James Fallows has a very interesting take on Betsy McCaughey’s appearance on Jon Stewart:
As I mentioned this morning, I thought Betsy McCaughey was even more blithely disconnected from the world of reality than I had expected — but that she was weirdly “effective” against Jon Stewart, since there was no way to shame her by pointing out that what she said was untrue. She would just smile, mug at the audience in an “isn’t he cute!” way, and say, No, I’m right.
He then goes on to a lengthy discussion of why what she did worked in a weird way, including various emails. He also predicts that Republican operatives will emulate what McCaughey did. It’s an interesting discussion .
From my perspective, it’s all about the prop. Bringing the first 600 pages of the bill in a binder makes it look like there must be some truth to what she’s saying, even though she has trouble finding the right page and much of what she says is directly contradicted by what is in the bill.
This is actually a pretty old Republican tactic. Refer to some official document — whether it’s the constitution or some letter supporting your economic plan supposedly signed by hundreds of economists — even when what you’re saying has nothing to do with what is in the document. Bringing a hard copy of the document along is the next logical step.
I realize we’ve discussed this appearance before, but what what do you think? Did you think B-Mac was also weirdly “effective”?
Dan
Yes, I thought she was weirdly effective. Stewart never pinned her down the way he did Kristol a couple weeks ago. But here’s the thing: She was strenuously defending Medicare from the depredations of Obamacare and claimed to just be looking out for the old folks. I wanted Jon to say, “Then presumably you’re in favor of Medicare for all, right?” If BM’s line of attack stays like it was on the show then she’s open to just such a question.
Shygetz
As a matter of fact, I did. It’s hard to shame the shameless, and she never gave Jon anything to grab onto. She never elaborated on her position, she just said “nope, you’re wrong and I’m right.”
Leelee for Obama
I can’t be objective here, because my default is set with her being full of crap. I’ll have to watch it again-but Fallows is pretty discerning, so he is probably, sadly, correct.
Ed in NJ
Every time I see these heartless Republican operatives on the Daily Show, I am struck by how much their physical appearance conjures up the final scene in the classic Twilight Zone episode The Masks.
Shygetz
I thought the most effective part for Jon was where he challenged her to find the “death panels” section and she stumbled about while he mugged. The show needed editing so Jon could have retorted in detail, referencing more of the bill, but for some reason Jon wanted to show it unedited.
JK
Of course, McCaughey was effective. Why did you even have to ask? Jon Stewart is a wiseass comedian not a policy wonk. Stewart is on firm ground when he sticks to pointing out the shallowness, depravity, incompetence, and lack of professionalism of the MSM.
Stewart is lost when discussing public policy. He was fine with Jim Cramer because Cramer chose not to fight back.
Having Stewart discuss healthcare reform is as idiotic as having David Letterman discuss cap and trade or Conan O’Brien discuss No Child Left Behind.
UberMitch
This is actually a pretty old Republican tactic. Refer to some official document
Well older than your examples. Like a list of communists in the US government.
Va Highlander
No, I did not think she was effective at all. I thought she seemed silly and disingenuous and I turned away in about a minute.
Hard to say someone is effective when they’re incapable of holding my attention.
Cerberus
I’m not sure. I hope not, because she sounded completely insane and her weird mugging for the camera seemed really unnatural and bizarre like she was on some Jerry Springer show. Certainly it seems her company didn’t think she was effective considering they decided she was a liability after that performance.
I think she was trying to bring about the illusion of expertise with the whole binder shtick and she might have gotten somewhere with the cable news hosts, but Jon just made it the symbol of her lies. Unable to find pages, claiming that gnomes stole the relevant page, unable to read the page, and trying desperately to mug as Jon uses it to prove her a lying sack of shit. She also missed out on how thoroughly Jon was mocking her as he started slipping into really subtle sarcasm when she revealed how full of shit she was.
The only reason she didn’t get pinned down like Kristol was that she was much better at the usual conservative tactic of filibustering all the time and doing that “let me finish” “let me say something” whining whenever Jon tried to interrupt her. That and being immune to shame so that there wasn’t that oh shit moment.
So I’m not sure on what planet she was effective as basically she came off similar to Orly Taitz on Colbert…
Holy shit, you’re right, it is the new popular style. She pulled pretty much the exact same “I have a big binder and a head full of crazy, let me get it out uninterrupted” stunt. Wow. I don’t see how this will help them as I’m pretty sure this is an ancient conspiracy theorist style wherein you bring some physical prop as an allusion to intelligence or evidence you basically made up. Real experts rarely need to bring a prop as they’re basically the ones looking surly as they try and dumb down their synopsis for the idiot market.
General Winfield Stuck
There is only one GOP strategy today. Lie convincingly about everything always. It’s their Golden Rule of debate. Keep the bottom dirt stirred up long enough to steal your lunch, and shirt off yer back, if they can.
Though lately, they have added screaming bloody murder, both literally and figuratively.
kay
They do it because it works.
Look at the polling on Obama’s birthplace.
All they have to do is raise doubts in a group of people who were likely to believe the worst anyway. In this case it’s seniors, who were likely to believe the worst about reform because they already enjoy government-funded health care, and didn’t vote for Obama anyway, as a demographic.
Drafts of legislation are so complicated, and the language is so unfamiliar and legalistic and technical she can spin it any which way, and she did.
She’s not alone, either. Supposedly intelligent conservatives read the same provision and said ridiculous things, like Kathleen Parker, who demanded House Democrats insert a provision that said end of life counseling would NOT be mandated, although the legislation already says it’s voluntary. That’s ridiculous. Every provision in every piece of legislation would have to include a long list of what it does not mandate, rather than the standard “nothing in this….”
It would be thousands of pages.
I’m willing to bet, in Parker’s case, that this is the first time she’s read the draft of a bill. She doesn’t know how to read it.
Bill H
I thought she looked like a mindless clown, with her mugging to the audience, her “pasted on” oversized smile, and her manner of speaking to Jon like he was five years old. But, unfortunately and given the nature of political discourse today, yes she was probably very effective.
MikeJ
And of course in the NYT story on the show in yesterday’s paper, Ashley Southall tells how McCaughey said one thing, Jon Stewart another, and who can really tell who’s right or wrong?
Can someone remind me why I pay attention to anyone other than Will Shortz there?
Cerberus
@Shygetz: Because her unable to find the so-called most critical part, the part that scares her and randomly blaming unknown thieves who must have stolen it. Also unable to count page numbers revealed her to be either an idiot or a liar in no uncertain terms and highlighted the disingenuous crazy.
That section was pretty much the point of the whole thing and I think the part where he began to realize how much like Orly Taitz this woman was.
Ann B. Nonymous
I think it was so effective that I hope Republicans emulate her in their personal lives.
Comrade Jake
I caught the appearance, and what was immediately clear was that Stewart had a better command of the facts. It’s not even close.
Of course this means that Republicans will be convinced that Betsy kicked ass. We’re talking about the same folks who largely believe Obama wasn’t born in this country, and think Sarah Palin is some kind of savant. You’d have better luck banging your head against a wall than trying to figure out how they’ll respond to anything objectively. Seriously Doug, why bother?
Shibby
@Cerberus:
I think you have it right. I read a lot of the hand wringing over the interview prior to viewing it myself. After watching it, I really didn’t see what all the fuss was about. Yes, she didn’t really get nailed down by Stewart, but she did come off looking like an incompetent and a know-nothing. People with even a minimally functional BS detector should have picked that up.
Cerberus
@Comrade Jake: Yeah I think the base will rally behind her, but that’s because they’re rapturist evangelicals trained by years of Birch society dropouts to see conspiracy theories in everything. So this fit perfectly into that style.
But I’m heartened by her firing. That means that the rich republicans, the ones interested in swaying the mushy middle and being seen as the sane manipulating that crazy base felt she blew the game in a dangerous way. I don’t think the money thinks it’s a winner, though the ground soldiers do. I think it’s part of the giant war with the big money looking at the monster they have created and both excited by its potential and worried about the increasing lack of control they have over it.
David
She wouldn’t have resigned if she had nothing to hide:
“Betsy McCaughey, the healthcare reform opponent who helped tank the Clinton administration’s plans and has been spreading misinformation about the current proposals, has resigned from the board of directors of a medical equipment company.”
http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/2009/08/21/mccaughey/
GregB
I was rather stunned that her whole argument was pinned on important information on page 423 and she couldn’t find the damn page. The one page that she cited over and over again and she was fumbling around like a stooge.
