, she wrote.
After the incident she was taken to Southern Hills Hospital and Medical Center, where she was treated and released for minor injuries.
MIKE BLASKY and BRIAN HAYNES
LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL
WINGNUT WACKO HOLDS USA MEDIA HOSTAGE
The 9/11 Media Hijackers
Terry Jones' Quran-threatening circus shows that the enemy of American democracy isn't just foreign terrorists, but also homegrown idiots turning U.S. policy into reality TV.
How does a fringe preacher go from 50 congregants to the front page of 50 newspapers overnight?
Just say you're going to burn the Quran. It took little more for the "Reverend" Terry Jones and his ironically named Dove World Outreach Center to go from obscure even in their hometown of Gainesville, Florida, to instant international infamy. But this twisted celebrity came at a cost: violent protests in Afghanistan and beyond. Generals, Cabinet secretaries and even the president were reduced to reasoning with an essentially unreasonable and insignificant man.
Reality TV, having adjusted our notion of reality by creating D-list celebrities famous just for being famous, now threatens to unsettle the world, and define the American Dream down. Octomom and Balloon Boy are bad enough, but Jones embodies the Joe the Plumber-ization of actual public policy—below-average people christened as symbols of a pre-fab populism, suddenly coming alive as actors on a larger stage. No less lame, we're expecting that the president of the United States should know who "Snooki" is to prove that he's in touch with the American people. This gossip-magazine approach to politics—perhaps the long-predicted legacy of entertainment businesses taking over news divisions—is an evolutionary step down from the sports metaphors that always afflict election season. Because this isn't a game—it's real life, with real consequences that contribute to the making of history. And when news organizations follow the lowest common denominator rather than take the responsibility of leading, the joke's on all of us. The inmates end up running the asylum.
Just because you're crazy doesn't mean you're stupid. The crusty Rev. Jones was just following an established formula for manipulating the Pavlovian press in the Internet age perfectly. It goes like this: Take a pre-existing narrative like the mosque debate ("Are Americans Islamophobic?"), add a fresh news peg, make it more extreme—and, presto, you're guaranteed wall-to-wall coverage that the best PR agency couldn't buy. Jones gamed the system so well that his decision Thursday afternoon not to burn the Korans became breaking news—and usually not doing something is the opposite of news. Then, by evening, he was equivocating yet again, generating still more headlines.
We can try to justify the coverage by dressing up the "Burn a Quran" stunt as a constitutional debate between freedom of speech and freedom of religion, but vibrant debates require two sides and even the most intrepid cable news booker couldn't have found too many willing to endorse the Rev. Jones' position. There wasn't any high-minded explanation; it was just a base fascination that draws our attention for the same reason that people used to view public hangings or watch the Anna Nicole Smith show.
Rev. Jones knew what he was doing—he'd developed a taste of Westboro Baptist Church-style controversies (and now the Westboro folks are threatening to burn the Quran on his behalf. According to Orlando Sentinel columnist Mike Thomas, Jones previously sent some parishioners' kids off to school wearing T-shirts that read "Islam is the Devil," with predictable results. Earlier this year, he weighed in on local politics with the similar subtlety, this time offering the slogan "No Homo Mayor" (hint: it's not Spanish) against a local candidate.
Rev. Jones is not the only hatemonger masquerading as a man of God—every faith has them. And, of course, there isn't anything new about publicity stunts in politics or religion.
But in the Internet age, local cranks can quickly become national—and even international—stories, providing that they are willing to be shamelessly crazy in a way that confirms the worst stereotypes.
It's an extension of the shock-jock strategy that has leapt from talk radio to congressional candidates in recent years—there's no such thing as too extreme if it drives ratings, and screaming "fire" in a theater always draws a crowd outside. There's now a greater incentive for testing the boundaries of taste and judgment, while more thoughtful voices too often get drowned out.
