Yesterday, in this piece about Stephen Colbert, I mentioned Jon Stewart’s attack on Fox News but couched it with as much skepticism as possible because, frankly, it didn’t pass the smell test, especially in the area of context. To have those suspicions confirmed last night by Bill O’Reilly came as no surprise (see the video below). Furthermore, I respectfully disagree with O’Reilly that Stewart should be held to a lower factual standard because he’s a ”satirist.” Stewart isn’t a satirist, he’s a political partisan disguised as a satirist, a man as determined to defeat the right as Nancy Pelosi and Bill Maher. The difference between Pelosi and Maher, though, is that they step into the arena of political battle and fly their flag. At the very least you can respect them for that. They come to wage open war whereas Stewart and Colbert come to throw rocks while wearing the protective shield of a clown nose.
I love our side and there’s really no lower form of life than someone on our side who undermines their own, so I say this to be constructive, not destructive. There are a lot of people on the Right who love Jon Stewart, people I respect, some of whom I know and like. And I agree that Stewart’s very good at what he does (which is why I take him seriously). But a conservative admiring the brilliance of Jon Stewart’s talent is like a boxer admiring the power of Mike Tyson’s punch as he’s beating you senseless. You have to fight back and in that respect, last night O’Reilly did an excellent job of threading a very difficult needle. Stewart is not easy to lay a glove on, but this was a clean hit. (You’ll be glad to know that I am now out of boxing metaphors).
Another point O’Reilly made that should be highlighted, is how the so-called “objective” or “legitimate” media too often takes what Stewart and Colbert do as some kind of gospel. Because Stewart is a “comedian,” the liberal media uses that as an excuse to blow up what he does on their air or online without bothering to fact-check, even when the stakes involve reputations. We’ve seen this before. Nobody watches “Saturday Night Live” but everyone saw Tina Fey’s Sarah Palin impression. With a smirk, and as though it didn’t matter, the left-wing media let Tina Fey do their dirty work on Palin with the endless looping of those SNL clips all in the name of “fun.” Well, it’s not fun, it’s an attempt to dehumanize someone into a national punchline and the media knew it.
An excellent example of this is Mediaite, a far-left site disguising themselves as “objective.” Like Stewart, they’re very good at what they do, but they are by design and on a daily basis aiding and abetting this sinister practice of cherry-picking videos that further the Leftist narrative in the hopes they’ll go viral. Again, the idea is to dehumanize the subject into a punchline. Why would a legitimate news site post this, or this, or especially this? There’s nothing of substance there. It’s about isolating and targeting a political opponent. At one point yesterday, there were no less than four stories on Mediate’s front page ridiculing Michelle Bachmann, none of them on the substance of her post-SOTU remarks, all of them meant to further the narrative that she’s dumb. One. Two. Three. Four.
And did Mediaite question Stewart’s attack on Fox News and Bill O’Reilly. That’s a rhetorical question. It’s one thing for an openly political website to do this, our own BreitbartTV and our friends at NewsBusters are excellent examples, but like Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, Politico, and the MSM, Mediaite thinks they can do more damage through duplicity. And so that I’m not accused of doing my own cherry-picking, I invite you to spend some time here and here, and come to your own conclusions.
There’s also something darkly twisted and pschologically disturbing about these relentless anti-substance attacks on Palin and Bachmann , and it’s not just Mediaite. As the Hollywood Reporter pointed out yesterday, you see it at MSNBC, as well. They’re all members of what I all the HeManAttractiveConservativeWomanHatersClub. There’s an anti-woman rage bubbling on the Left, and due to the fact that there’s a big asterisk next to the name’s Palin and Bachmann in any handbook of professional journalism, that bubbling is allowed to boil over without consequence. In a world where professional journalism exists, the guy who actually gave the State of the Union address would get the most press, no? To be fair and clear, I do not believe Colbert and Stewart are members of that club.
Most importantly, what we’re witnessing here is a preview of 2012. You can see how the Leftist media is going to use Jon Stewart and you can see how Jon Stewart is going to allow himself to be used. Same with Colbert and SNL. Because so-called “satirists” are held to a lower factual standard and the media is desperate to destroy their political opponents by any means necessary without appearing to get their hands dirty, what you have here is a marriage made in Alinsky Hell.
Stewart and his dishonest media allies are ruthless and playing for keeps, and that’s no joke. O’Reilly did good work pushing back last night. Here’s hoping we see more of that from our side.