It would also help for Stewart to point out that the the GOP leadership believes that healthcare is a privilege, not a right.
Jim DeMint said exactly that earlier this week.
DeMint and the GOP support means tested death panels. If you are privileged, you have the right to healthcare. If not, suck it up and grab those bootstraps.
Ellie
From my reality-based perspective, I thought she came across as a blithering loon. However, I have no idea how it plays to the larger public. Given the unmitigated stupidity of the current political discourse, sadly, she was probably quite effective.
Shorter me: Ditto, Bill H.
Snarla
I kept expecting her to start winking at the camera.
aarrgghh
1) it is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it. (upton sinclair)
and
2) it’s impossible to defeat an ignorant man in argument. (william g. mcadoo)
Left Coast Tom
Yes.
Effective people don’t resign the day after they’re so effective.
Jackie
I’d guess the crazy base and the seniors who are swallowing this are not watching Jon. The political operatives aren’t going to find anything new to mine for their side. Their was no knockdown punch. But maybe the village, always interested in what the Kewl Kids are up to ,got another look at the sheer fact free act and a little drip got added to the pile. They are so afraid of looking unserious that the more evidence of unserious that pile up can only help. Though it may take longer than I will live to see.
I thought, and it seems her company thought, she was merely a dishonest shill. This lady fakes sane better than Orly but she is faking all the same. That came through. I don’t think that helps her cause. And that, I’d bet, is what got her fired.
Winston Smith
I’m flat-out astonished that anyone thought she was at all “effective.” I mean, I tend to be very attentive to the effects of my own biases and predispositions on such evaluations…but she just came across–IMHO–as a complete bullshitter. The majority of the interview seemed to involve her flipping fruitlessly through her prop binder looking for that darned death panel section that just never showed up. She ‘pears to be a fool…
Unfortunately, as is so often the case with such folks, they spew out so many bits of nonsense that it’s tough to dot every ‘i’ and cross every ‘t’ in refuting them. It seemed puzzling to me that doctors would be evaluated in part on whether their patients stuck to their living wills (or whatever). In fact, that strikes me as pretty alarming, and I’d like to hear more about it. It’s obviously easy to think of some reasons why that might be a desideratum, but it seems worthy of real attention.
Jim
I just started Charlie Pierce’s Idiot America, and this is a key part of his argument, the war on expertise. Keep it simple and appeal to people’s pre-existing fears and prejudices. You see this at the town halls: They fling out some bizarre conspiracy theory, you tell them they’re wrong, and they just bark out “Liar! You’re lying”
Candy Crowley and David Gregory then report this as “controversy” and something “Republicans and Democrats disagree about”
John Harrold
I think Stewart took the wrong approach. I think the more appropriate response would have been: If you (Betsy) are concerned about the language of the bill and how it might be interpreted, why not try change the language to be more explicit. This would demonstrate that you’re interested in developing a bill that helps people. Instead, you and many on the right have turn this into an opportunity to score political points by demonizing your counterparts in the other party.
At least that’s how I would have approached it.
Davis X. Machina
I thought it was a job try-out, with either her writing Samantha Bee’s stuff or Samantha Bee’s writing her stuff….
mr. whipple
“Did you think B-Mac was also weirdly “effective”?”
No. She’s a nut.
Wingnuts will believe her, tho, the same way the believe Palin.
Bryson Brown
She was effective, in the same way creationists and global-warming deniers can be. The recipe is simple: ignore the facts, stick to your talking points, never concede anything. People already inclined to buy what you’re selling will at least be convinced that your position is tenable; after all, they’ve just seen it defended ‘successfully’.
evie
She was not remotely effective. Why do some people think only they are capable of “getting” her obfuscation’s and lies? That everyone else is wowed by her good humor and good looks?
brent
@JK:
I have to strenuously disagree. I am sure there are many people in the world that know more about health care policy than Jon Stewart, but as far as TV anchors go, he is significantly better than most and he is certainly not “lost.” Unlike his guest, he understood the passage in question just fine. He explained, entirely correctly, what it said and what it did not say. Other than maybe Moyers and Maddow and precious few others, I can’t think of many TV news personalities that could do that or indeed would even try.
Again, he had detailed and precise knowledge about what was in the bill and could interpret it for a mass audience. I think its arguable that he is the only anchor on television who has demonstrated such knowledge but if he isn’t, then the list of people who has is very, very short.
Mr Furious
I don’t think it is a game changer either way. The teabagging anti-reform crowd will never see the Daily Show appearance—and if they do, “Stewart’s a left-wing tool” “A know-nothing comedian!” etc
And the normal Daily Show audience is more informed than most and already knows she’s full of shit and simply enjoyed Stewart’s toying with her and playing her for a fool.
Number of viewer opinion’s changed: 0
arguingwithsignposts
Well, I didn’t think she was that effective, but I’m not inclined to believe her bullshit anyway.
That said, a lot of what’s going on with republicans reminds me a lot of a sort of postmodernism (truth is subjective), which is weirdly ironic since most of them rail against postmodernism as a philosophical theory and claim to believe in absolute truth.
arguingwithsignposts
BTW, I really wish someone would call these people on the “here’s the bill, have you read it” stuff. There IS NO BILL! There are three proposed bills sent out of house committees and at least two proposed bills in the Senate. THERE IS NO BILL!
drillfork
I’ll always defend Stewart, not just because I’m a fan, but because I respect how challenging it is to have a substantive 5-minute interview while interjecting humor in even the most serious of topics.
Clearly, Jon’s had better interviews, and maybe McCaughey not acknowledging Stewart catching her on her bullshit threw him off. And maybe everyone at TDS was halfway out the door on when this aired. Editing that mess would have cost somebody a few hours of vacation.
Ultimately though, people will see this the way they were going to see it. The wingnuts will cheer her, while the core TDS audience will find her delusional, soulless and flat creepy. What a loathsome human being she is…
superking
She was effective because she was insistent and Jon Stewart didn’t have a good way to respond. He was very close, but he never tried to shut her down.
Each had different goals entering into the interview. Stewart wanted to show that she was crazy and to demonstrate that her interpretation of the bill was incorrect. Betsy only had to convince people that there was some actual debate about how the provisions of the bill would be interpreted. Stewart had the harder job.
He was somewhat effective in showing her to be a nut. He kept asking her if she honestly thought that Democrats had designed a bill with the intent of killing seniors. The problem was that he never asked it as directly as he needed to, AND every time he started a sentence, she would begin talking over him. That made her look intelligent and knowledgeable even though she wasn’t because it appears as if she was anticipating his objections and knew the appropriate response.
On his second goal, Stewart got very close but just never closed the deal. She was claiming that the reporting standards would be used to control doctors who did not adhere to end of life documents. Stewart took the page of the bill and read it aloud. In fact it says, as he read it, that the only use of living wills that call for life sustaining treatment would be reported. That is, if a doctor does not follow a will that calls for additional life support, i.e. if the doctor takes some action that goes contrary to a person’s wishes to be kept alive, then that will be reported and used to rate the doctor. HOWEVER, if the living will does not ask for life sustaining treatment, nothing about the doctor’s treatment whether consistent with or contrary to the advanced directive will be reported.
This is why she is wrong. She wants to claim that we will be grading doctors on whether they follow advanced directives where the person has asked to not be put on life support. That has zero connection to reality.
She was effective again because she kept interrupting him, continued to claim expertise which she clearly lacked–she even went the “I have a Ph.D.” route at the end–and because she was mugging for the camera. On this second point, Stewart was never able to express the problem clearly, and she won.
Mr Furious
Personally I think Stewart went too easy on her and kept it too light. She was lying to his face but hammed it up for the cameras and threw the “isn’t he cute” glances at the audience—he reflected too much of that back…
“I like you, but I don’t understand how your brain works.” should have been more “I appreciate that you’re not screaming or packing a gun and seem to be earnestly stating your case, but you’re actually lying your ass off, and nothing you are saying is close to the truth.”
He never got angry, and frankly, he should have. So in that sense, she walked out with a draw, when she should have been carrying out her own head.
ominira
She came across as pathetic and unhinged when I watched, flipping through countless times, unable to find the “death panel” page. For the audience that watches Stewart her inability to use a sticky (as he so generously pointed out) marked her as even more of a loon than you might think. And that rictus grin.
*shudder*
arguingwithsignposts
@superking:
See, I thought this made her look worse. I hate people on all these shows who talk over the people who disagree with them (most often GOP operatives like Dick Armey, Joey the Scar, … go down the list). Pat Buchanan is the worst, IMHO.