This is the dark side of populism and it reflects something of a market failure. Any fool can draw eyeballs with the promise of sex or violence—proposals to solve slow-moving problems are a tougher sell. With globalization, the stakes are even higher. A corrupt carnival barker's stunt is now broadcast around the word enflamed by the oxygen of mainstream media attention. What happens in Gainesville doesn't stay in Gainesville. It can end up threatening the lives of American soldiers in Afghanistan, undercutting hard-won counterinsurgency gains, and serving as a recruitment tool for our enemies.
Media barons might approvingly quote the Romans' admonition about "bread and circuses" while they count their money and media share, but they have forgotten the full context. Societies are capable of amusing themselves to death, just as the Romans did when they stopped caring about responsible civic participation and started indulging their all their base instincts all the time. Soon the barbarians were at the door.
The media didn't create Rev. Jones, but it briefly made him infamous and increased his reach. There is a higher purpose in shining a light on extremists—keeping an eye on their influence. In this case, though, the attention gave an idiot disproportionate influence, and made it seem as if he was remotely representative, fueling the myth of moral equivalence with the fundamentalists we are fighting.
America came out looking bad, in part because we've forgotten that scandal and spectacle are not the same thing as news—bread and circuses are not enough to sustain a democracy. The "more perfect union" we strive for depends on a press with a sense of responsibility, an internal gut check that knows the antidote to demagogues is often a sense of humor combined with a sense of perspective.
John Avlon's new book Wingnuts: How the Lunatic Fringe is Hijacking America is available now by Beast Books both on the Web and in paperback. He is also the author of Independent Nation: How Centrists Can Change American Politics and a CNN contributor. Previously, he served as chief speechwriter for New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and was a columnist and associate editor for The New York Sun.
Terry Jones' Quran-threatening circus shows that the enemy of American democracy isn't just foreign terrorists, but also homegrown idiots turning U.S. policy into reality TV.
How does a fringe preacher go from 50 congregants to the front page of 50 newspapers overnight?
Just say you're going to burn the Quran. It took little more for the "Reverend" Terry Jones and his ironically named Dove World Outreach Center to go from obscure even in their hometown of Gainesville, Florida, to instant international infamy. But this twisted celebrity came at a cost: violent protests in Afghanistan and beyond. Generals, Cabinet secretaries and even the president were reduced to reasoning with an essentially unreasonable and insignificant man.
Reality TV, having adjusted our notion of reality by creating D-list celebrities famous just for being famous, now threatens to unsettle the world, and define the American Dream down. Octomom and Balloon Boy are bad enough, but Jones embodies the Joe the Plumber-ization of actual public policy—below-average people christened as symbols of a pre-fab populism, suddenly coming alive as actors on a larger stage. No less lame, we're expecting that the president of the United States should know who "Snooki" is to prove that he's in touch with the American people. This gossip-magazine approach to politics—perhaps the long-predicted legacy of entertainment businesses taking over news divisions—is an evolutionary step down from the sports metaphors that always afflict election season. Because this isn't a game—it's real life, with real consequences that contribute to the making of history. And when news organizations follow the lowest common denominator rather than take the responsibility of leading, the joke's on all of us. The inmates end up running the asylum.
Just because you're crazy doesn't mean you're stupid. The crusty Rev. Jones was just following an established formula for manipulating the Pavlovian press in the Internet age perfectly. It goes like this: Take a pre-existing narrative like the mosque debate ("Are Americans Islamophobic?"), add a fresh news peg, make it more extreme—and, presto, you're guaranteed wall-to-wall coverage that the best PR agency couldn't buy. Jones gamed the system so well that his decision Thursday afternoon not to burn the Korans became breaking news—and usually not doing something is the opposite of news. Then, by evening, he was equivocating yet again, generating still more headlines.
We can try to justify the coverage by dressing up the "Burn a Quran" stunt as a constitutional debate between freedom of speech and freedom of religion, but vibrant debates require two sides and even the most intrepid cable news booker couldn't have found too many willing to endorse the Rev. Jones' position. There wasn't any high-minded explanation; it was just a base fascination that draws our attention for the same reason that people used to view public hangings or watch the Anna Nicole Smith show.
