A lot of the media is making quite a stink over Jon Stewart’s recent appearance on FoxNews Sunday, where he was interviewed by Chris Wallace. The focus of the media’s reaction is the way that Stewart schooled Wallace.
What nobody in any media has mentioned is that this was the second time that Stewart, the host of Comedy Central’s The Daily Show, went toe-to-toe with a cable news face and won.
The previous time was October 2004, when Stewart appeared on the now-defunct CNN program Crossfire and traded shots with Paul Begala and Tucker Carlson. True to form, Carlson referred to an interview Stewart had done with Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry and accused Stewart of being Kerry’s “butt boy.”
It’s true. The CNN transcript is right here.
But the essence of the Stewart victory over the CNN hosts in 2004 and Wallace this past weekend was in the following comment:
STEWART: If you want to compare your show to a comedy show, you're more than welcome to.
CNN in 2004 was still calling itself “the most trusted name in news.” FoxNews in 2011 continues to maintain the pretense that it is a legitimate news organization. In both cases, smug hosts obviously thought they would be scrubbing the floor with Stewart’s head.
In both cases, the so-called journalists arrived at a gun fight armed with switchblades.
To both news channels, I pose the following question: Why do you invite a comedian to a serious discussion of the news media. Do you watch The Daily Show and mistake it for real news? Do you fail to understand that it’s a parody of what you do?
Or let me use the same short words that Stewart used in 2004: Why do you want to compare yourself to a comedy show? You lose before you even begin.
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