Shouting over your opponent doesn’t make you look intelligent and knowledgeable at all. it makes you look like an ass. I know, because I’ve done it myself more than I would have liked. I constantly have to keep that in check.
Janet Strange
@Jim: This has been driving me crazy lately. I remember reading a good explanation of the phenomenon of misleading by putting out a very simple – very simple – (but false) description or explanation that can be explained very quickly and in few words. But, and this is key, at this very simple, not taking into account all the facts, black and white, etc level – it’s logical and makes sense.
On the other hand, the truth (health care reform, climate change, whatever) is complicated and takes a while to explain. Given the short attention span of both the public and the media, truth doesn’t have a chance. So putting out those simple, apparently logical explanations is a very effective tactic in propaganda. People listen and say, “Of course! It makes perfect sense – common sense. Anyone who can’t see it is stupid! Wake up people!” (Etc.)
IIRC, whoever wrote what I’m thinking of had a word or phrase to describe this – that’s what’s bugging me. I know it’s not a novel explanation – it’s that there was a short name for it that I liked. I’d like to be able to say, there it is again – burblesnap.
Actually, I kinda like burblesnap – maybe I should just go with it.
JK
@brent:
I wish Betsy McCaughey would get interviewed by an actual journalist instead of by a comedian. I’m sick and tired of the MSM abdicating its responsiblity to Jon Stewart.
Mr Furious
Stewart disemboweled Cramer, because he was livid with Cramer and what was going on with the financial mess. Also, Cramer went in there ready to submit and do penance.
Betsy McCaughey went in with her game plan—pleasantly stick to her talking points no matter what—and she executed perfectly.
Stewart was unable to crack her, because he was effectively disarmed by her charm offensive. Do I think he was buying into her bullshit? Of course not, but he was unable to get rough with her for some reason, and I was disappointed.
He rebutted her bullshit, but she countered with a smile, wink and a “but I know I’m right, and I’m the expert.”
mclaren
It’s an old old Republican tactic.
“I have here in my pocket a sheet of paper with the names of 57 known Communists in the State Department!” — Senator Joseph McCarthy, October 1953
The story goes that when his advisors demanded McCarthy settle on a number for the alleged communists (because he kept changing it in speeches and it got embarrassing), McCarthy was sitting around in a diner and he looked at a Heinz ketchup bottle and decided on the number 57. 57 varieties, 57 Communists.
About par for the course for Republicans today.
Lee
I’m not sure why they did not edit the interview down. She was effective in only that Jon did not have a ‘gotcha’ moment. What made this possible was her rambling all over the place. Jon was able to nail her on the content of page 423, but she was already on to some other topic by the time he was finished speaking.
I think she was truly effective for only the wingnut crowd. For everyone else she came across as a blithering idiot.
mario
first of all, jk, is a moron.
secondly, it’s really hard to evaluate “effectiveness” in this case – there are people out there who find her credible, as incredible as that may sound to us. We have no way of gauging her performance as it appears to these people.
I’ve started calling it the “Wacqui Way of Knowledge” – it exists on some other plane, and we really need to start understanding how it works.
arguingwithsignposts
This is another thing that gets me. Dick Armey has a ph.d. in economics. So does Phil Gramm. This McCaughey has a ph.d. Ph.D.’s don’t mean a thing when you’re an idiot, just like a law degree. Ann Coulter has a law degree, but she’s still an idiot. George Bush has an MBA, but he’s an idiot.
I don’t have anything against advanced degrees (I have one myself, and am trying to finish another), but dammit, an advanced degree doesn’t mean you know what you’re talking about on any subject.
jcricket
It all depends on whether you take the short or long-term view of things. In the short term, Republicans have figured out quite effective tactical strategies to avoid having actual policy debates (which we know they’d lose). They can lie with impunity, and face almost no short-term consequence. This is especially true of non or ex-GOP politicians, like McCaughey.
In the long-term, since they’re now aggressively on the wrong side of things, and always double-down when shown to be wrong (let’s invade Iran too!!! tax cuts to zero!!! Schiavo was a good idea!) they’re going to “lose the war” for public opinion over time.
I don’t think of Americans as particularly concerned with facts and what-not, but if you’re wrong all the time you tend to end up out of step with reality (which Americans are at least nominally in touch with), so you get voted out of office.
Mr Furious
Agreed, JK. And the fact that everyone on the left gets satisfaction from Stewart lets them off the hook further.
Even when the appearance garners wider exposure (such as with Cramer) it’s still framed as “let’s look in on this hostile exchange last night on Comedy Central…” with no explanation that Stewart is right and the opposition is full of shit.
ominira
@JK:
I wholeheartedly agree with this, but until that happens, I’m glad we have Jon Stewart. Don’t overlook the fact Stewart has been effective in bringing about change: influencing CNN’s decision to cancel Crossfire, getting McCaughey to step down from her position as director of a company’s board (what self-respecting real-world business wants someone who appears to be a certifiable lunatic listed on its board?), etc.
Splitting Image
I think Fallows got it about right. Stewart failed to pin her down on anything, so in that sense she was a success to be emulated.
On the other hand, she badly hurt herself by fumbling around looking for the right page. Overall, it was a poor performance on her part (and judging by her sacking immediately afterward, her bosses agreed), but it wasn’t really a result of anything Stewart did. If she hadn’t brought the binder, it would probably have been a win for her side.
I also think that her performance will play well with certain kinds of Christians. If you ask some of the people holding up a “3:16” sign in the stands at a football game to find the actual passage, a lot of them would fumble around just as badly. But the inability to find it wouldn’t make any of them less sure of themselves. They all know it’s there.
Similarly, they all know the death panels are in there. Stewart was just being mean making her search for it like that.
RSA
I’ve never been on TV, but I realized, watching McCaughey, that it takes a good deal of timing and skill to be able to look over at the audience for a reaction or for support. You can’t just say something argumentative and turn your head toward the audience, away from the camera, smiling and nodding. You look like a fucking idiot if you do.
txbubba
My wife and I watched it last night, and it was effective if you really do not know much about living wills. Even then, she retreated from each point as Stewart rebutted it, and she seemed disorganized, especially after she couldn’t find p. 432 just minutes after having found it and read it aloud.
Just a few easy targets in her arguments:
Long list of items–I have gone through writing 4 living wills, and each time, whether using only a form or working with a lawyer, we went through a long list of situations and conditions. The bill seems to merely standardize these.
The bill doesn’t allow patients to change their minds at the time of the health problem–This is the stupidest argument because the very definition of the living will is that it applies when the patient is no longer able to make a decision. If they are able to change their minds, people can. Without a living will, someone else has to make the decision for the patient.
Betsy was effective only if you have no understanding of the topic and no common sense.
JK
@Mr Furious:
“Personally I think Stewart went too easy on her and kept it too light. She was lying to his face but hammed it up for the cameras and threw the “isn’t he cute” glances at the audience—he reflected too much of that back…”
This drives me crazy. Jon Stewart is first and foremost a comedian. He’s neither a journalist nor a think tank scholar. McCaughey was definitely a little shaky, but Stewart was grossly unqualified to properly expose and refute her lies.
I wish progressives would just accept Stewart as a comedian like Letterman or O’Brien and stop trying to cast him as Glenn Greenwald or Seymour Hersh.
jwb
No, I didn’t think she was at all effective—though I think Jon let her off the hook on more than one occasion by not simply waiting for her to find the offending passages she claimed were in the bill. It would have made excruciating TV with nothing going on but her stumbling, but it would have completely eviscerated her. Personally, I though she came off as a no-nothing who was not going to convince anyone who wasn’t already convinced—and that’s not Jon’s audience.
Basically, I thought it was a waste of everyone’s time, but, no, she was not even weirdly effective.
PK
I thought she came across as an incompetent know nothing buffoon. But then I thought the same way about Bush. So she might even become our next president.
gwangung
Well, she was effective for about 28% or more of the country, then…
brent
@JK:
Sure. I don’t disagree in principle and I am quite sure Jon Stewart wouldn’t either with the proposition that this sort of thing should not be left to a comedian on a small cable network. The problem is that the list of “real journalists” who would, or even could, confront McCaughey with precise knowledge of the passage in question, is a very short one, if it exists at all.