Rev. Jones knew what he was doing—he'd developed a taste of Westboro Baptist Church-style controversies (and now the Westboro folks are threatening to burn the Quran on his behalf. According to Orlando Sentinel columnist Mike Thomas, Jones previously sent some parishioners' kids off to school wearing T-shirts that read "Islam is the Devil," with predictable results. Earlier this year, he weighed in on local politics with the similar subtlety, this time offering the slogan "No Homo Mayor" (hint: it's not Spanish) against a local candidate.
Rev. Jones is not the only hatemonger masquerading as a man of God—every faith has them. And, of course, there isn't anything new about publicity stunts in politics or religion.
But in the Internet age, local cranks can quickly become national—and even international—stories, providing that they are willing to be shamelessly crazy in a way that confirms the worst stereotypes.
It's an extension of the shock-jock strategy that has leapt from talk radio to congressional candidates in recent years—there's no such thing as too extreme if it drives ratings, and screaming "fire" in a theater always draws a crowd outside. There's now a greater incentive for testing the boundaries of taste and judgment, while more thoughtful voices too often get drowned out.
This is the dark side of populism and it reflects something of a market failure. Any fool can draw eyeballs with the promise of sex or violence—proposals to solve slow-moving problems are a tougher sell. With globalization, the stakes are even higher. A corrupt carnival barker's stunt is now broadcast around the word enflamed by the oxygen of mainstream media attention. What happens in Gainesville doesn't stay in Gainesville. It can end up threatening the lives of American soldiers in Afghanistan, undercutting hard-won counterinsurgency gains, and serving as a recruitment tool for our enemies.
Media barons might approvingly quote the Romans' admonition about "bread and circuses" while they count their money and media share, but they have forgotten the full context. Societies are capable of amusing themselves to death, just as the Romans did when they stopped caring about responsible civic participation and started indulging their all their base instincts all the time. Soon the barbarians were at the door.
The media didn't create Rev. Jones, but it briefly made him infamous and increased his reach. There is a higher purpose in shining a light on extremists—keeping an eye on their influence. In this case, though, the attention gave an idiot disproportionate influence, and made it seem as if he was remotely representative, fueling the myth of moral equivalence with the fundamentalists we are fighting.
America came out looking bad, in part because we've forgotten that scandal and spectacle are not the same thing as news—bread and circuses are not enough to sustain a democracy. The "more perfect union" we strive for depends on a press with a sense of responsibility, an internal gut check that knows the antidote to demagogues is often a sense of humor combined with a sense of perspective.
John Avlon's new book Wingnuts: How the Lunatic Fringe is Hijacking America is available now by Beast Books both on the Web and in paperback. He is also the author of Independent Nation: How Centrists Can Change American Politics and a CNN contributor. Previously, he served as chief speechwriter for New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and was a columnist and associate editor for The New York Sun.
Thursday, September 09, 2010
Judge Strikes Down Military Ban on Gays THIS WILL MAKE RACHEL MADDOW HAPPY!
RIVERSIDE, Calif. (AP) -- A federal judge on Thursday declared the U.S. military's ban on openly gay service members unconstitutional and said she will issue an order to stop the government from enforcing the ''don't ask, don't tell'' policy nationwide.
U.S. District Judge Virginia Phillips said the ban violates the First and Fifth Amendment rights of gays and lesbians. ''Don't ask, don't tell'' prohibits the military from asking about the sexual orientation of service members but requires discharge of those who acknowledge being gay or are discovered engaging in homosexual activity, even in the privacy of their own homes off base.
In her ruling, Phillips said the policy doesn't help military readiness and instead has a ''direct and deleterious effect'' on the armed services.
The Log Cabin Republicans, a 19,000-member group that includes current and former military members, filed a lawsuit in 2004 seeking an injunction to stop the ban's enforcement. Phillips will draft the injunction with input from the group within a week, and the federal government will have a week to respond.