My further point is that contrary to your claim that he is out of his depth, Stewart is consistently well prepared and knowledgeable about the topics that he discusses on his show. He does a better job than just about everyone in the news industry at actually getting to depth in his interviews. Whatever his shortfall, he certainly tackled this interview a hell of a lot better than say Brokaw or Gregory would have. One can argue about whether or not he “succeeded” in this interview, but the idea that he failed, as you claim, because he lacked knowledge of policy is just demonstrably not true.
arguingwithsignposts
@JK:
First off, the fact that he’s “neither a journalist nor a think tank scholar” allows him to say things that neither journalists (at least Village journalists, eg armbinder, todd, gregory, etc.) nor think tank scholars (who know which side their bread is buttered on) can say. Ditto Bill Maher, Bill Hicks, Lenny Bruce, George Carlin, etc., etc. Stewart’s comedy is based in current events, not observational comedy (a la Jerry Seinfeld).
“Grossly unqualified?” not really. He’s just as qualified as many of the hacks who work at the Atlantic, or Douthat, or Bill Kristol, or whatever. He’s not as qualified as, say, Paul Krugman, but there are a lot of people in Washington who are significantly LESS qualified than Stewart (and just what makes for “qualification” anyway? McCaughey is hardly qualified to tie her shoes based on the lies she spreads, and she has a ph.d.!).
And who’s casting Stewart as Greenwald or Hersh? Nobody. He does a better job than any of the Sunday Morning talking heads in at least TRYING to skewer the b.s. None of the republican liars will face a hersh or a greenwald, so this is what we’ve got. And we’ll take it and wish for better from the villagers (which is a wish in vain, i know).
Mr Furious
Fallows’ column about McCaughey from last week is a must-read.
What happened on the Daily Show a week later makes it even more so.
Kirk Spencer
@arguingwithsignposts: Just as a “by the way”, that Ph.D. she bandies about is in
(wait for it)
History. US Constitutional history. Her dissertation was on William Samuel Johnson.
Her big entry into Health Care Reform was “No Exit”, where she did then what she’s doing now. That is, lying about what’s in the bill and arguing against the strawmen she’s thus created.
arguingwithsignposts
@brent:
My comment is caught in moderation for some reason, but I basically agree with what you’re saying here.
athena
One difference between Cramer, Kristol and Betsy Ross McCaughey is gender. Would folks be calling Stewart “mean” if he had been sharper with BM? Perhaps he felt he had to give her more rope because she’s a girl?
I thought she came off as a blithering idiot. The kind that keeps the mouth going when the brain is turned off, or tuned to one channel: page 432. Is that the only page she had read?
I thought it was very funny when he hummed “Yakity Sax” while she fruitlessly thumbed through her overstuffed binder. But then, I am old enough to understand the reference.
Deborah
I don’t watch tv except for clips posted online, so I can’t compare this to the entire ouvre of Jon Stewart appearances. But I did not think she was effective. This is roughly what a saw:
Stewart: So where in the bill does it describe death panels?
McC: On page 4xx, right here….let me find it… (looks endlessly)
S: That doesn’t seem to be describing a death panel at all.
M: It is! See, there’s a mandate here…
S: Where?
M: Well, it doesn’t SAY mandate, they’re sneaky that way, but you can tell that it actually MEANS old people will be told to die…
S: Where?
M: I’m looking….Okay, here (reads) See, the MEANING of that is not that your doctor can be recompensed when describing end of life issues, it says that he has to actually describe them! If he mentions a feeding tube, that means he’s forcing you not to have a feeding tube. Etc…
So I thought she came off poorly. She had a big ol’ document, but she completely failed to find in it what she claimed was there, and when she could find it she was left arguing that the innocuous language really had terrible secret meanings.
I highly recommend Joe Klein’s enraged take on this. He recently tried to have this conversation with his dad, and discovered that a) Joe is just wee young Joe to his dad, someone with more authority would have been good to have; b) Joe doesn’t really understand the issues and options the way that, say, his dad’s regular doctor would.
Bruce (formerly Steve S.)
“Did you think B-Mac was also weirdly ‘effective’?”
Stewart’s audience, of which I was one, was undoubtedly repulsed by her, as I was. In a friendlier venue her antics would be well-received, but that’s always been the case. The binder was a nice touch but otherwise it’s just status quo.
JK
@Mr Furious: @ominira:
I like Jon Stewart but the incessant hero worship of him is bordering on insanity.
The 2 incidents most frequently cited by Stewart fans are the Jim Cramer interview and the appearance on Crossfire with Tucker Carlson and Paul Begala.
In both cases, Stewart went after the Lowest Hanging Fruit. Sure, Cramer talks bullshit on his stupid CNBC show, but he’s the mascot of the network. Stewart should have taken on one of CNBC’s anchors like Mark Haines, Ron Insana, Maria Bartiromo, or Erin Burnett. The lecture Stewart gave to Begala and Carlson about the shortcomings of cable news should have been delivered to Sean Hannity or Bill O’Reilly instead. Their programs are far more dishonest, manipulative, and corrosive than Crossfire ever was.
Mr Furious
It boils down to this:
Did Stewart do a much better job than a standard tv interview? Yes.
Did McCaughey deliver her package and get away clean? Also, yes.
Might a pitbull like Lawrence O’Donnel confront Betsy more aggressively? You bet. But he would not have been more effective than Stewart because his tack would have been to shout her down and make McCaughey a martyr as well as a liar.
Sentient Puddle
I don’t think she was effective because of the prop. Sure, she was certainly going for that sort of appeal, but it was sort of demolished when it became clear that Jon Stewart actually read the bill and knew where everything was. She would cite something obscure on page X, and he’d know exactly what she was talking about, rebut it, and cite something on page Y. Then of course, it allowed him to go Yakkity Sax on her, which made her look like a total fool.
No, I think the point where she was oddly effective was the filibuster. What she said was total nonsense, but I caught myself zoning out at several points. But here, it wouldn’t have been anywhere near as effective if she had some capacity for realizing that Jon caught her in a lie.
Good effort, Jon. But she’s just totally shameless.
BDeevDad
I figure it might have been effective with folks playing political games, but I give his core audience more credit to see that she was an illiterate loon because she contradicted her own points (mandatory) and could not even defend her simplistic view.
b-psycho
When a bill is that large, it makes it easy for people to claim things are in it that aren’t, because virtually no one is going to check the text & follow through all of the legalese.
I’m sure a lot of people ask themselves WTF it is with legislation being that damn long in the first place. When the average person can’t understand it & most of the people that are voting on it don’t read it, where exactly does the representation come in?
arguingwithsignposts
@Mr Furious: @JK:
You both assume that any of these idiots would have agreed to be on with Lawrence O’Donnell, or any real journalist like Greenwald, Hersh, or even Taibbi.
Look at how hard it is for Maddow to get GOP shills to come on her show, for instance.
And, FWIW, look through the daily show archives at the people he’s interviewed. Cramer and Tucker and Begala are only a couple of instances. He’s hit quite a few knuckleheads over the head (although I wish he’d have taken a harder approach with McCain). And he’s been on Bill O’Reilly’s show too.
Would it be great if he could deliver the smackdown to Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity? Sure, but those asshats are at least smart enough not to go on Stewart’s show.
And, no, I don’t believe McCaughey “got away clean.” She did better than she could have, but she was no prize winner.
brent
@JK:
1. Stewart did, in fact, take on a number of CNBC’s personalities in the segment that sparked the whole controversy. The whole thing became focused on Cramer because he was the only one who actually had the guts to respond.
2. He went after Crossfire because he was invited on the show. It was a particular well known incident because Tucker Carlson, unwisely, decided to fight a battle of the wits unarmed. Again, not Stewart’s doing.
The point is that Stewart’s critique of the media is broad as well as specific. He names names all the time. The fact that most people only hear about it when one of the subjects of his critiques decides to fight back does not point to a problem with Stewart but precisely with the media environment that he spends everyday lampooning.
I don’t have heroes and if I did, one of them wouldn’t be Jon Stewart. I only watch the show occasionally. I do however think he is good at what he does and exhibits both well preparedness and contrary to your latest criticism, a willingness to be fair with the objects of his satire in interviews. You and I probably agree that this ought to be a minimum requirement for a news pundit and shouldn’t be the sole province of a comedian but your notion that Stewart fails on these accounts is really just flat out false by any reasonable standard of judgment.
Jacquelyn
I had the bill up on Thomas Register as I watched the interview simply because I am quite literal. I didn’t find McCaughey credible; however you asked about her effectiveness. Two things come to mind: 1. The Reagan-Carter debates in which Ron was able to “aw shucks, Jimmy” his way to making Carter look like a child who was caught with his hand in the cookie jar; and, 2. The apparent fact that our society is living in the post-history stage of it’s evolution…i.e. the previous administration’s willingness to say and do whatever it pleased based on NOTHING, especially the lessons of history or actual factual data. So, was she effective? The only part of her interview in which she was effective was proving there is no room for any serious discussion, let alone debate. Any child can stick his/her fingers in their ears and yell, “I’m not listening!”
gnomedad
Republican lying is like a bomber dumping chaff to confuse radar, or a denial-of-service attack on the internet. You end up wasting limit public attention deflecting bullshit and never get to your own message.
Deborah
@jcricket:
Lately I’ve been struck by the Republican seizure of tactics (lie flat out about what’s on the table, shamelessly, endlessly) over strategy. Or, the strategy is to stop the Dems ever passing anything so they can run on “look, they did nothing.”
In the campaign the McCain team endlessly prized tactics (Poof it’s a Palin! We’re suspending the campaign! etc) while the Obama team stuck to their strategy despite the afternoon’s news cycle. This seems to be a serious issue with the modern Republican approach–whatever it gets them in short term cred exciting the base and muddying the independents it loses them on long term “can you believe anything these wingnuts say?” I really want the end-of-life consultation back in the bill, and run hard against every Republican who claimed it was a death panel with endless short loops of them proclaiming “it’s a death panel” followed by “Senator X flat-out lied to you about care for seniors. We need a Senator who will tell us the truth, not try to scare us with lies.”
Klein in his blog and at more length in the magazine.
JK
Jon Stewart’s goal is to entertain not inform.
The best refutations of the bullshit McCaughey spews out will be found in The Nation, The Progressive, Mother Jones, or Talking Points Memo and not on The Daily Show.
sweetgreensnowpea
i watched the interview. aside from being amazed at the way she kept looking to the audience for support with a big grin on her face, i couldn’t stop thinking — ‘aren’t the pages f-ing NUMBERED?’
Travis
@JK: He’s not a superhero, JK, and he’s not responsible for capturing all the villains. Your complaint would make as much sense if you added that George W. Bush was able to be re-elected despite Stewart’s constant mockery. Perhaps you could name some equivalent changes that Wolf Blitzer has had on the commonwealth, despite his being much more prominent and nearly continuously on the news.
As others have said, Stewart’s consistently well-read and well-prepared for his guests, and he engages with people more than many other real journalists do. Many other TV interviewers could be replaced by an AI program, as they relentlessly plod through their questions, ignoring potential follow-ups, contradictions and blatant lies from their interviewees.
tb
I think they’re embracing more and more the creationist model for debate, in which:
– the debater relies heavily on rhetorical tricks and manipulating the prejudices/fears of the audience.
– the debater tells the same blatant lies again and again no matter how thoroughly they are debunked.
– those lies are propagated and gain credibility just by being spoken in a formal context.
– the lies appear on equal footing with the truth/facts, making them seem to have equal validity.
So in that sense, her appearance was a success.
kay
@b-psycho:
“I’m sure a lot of people ask themselves WTF it is with legislation being that damn long in the first place. When the average person can’t understand it & most of the people that are voting on it don’t read it, where exactly does the representation come in?”
This is sort of a myth. The Bill of Rights is brief and clear-cut. What isn’t brief and clear cut is the application.
There are (I think) 19 recognized exceptions to the 4th Amendment. We JUST THIS YEAR essentially completely re-interpreted the 2nd Amendment.
This is complicated. Dumbing the legislation down is not the correct response to dumbed-down presentation of the legislation by lobbyists.
Zach
What’s odd about the prop was that she didn’t even make a big deal out of how big the bill was, or that no one’s read the whole thing, or whatever. It’s like it’s such an accepted fact on the right that the bill’s length is so absurd (ignoring the fact that it isn’t) that she doesn’t need to make that point to an educated audience. She made it seem like she had it out for reference, only, and that failed miserably.
Notice that she decided to change which part of the bill she was concerned about (was a few pages ahead in her NYPost piece) just before going on air guessing that Stewart had prepped on the part she’d complained about before.
arguingwithsignposts
@JK:
I think if you bothered to ask him, his goal would be to entertain AND inform. After all, I don’t know of many other comedians (outside of Bill Maher) who would spend any amount of time on the wall street bailouts or health care reform. If he just wanted to entertain, he could do Seinfeldian humor.
Again, straw man. NOBODY is saying TDS is the “best” refutation of her bullshit. Stewart does a good job at what he does, which is not TPM or MJ or The Nation. And besides, his AUDIENCE isn’t the same audience as those magazines.
While I’d like it if everyone read those publications, I’d also like it if someone would give me a magical unicorn and free money for life. I’ll take what I can get in the “skewering bullshit” department, wherever it comes from, to reach the largest possible audience.
gwangung
@tb: Yes, this. Exactly.
Why would they NOT use it, when it works so well on the general population in an area where it’s SOOOOOO easy to see the bullshit.
Jordan
What McCaughey did was very simple. She started with the claim that “Section 1233” mandates that doctors sign people up for end-of-life orders. Stewart rebuts, saying well, the actual *language* of the bill says those meetings are voluntary.
Defeated on the main claim, McCaughey simply backs off and retrenches, saying “but look on page 432!” (which she can’t find in her binder). Her new argument is that doctors are pressured to have end-of-life conferences because the bill ties them to Medicare quality rankings and hence reimbursements. And since section 1233 lists the type of discussions to be reimbursed as “advanced care planning consultations,” McCaughey claims doctors would be stealthily incentivized to force patients to sign do-not-resuscitate orders.
This is, of course, asinine. The section modifying the Social Security Act only says that advanced care consultations should be incorporated into general quality reporting for Medicare treatments. It neither rewards doctors for pushing patients into advanced care planning, nor does it specify what decisions patients are expected to make regarding end-of-life care. It’s merely a way to establish benchmarks of quality for this type of “procedure.”
The trouble is, while Stewart obviously read this part of the bill, he wasn’t ready to rebut this fairly insane claim. He pointed out that a living will could say “keep me alive at all costs” and still score a positive quality/effectiveness ranking, but it wasn’t enough to definitively shut down her point. And even if Stewart was ready for the Medicare reimbursement tack, McCaughey probably had 2 or 3 other loony claims to try.
All she has to do is keep making ridiculous claims, one after the other, until the interview is over. If even one of them gets through, like a nuclear MIRV, the viewer at home is left with the impression that maybe she’s on to something, and that’s all she needs to nuke all reasonability out of the discussion.
brent
@JK:
Jon Stewart’s goal is to entertain not inform.
You keep making assertions that are quite clearly false. Obviously his goals include both. He obviously didn’t do an interview with a health care policy pundit with the intention of not informing about the health care policy debate. And in fact, he did inform about precisely what his guest was using to make her wild interpretations and exactly why she was wrong.
As for whether or not better refutations of McCaughey can be found elsewhere, there is no doubt that this is true but it will not escape anyone’s notice that none of the sources you listed actually include interviews with the “real journalists” that you began this discussion calling for.
If what you are trying to say is that you would like there to be more in depth coverage of health care policy then join the club. I merely fail to see how criticizing Stewart with the rather baseless assertion that he is “lost” on this issue, when he is quite obviously raising the level of debate on television, gets us there.
JK
@brent:
“Your notion that Stewart fails on these accounts is really just flat out false by any reasonable standard of judgment.”
Bullshit. Are you ready to nominate Jon Stewart to be the next president of a tv news division or host Meet the Press?
Jon Stewart should have held out for an interview with Mark Haines, Ron Insana, Maria Bartiromo, or Erin Burnett. Stewart was a guest on the O’Reilly Factor and acted like a gutless pussy and refused to call him out on his bullshit.
“Well preparedness?” Are you crazy? He does brief, superficial interviews that barely scratch the surface of a given topic.
You and the other Stewart ass-kissers are pathetic. No criticism of Jon Stewart is ever permissable.
If every Daily Show viewer would subscribe to Pacifica Radio http://www.pacifica.org or donate to FAIR http://www.fair.org, the media landscape would be looking much brighter today.
kay
@Jordan:
I give him huge credit for trying.
Here’s the scary part: any industry lobbying group can now do this with any proposed legislation, and unlike public interest groups, they have a HUGE money incentive for doing so.
This is just the first. They can trump Congress on any bill, by sending someone out with a binder to pick particular clauses and speculate on how they are to be applied.