After-hours e-mails requesting comment from U.S. Department of Justice attorney Paul G. Freeborne and from the Pentagon were not immediately returned Thursday.
The lawsuit was the biggest legal test of the law in recent years and came amid promises by President Barack Obama that he will work to repeal the policy.
The Log Cabin Republicans said more than 13,500 service members have been fired since 1994.
''This decision will change the lives of many individuals who only wanted to serve their country bravely,'' said the group's attorney, Dan Woods.
Woods argued during the nonjury trial that the policy violates gay military members' rights to free speech, open association and right to due process as guaranteed by the Fifth Amendment.
He said the ban damages the military by forcing it to reject talented people as the country struggles to find recruits in the midst of a war. Lawyers also submitted remarks by Obama stating ''don't ask, don't tell'' weakens national security.
Freeborne had argued the policy debate was political and that the issue should be decided by Congress rather than in court.
The U.S. House voted in May to repeal the policy, and the Senate is expected to address the issue this year.
Government lawyers also said Phillips lacked the authority to issue a nationwide injunction.
Six military officers who were discharged under the policy testified during the trial. A decorated Air Force officer testified that he was let go after his peers snooped through his personal e-mail in Iraq.
The officers who participated in the trial were ''reacting emotionally because they're so proud that they were able to play a part in making that happened,'' Woods said after the ruling.
''It'll be an interesting decision for our president to decide whether to appeal this case. He's said that 'don't ask, don't tell' weakens national security, and now it's been declared unconstitutional,'' Woods said. ''If he does appeal, we're going to fight like heck.''
U.S. District Judge Virginia Phillips said the ban violates the First and Fifth Amendment rights of gays and lesbians. ''Don't ask, don't tell'' prohibits the military from asking about the sexual orientation of service members but requires discharge of those who acknowledge being gay or are discovered engaging in homosexual activity, even in the privacy of their own homes off base.
In her ruling, Phillips said the policy doesn't help military readiness and instead has a ''direct and deleterious effect'' on the armed services.
The Log Cabin Republicans, a 19,000-member group that includes current and former military members, filed a lawsuit in 2004 seeking an injunction to stop the ban's enforcement. Phillips will draft the injunction with input from the group within a week, and the federal government will have a week to respond.
After-hours e-mails requesting comment from U.S. Department of Justice attorney Paul G. Freeborne and from the Pentagon were not immediately returned Thursday.
The lawsuit was the biggest legal test of the law in recent years and came amid promises by President Barack Obama that he will work to repeal the policy.
The Log Cabin Republicans said more than 13,500 service members have been fired since 1994.
''This decision will change the lives of many individuals who only wanted to serve their country bravely,'' said the group's attorney, Dan Woods.
Woods argued during the nonjury trial that the policy violates gay military members' rights to free speech, open association and right to due process as guaranteed by the Fifth Amendment.
He said the ban damages the military by forcing it to reject talented people as the country struggles to find recruits in the midst of a war. Lawyers also submitted remarks by Obama stating ''don't ask, don't tell'' weakens national security.
Freeborne had argued the policy debate was political and that the issue should be decided by Congress rather than in court.
The U.S. House voted in May to repeal the policy, and the Senate is expected to address the issue this year.
Government lawyers also said Phillips lacked the authority to issue a nationwide injunction.
Six military officers who were discharged under the policy testified during the trial. A decorated Air Force officer testified that he was let go after his peers snooped through his personal e-mail in Iraq.
The officers who participated in the trial were ''reacting emotionally because they're so proud that they were able to play a part in making that happened,'' Woods said after the ruling.
''It'll be an interesting decision for our president to decide whether to appeal this case. He's said that 'don't ask, don't tell' weakens national security, and now it's been declared unconstitutional,'' Woods said. ''If he does appeal, we're going to fight like heck.''
Britney Spears denies JUST what I thought!