That’s pretty scary. They’re rewriting legislation to serve their own interests, one sentence at a time.
Conrads Ghost
I agree that she was “weirdly effective.” Stewart just couldn’t overcome his “this is too ridiculous to take seriously” mode, and she certainly gave a bravura performance. I don’t even have to look to know that the conservatrons are cheering and internalizing her act. Stewart has a couple of interpersonal tics where he just does not go for the takedown – plus if you watch past interviews (Dana Perino) he’s deferential to women.
I keep going back to “Inherit The Wind,” where William Jennings Bryan is meticulously and completely destroyed by Clarence Darrow. With him went the ‘movement,’ from what I’ve read; for decades the religious right went way, way underground. While that’s not a completely desirable outcome (what ungodly beasts fester in the sewers of the American psyche), at the same time these virulent deviates will NEVER change until they are taken apart piece by piece in the public eye. Repeatedly. They will ALWAYS insist they’re right and you’re wrong; they will ALWAYS resort to cheap shots (i.e., McCon’s [successful] attempt to put Stewart on his heels via his “penthouse” and wealth, something a hard core negotiator would never have answered); they will ALWAYS argue in spirals, throwing out barely relevant but transiently ‘meaningful’ factoids in order to, again, throw you on your heels; they will ALWAYS use any sign of accommodation or willingness to engage productively as a weapon for immediate gain; etc etc etc. In the end it’s a game of millimeters, notching cheap shot after cheap shot until enough of a semblance of a narrative exists for rationalization of the most radical of behaviors.
This is, was, and will always be the game for those in over their heads. And as far as I’m concerned, this is the definition of modern conservatism – those who cannot deal with a rapidly changing world. Not as in “has difficulty,” but as in “does not have the tools, and never will.” Jefferson outlined the parameters of hierarchy in a democracy:
“There exists a false aristocracy based on family name, property, and inherited wealth. But there likewise exists a true aristocracy based on intelligence, talent, and virtue.”
It’s time for thoughtful, informed, moral and passionate liberals to internalize this – especially the Dem leadership. The American people voted out the representatives of “false aristocracy,” and voted in “a true aristocracy based on intelligence, talent, and virtue.” It’s time to take this to heart, and behave accordingly.
JK
@arguingwithsignposts: @brent:
When it comes to lame sarcasm, nobody does a better job than shameless Jon Stewart ass kissers like you two.
arguingwithsignposts
@JK:
Ahh, when it comes to losing an argument and resorting to ad hominem, nobody around here does it better than you.
Your lack of actual engagement with the points that were made contra your wild accusations would make McCaughey proud.
Rob C.
Yes she was effective. But let’s face it – we’ve become a truly stupid nation. Would her phony nonsense have any traction in a saner, more discerning country? Would a clown like her merit any attention, let alone respect, in America thirty years ago?
vacuumslayer
A lot of people have said it better than I will, but I want to chime in anyway: she won because even though she was a lying witch, she steamrolled, she stood her ground, she lied with a smile on her face. She kept to her talking points. Also Jon was in “suffering fools” mood and did. Suffer fools.
slippytoad
@John Harrold: I believe all those words would have been far too complicated for McCaughey to understand at once.
brent
@JK:
What sarcasm are you talking about? I certainly have no problem with sarcasm but this does seem to be another curious example of you making a completely unsupported assertion which is also plainly false.
Your entire argument in this thread is based on assertions which are rather obviously untrue so it comes as no surprise that you can’t provide a substantive response to criticism of those assertions but really, this sort of ad hominem would embarrass a 3rd grader.
Mr Furious
I’m agreeing with JK’s assertion that the media is too comfortable abdicating its responsibity to Stewart…not that Stewart is ineffective or only goes after the low hanging fruit.
As pointed out above, Stewart can only confront those willing to appear on his show. He goes after whoever deserves it in the “news” segments.
Like the rest of the media however, Stewart, unfortunately, pays to play. (ie: McCain is a “good” guest, gets invited on frequently, and is treated with more respect and deference than he now deserves—though I don’t recall him being on since the election).
I think Stewart does an admirable job—even with McCaughey he did better than most would—but he didn’t slay any dragons the other night.
Comrade Luke
Her goal was to get her points across with the minimal amount of discussion. Based on that, the binder and the fact that she supposedly couldn’t find the page in question, what there for no other reason than to kill time between her talking points.
If she really wanted to debate the point in question she could have just brought the page and quoted from it. But she didn’t, and she couldn’t because if she did the entire segment would have been about how she’s misinterpreting the language of the bill.
Instead of doing that, she faked (imo) not being able to find the bill, ie reality, and while she was “looking” for the page she was constantly spewing her lies about language of the bill that never existed in the first place.
The binder was her filibuster, her version of “let me finish”, and to that end she accomplished a lot. It was a new tactic that Stewart wasn’t ready for.
Regarding all this discussion about Stewart’s role, it really doesn’t matter that he’s is (according to some) an entertainer versus a journalist (how in the hell did we get into a discussion that’s DEFENDING journalists?). He has more reach than The Nation or any other progressive magazine, and he knows it. He also does a better job preparing for these interviews than anyone other than Moyers and Maddow.
He’s trying to be as much of what he considers a good journalist to be, without the formal education (as far as I know), because actual journalists aren’t doing their job.
He’s learning on the fly, but he’s learning. Give him credit for that.
JK
To all Jon Stewart fans,
Please stop kissing his ass. He’s not worth it. Save your adulation and hero worship for someone who has contributed something to society more valuable than political satire.
vacuumslayer
Jon’s ok. For my money, Colbert skewers political figures in a much funnier and ultimately eviscerating way. Jon pulls punches far too often.
slippytoad
@arguingwithsignposts: Q: What do you call a medical school graduate with a D average?
A: Doctor.
Her PhD is just as good as the paper it’s printed on. Wingnut welfare being what it is I’m sure there are tons of lettered academics running around this country who are fucking dishonest liars and functional imbeciles who couldn’t elucidate the fundamental principles of their field of study.
After all, George W. Bush got a degree from, what, Yale? What does that say about everybody else who did?
Comrade Luke
@JK:
Dude, why don’t you leaf through your binder and show us where we’re all kissing his ass?
b-psycho
@kay: I’m not justifying what she did, just saying why it ends up easy to do. Most people tend to be short on attention span & want short answers regardless of if they’re correct.
It is troubling to me though that reading & understanding legislation isn’t considered an absolute necessity before voting on it, especially considering the kind of crap that passes thanks to such ignorance (“Patriot” Act, anyone?).
kay
@b-psycho:
I haven’t seen a single sponsor or drafter of that bill appear unprepared to defend it.
I saw an eloquent and smart defense of the provision in question by the Oregon House member who drafted it, actually.
This is a tactic. Ask yourself this: why hasn’t the Senate HELP proposal been emailed piece-meal to senior citizens? There’s apparently a draft of the Senate Finance bill floating around, because we were told by the cowardly morons who make up Senate finance that they caved to the stupid and removed the end of life provision.
Why aren’t lobbyists appearing on television with THAT proposal? Why just the House proposal?
“READ the BILL” is just more bullshit. It’s not anything like ready for a vote in Congress. Why would every House member read it? The mechanism doesn’t even work like that. The various committees who have jurisdiction over various areas contribute pieces. That’s the whole point of the elaborate final process, in both chambers, and we’re no where near that.
arguingwithsignposts
@Comrade Luke:
{golf clap} well played, sir. well played.
latts
@arguingwithsignposts:
What you said.
And I guess I’m not pure enough for JK, because I think Jon Stewart is pretty damned awesome– not perfect, but anyone I would consider perfect would get essentially zero air time– and there’s a reason he has far more influence than his ratings alone would indicate.
But hey, I’m not pure enough for those great not-presidents Ralph Nader or Dennis Kucinich either, so what do I know?
kay
I would ask John Stewart to invite the drafters of the end of life provisions to appear and defend their work from this paid shill.
I don’t think it’s fair play to give her hours to attack with no real substantive rebuttal from the particular people (because they are particular people) who drafted this.
I think his approach could do more harm than good, not in terms of “political effectiveness” (on that I have no idea) but just in terms of basic fairness.
The accused get a hearing. We’ve heard lots and lots and lots from the mobs making the accusation. I don’t really need to hear any more.
I’d invite this particular person, Senator Collins, who is the hands-down winner of Profiles in Cowardice for her silence on this:
“Earlier this spring, before the bogus “death panel” talking point started making the rounds, Collins introduced the “Advance Planning and Compassionate Care Act,” which provides Medicare funding “for advance care planning so that patients can routinely talk to their physicians about their wishes for end-of-life care.”
brent
Jon Stewart should have held out for an interview with Mark Haines, Ron Insana, Maria Bartiromo, or Erin Burnett.
Why? Jim Cramer wanted to be interviewed and he was. Erin Burnett would not have been interviewed no matter how long he “held out.” How does not interviewing these people move the debate on television financial pundits forward?
Stewart was a guest on the O’Reilly Factor and acted like a gutless pussy and refused to call him out on his bullshit.
Stewart has stated in the past that he does not think O’Reilly is as much of a problem as people like Hannity. He thinks he is an arrogant blowhard but doesn’t agree that he is a lunatic like Beck. Nonetheless, he has been just as critical of O’Reilly and the entire FOX News lineup both on his show and in interviews as he was on Crossfire. The only difference is that O’Reilly is not as stupid as Carlson and knows better than to get into that kind of meta argument with Stewart.
Bullshit. Are you ready to nominate Jon Stewart to be the next president of a tv news division or host Meet the Press?
This is a non sequitor but since you ask, I would certainly nominate him if the only other choice was David Gregory. Do you really mean to argue otherwise? Do you really mean to suggest that heads of tv news divisions are currently demonstrating a depth of knowledge and sophisticated analysis that Stewart is not? If so, why are we having this conversation at all? If tv news is doing its job then Stewart is irrelevant.
He does brief, superficial interviews that barely scratch the surface of a given topic.
These are all subjective statements and certainly well-preparedness is a relative standard, but I will say it again: there are few, if any journalists on television who could or would reasonably refute any specific claim about the content of a specific bill. The only two that I can think of who might would be Maddow or Moyers. Stephanopoulos has his moments. But by and large, an interviewer who has read and understood a bill, understands and can explain the history of the initiatives presented in the bill and can specifically refute a guest who is deliberately misinterpreting obscure cross sections of the language in question, is really pretty rare.
You say he is not well-prepared. Well what knowledge did he lack that would have been relevant in that interview?
Finally, your strange vitriol for anyone who refutes your assertions and your accusations of “ass kissing” are more than a little bizarre. My admittedly unsolicited advice to you is to learn to accept that people may disagree with your assessment because they think you’re wrong as opposed to the far less likely motivation that they are trying to curry favor with Jon Stewart in the comment section of a blog.
b-psycho
@kay: I realize there are multiple bills, and seemingly a lot to finish up. I’m not arguing against the living will provision, or even arguing one way or another on the whole concept*. My comment on reading the bill was a related general aside.
(* – my stance on health care reform is that if removing the interventions that made health care so expensive in the first place isn’t an option, then they should just say fuck it & go single-payer. The current “market” is a cartel anyway, I won’t miss it.)
kay
@b-psycho:
I guess I’m objecting to the difference between the actual work and the spin on that work.
I have heard the punditry object to the fact that the House produced a target for the lunatics. What I’m asking is what does this approach do to the process? They can’t circulate a proposal that went through two committees, because IF THEY DO, paid shills like this tool will lie about it?
Congress is broken now. It is going to shut down completely if this tactic takes hold, and, IMO, that is the point of the tactic.
Industry lobbyists don’t want reform. The status quo works for them. They’re privatizing profit and socializing risk, now. The one and only reason they came to the table is they thought they had so screwed the pooch that reform was inevitable.
We can’t have a Congressional process if drafting and releasing a proposal is considered “bad politics”. We’ll get the OPPOSITE of transparency and smart legislation. We’ll get legislation drafted in secret and written with an eye towards cable news. That’s not a good government outcome.
kay
@b-psycho:
And, then, about Stewart, I would just say that if he’s going to dive into legislative proposals (and he CAN, God knows no one else in media is, so it’s wide-goddamn-open) he has a duty to then dive all the way in, and not do so in a “debate” format, where he only invited one side.
I don’t think he can present a rebuttal by health care reform advocates, because that’s not what his show is, and he’s going to end up with C-SPAN-like wandering in the weeds, but if he can’t, is it just plain FAIR to give hours to the opposition and rebut only with skeptical eyebrow raising and reciting the actual text, with none of the rationale or thinking behind the text?
I don’t accept that as a fair hearing.
gwangung
Now, that’s just a stupid statement. It plays into the establishment memes that you must be a Serious Person to contribute to the debate and society.
If you have a point, you contribute, whether it’s done with a Serious Face or with humor.
John
There is no way any sane, rational human being could say she was effective. My take away from watching her was that she was batshit crazy and nothing she says can be trusted.
jenniebee
I see the “effectiveness” debate not as a genuine debate at all, but more as a desperate rear-guard effort to clean up what was a disastrous interview. Betsy McCaughey didn’t think she was being effective, she said as much herself in the interview. Her “mugging” to the silent audience, which began with that obnoxious “he’s wrong, but he’s so nice” plea to the studio audience to back her up, got more pronounced as the interview went on, and it looked desperate.
Not only did McCaughey think she was being trounced, it’s evident that her employer thought so as well. And, more objectively, the chances that someone whose performance in a debate was set to Yakitty Sax during the actual debate could be said to have done well, is statistically slim at best. The starbursts crowd can try to reimagine the event in a way that serves their purposes, but that’s all this debate about “effectiveness” is. You won’t see Bill Kristol taking a page out of her playbook in a Daily Show interview anytime soon, more’s the pity.
Irony Abounds
She was effective because all Republicans have to do is lie, lie, lie, and then, after a very short pause, lie again. The problem facing those who are interested in health insurance reform is that there are any number of ways of approaching reform. Single payer, public option, co-ops, mandates, etc., none of which commands the approval of all who are in favor of reform. Consequently, when the consistent, uniform, and constant lying of Republicans goes up against multiple approaches and a fair degree of intra-fighting among reform advocates, who do you think is going to win?
Midnight Marauder
@JK:
Please stop kissing his ass. He’s not worth it. Save your adulation and hero worship for someone who has contributed something to society more valuable than political satire.
I think many here would argue that political satire is particularly valuable in the current society we find ourselves trapped these days.
ruemara
She’s weirdly effective, if you’re already convinced of what she said. In reality land, she looked as effective as Oily Taints discussing immigration law.
Nellcote
I thought she came off as Orly Taint’s american cousin. She came in with an unbookmarked pile of paper and talked like a meth head, ranting about utter bullshit. I guess if you find that sort of thing convincing well, I don’t know what to (politely) say.
kay
OT. but I just have to say the new talking point, that Americans have to wait for health care reform because the banking, finance and credit interests we just bailed out who sank the world economy might need further massive infusions of taxpayer cash, is just amazing.
Individuals who have no access to insurance, so no access to humane health care, must wait until the for-profit sector give us the green light that they are off life support and can operate independently of tax payers.
That is mind-blowing. We serve THEM, and if we get sick doing it, well, we’ll just have to suck it up and wait.
Deborah
@arguingwithsignposts: “I think if you bothered to ask him, his goal would be to entertain AND inform. ”
I believe they have asked him in an interview, and he was pretty much appalled and disappointed that for a segment of the audience he IS the news. He doesn’t want to replace regular news; he’s supposed to be comedy in addition to that news, that plays well because the audience IS informed about whatever the topic is and can detect bullshit and mock it. And it’s only funny if Stephen does know what he’s talking about–can discuss what’s in and not in that section of the bill, for example.
What it says that Comedy Central is asking tougher questions than actual news outlets is another issue entirely. But whether Colbert or CC view themselves as news reporters and journalists and a news channel–I don’t think there’s any evidence that they claim that mantle. They play off the news.
Ash Can
@kay: I’m convinced that the right-wing ethos exists primarily to give people an elaborately-constructed justification for their own personal misanthropy.
Mr Furious
JK, you cannot castigate the MSM for falling down on the job and leaving it to a satirist to do their job, and then level your criticism solely at Stewart.
It’s fine to point out that Stewart might not have done his best job the other night, but he’s NOT the problem. And right now, flawed though he is, he’s just about the only one trying to be the solution.
Chief
JK, if you think that Stewart is “lost” on this issue, then please point out where he was wrong in his understanding of the proposed bill. This isn’t about hero-worshipping Jon Stewart, it’s about you making a false claim in your first post and then desperately trying to cover it by calling anyone who disagrees a blind Jon Stewart fan.