Britney Spears denies child mistreatment allegations,
saying L.A. County already investigated them
Britney Spears is denying allegations in a sexual-harassment lawsuit filed by a former bodyguard alleging that she mistreated her two children, saying L.A. County social workers investigated and found no wrongdoing.
In the lawsuit filed in L.A. County Superior Court, Fernando Flores claims Spears sexually harassed him and also mistreated her children. Among the allegations, Flores claims Spears fed the children a type of fish they were allergic to and then refused to call for medical help.
But in a statement on her website, Spears described Flores as someone "trying to take advantage of the Spears family and make a name for himself."
She added: "The Department of Children and Family Services conducted a proper investigation surrounding Mr. Flores' accusations and have closed the case without any further action. Ms. Spears and her attorneys have every expectation that this matter will be dismissed by the courts."
County family services officials could not immediately be reached for comment.
Mark Vincent Kaplan, an attorney for Spears' ex-husband, Kevin Federline, also cast doubts on the lawsuit. "He is satisfied that the allegations are a product of economic motives," Kaplan told the Associated Press. "They are as baseless as they seem."
-- Shelby Grad LA TIMES
saying L.A. County already investigated them
Britney Spears is denying allegations in a sexual-harassment lawsuit filed by a former bodyguard alleging that she mistreated her two children, saying L.A. County social workers investigated and found no wrongdoing.
In the lawsuit filed in L.A. County Superior Court, Fernando Flores claims Spears sexually harassed him and also mistreated her children. Among the allegations, Flores claims Spears fed the children a type of fish they were allergic to and then refused to call for medical help.
But in a statement on her website, Spears described Flores as someone "trying to take advantage of the Spears family and make a name for himself."
She added: "The Department of Children and Family Services conducted a proper investigation surrounding Mr. Flores' accusations and have closed the case without any further action. Ms. Spears and her attorneys have every expectation that this matter will be dismissed by the courts."
County family services officials could not immediately be reached for comment.
Mark Vincent Kaplan, an attorney for Spears' ex-husband, Kevin Federline, also cast doubts on the lawsuit. "He is satisfied that the allegations are a product of economic motives," Kaplan told the Associated Press. "They are as baseless as they seem."
-- Shelby Grad LA TIMES
Wednesday, September 08, 2010
MAY I HAVE THIS JOB? PLEASE!!
Britney Accused of Sexual Harassment
Britney Spears' former bodyguard Fernando Flores alleges that the pop star sexually harassed him, repeatedly exposing herself to him and abusing her kids. In a lawsuit filed Wednesday, Flores says Spears made "repeated unwanted sexual advances." He says that, once, "She was wearing a white lace, see-through dress. She walked over close by [Flores], intentionally dropped her cigarette lighter on the floor, bent over to retrieve it and thereby exposed her uncovered genitals to [Flores]." Another time Flores says the singer called him to her room, where she was standing naked. After an awkward silence, Flores asked Spears if she wanted anything. She replied she would like two bottles of 7-Up. Flores claimed Spears even uttered the classic defense of a harasser: "You know you liked it." Flores also says Spears beat her kids and fed them crabmeat despite their allergies. TMZ reports that Flores reported Spears to the family services department, which found the claim without merit.
Britney Spears' former bodyguard Fernando Flores alleges that the pop star sexually harassed him, repeatedly exposing herself to him and abusing her kids. In a lawsuit filed Wednesday, Flores says Spears made "repeated unwanted sexual advances." He says that, once, "She was wearing a white lace, see-through dress. She walked over close by [Flores], intentionally dropped her cigarette lighter on the floor, bent over to retrieve it and thereby exposed her uncovered genitals to [Flores]." Another time Flores says the singer called him to her room, where she was standing naked. After an awkward silence, Flores asked Spears if she wanted anything. She replied she would like two bottles of 7-Up. Flores claimed Spears even uttered the classic defense of a harasser: "You know you liked it." Flores also says Spears beat her kids and fed them crabmeat despite their allergies. TMZ reports that Flores reported Spears to the family services department, which found the claim without merit.
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