McCaughey was not at all effective. She came off as a moron who didn’t know what she was talking about, and Stewart couldn’t possibly have pinned her down because she has no argument to pin down; that’s what was on display in the interview. Yes, she’ll probably still be listened to by wackos and conspiracy theorists who are already predisposed to believe her insane claims, but she’s lost credibility with anyone who wants to be considered a “serious” person. The fact that she was fired from her job immediately after this interview demonstrates how badly she did.
scarshapedstar
OK, I gather that you hate Jon Stewart, but did you even watch the fucking interview? He eviscerated her on ‘death panels’ – your doctor gets paid just the same if you make a living will that says “give me on a ventilator and a feeding tube and a pacemaker until technology progress allows me to be reanimated” or if it says “pull the plug after 48 hours”.
But the stupid harpy just kept shouting that it’s “mandatory” because doctors are rewarded for it. Doctors are probably rewarded for getting you to quit smoking, too, but they can’t force you to do that either.
Bottom line, only an idiot would think she did a good job, and evidently her former employers are not idiots, given that they shitcanned her the next day. Jon Stewart kicked her ass, just like Jim Cramer’s, Bill Kristol’s, and whoever the hell used to be on Crossfire’s. And the fact that he’s a comedian makes his accomplishment greater, not lesser. If I, a non-golfer, were to beat Tiger Woods, nobody would say “he’s just a biologist”, given that I managed to beat fucking Tiger Woods. Until somebody else in the MSM is actually willing to confront someone in an interview, he’s better than all of them.
mcc
DougJ: There’s this tendency to look at political arguments like we’re judges at a high school debate team tournament, and the goal is to figure out who scored more “points”. That’s not how things work in the real world. When there’s a public debate in the real world, what matters is effect. What effect did this debate have on the audience? How does it move the wider political context? I didn’t actually see the daily show episode in question, but I did see the effect in the news the next day: Betsy McCaughey lost her job. It seems to me any possible definition of “effective”. Meanwhile, if Jon Stewart did in fact “lose on points” that night, then it was he who was being weirdly effective: That would mean he exposed his target as repulsive and unemployable to the outside world, and he did it while losing an argument.
The thing about Jon Stewart is, in general, he succeeds at what he sets out to do. Have we ever been able to say that about Glenn Greenwald?
PeterA
If you subscribe to Bill Maher’s Theory of American Stupidity, as I do, then yes, BM was effective. Even vestigially intelligent people saw through her act at once, but that leaves a truly depressing number of people who thought, and think, she is even remotely connected to the reality the rest of us live in.
kay
@Ash Can:
“I’m convinced that the right-wing ethos exists primarily to give people an elaborately-constructed justification for their own personal misanthropy.”
If that’s the plan it’s failing with me. I read Leiberman’s comments and immediately signed up for a health care reform “event” in a city 40 miles away, and health care as a wonkish issue bores the hell out of me, although I’m glad other people are seemingly fascinated.
Joe Leiberman opens his smarmy, sanctimonious mouth with a stern lecture on “priorities” on my tax dollars (which are ALWAYS war ‘n Wall Street) and I get in my car, like magic.
I paid for his war. He can’t throw some of my money towards health care? All of a sudden he’s this big fiscal hawk? Since when?
Anne Laurie
@Shibby:
“Mr. Stevenson, you have the vote of every thinking American!”
“Unfortunately, ma’am, that’s not enough — I can’t win without a majority.”
bhagamu
No, she was not effective, not by a longshot. So many around the leftosphere (maybe 30-40% of commenters across multiple blogs) have panned Jon Stewart for not being as “aggressive” with McCaughey as he was with Cramer – but that really means he didn’t make such a show of being angry. People wanted Stewart to vent at her as a way to surrogate their feelings. Instead, Stewart made a wreck out of McCaughey’s argument and supposed expertise.
Stewart read out the bill and put it against McCaughey’s argument, and McCaughey looked deranged and detached from reality. It wasn’t even close. Stewart continued and pointed out exactly where the “leap” of logic was in one of McCaughey’s assertions (about the medicare cut).
She looked on par with Sarah Palin.
bhagamu
@John:
I agree with this. And a lot of folks are interpreting “weirdly effective” from the perspective of a total idiot, also known as an average American. Such people don’t watch the daily show anyway.
As far as people complaining about Jon Stewart talking about health care because he’s not advertised as a policy wonk, did you even watch the interview? Stewart not only destroyed McCaughey on the language of the bill, but on the meaning of health care policy and regulation.
Napoleon
I think Stewart was effective. Maybe I would see it differently if he had a show with the demographics and reach of the Tonight Show but that is not what he is going to influence. He is watched by high information viewers and in addition I would venture a guess disproportionately by opinion drivers who are going to see Betsy for what she was, a know nothing. That will influence how they view the rest of the debate.
Remember she did her damage last time around with an article in an obscure political magazine whose readership is 1/50 of the viewership of the Daily Show.
Chris Johnson
Dude, Bryan was more effective than Darrow too. Darrow even said he wanted to be an ape! And I bet he didn’t yell and posture as well. Bryan won, and that’s why evolution has never been taught in schools or colleges.
;)
This.
It makes for great snark, but people insisting that OTHER people are complete spastic animals and retards and hence society must go in thus and so a way… well, it leads to results.
Results like ‘a black man named Hussein gets elected president’.
The thing to watch out for is control of the mechanisms of discourse and representational government- Diebold, etc. Watch out for if Jon Stewart could be forced by his network bosses to not say certain things. Do NOT freak out if he lets a total fool (cute tho) make a fool of herself on television.
Anybody can say ‘wtf?’ silently without launching an offended attack. Seniors can, Southerners can, registered Republicans can. Sometimes it’s nice to see a feisty character like Barney Frank lay off on somebody, but that’s not always necessary.
Around about the time that common accepted knowledge said that the dot-com valuations would always increase because everybody was a complete idiot and would ignore the obvious problems with that situation- the dotcoms crashed.
Saying “X is true because everybody is a complete idiot who can’t see the extremely obvious” is like the canary in the coal mine for “X is about to catastropically fail, because nobody is willing to be ‘everybody’.”.
Call it Inverse Lake Wobegon Effect, when the people you talk to say everybody but them is a drooling idiot with the self-awareness of a lab-rat…
different church-lady
I don’t understand why people are saying there was no “gotcha” moment. Almost the entire interview was one long gotcha moment — just because the target refused to look embarrased or sheepish look sheepish doesn’t mean she wasn’t got.
“Is it me? It’s him, right?” — No, Mr. Thurm does not seem weirdly effective after that, in spite of the brass balls it takes to say it.
different church-lady
@different church-lady:
Yes, the edit after post function is missed.
Kelly
I think you would be to be predisposed to not trust Stewart for her schtick to be effective. He may have been more subtle than usual, but I think his signals were clear. I’d never seen her before, and to me, it was like she was such an obvious flake, that getting tough might have actually lent her a bit of credibility.
Wile E. Quixote
Jesus JK, what’s your problem with Jon Stewart? Did he piss in your cornflakes? Did he run over your dog? Did you wake up broke, sticky and confused after he slipped a roofie in your drink? Did he savagely use and abuse you, finishing the disgusting carnal pleasures he took upon your semi-conscious form with a donkey punch? Did he then force you to go A2M, steal all of your money and credit cards, wipe his dick on your drapes and not call or send flowers the next day?
You piss and moan and froth at the mouth while rending your garments complaining about how Stewart is just a comedian and then you turn around and condemn the man because, wait for it, wait for it, because he’s just a comedian. And when anyone takes you to task for this or points out that while you’re doing a great job demolishing straw men of your own creation that you’re failing to address the facts, you say that they’re kissing Stewart’s ass and then drop the names of lefty/progressive blogs and magazines† to show how *serious* you are. What are you going to do next? Pull a B-Mac and tell us all about your PhD?
Oooh, see, look we know that JK is *serious* because JK can name drop the names of progressive/lefty rags/blogs, and you see, anyone who watches TDS can’t possibly understand how authentic and *serious* JK is because he reads these very *serious* publications†. In fact no one who watches TDS can read any of these magazines/blogs because they’re such a bunch of ass-kissing lightweights that if they ever they did, by some fluke, gaze upon one of these very august and *serious* publications they would be blinded, their minds would burn and the flesh would melt from their screaming bodies before their heads exploded from the power of the sheer *serious* intensity that shining forth from each page of densely packed text. You know, just like what happened to the Nazis in the antepenultimate scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark when they opened the Ark of the Covenant and gazed upon the very *serious* power of the Lord.
Did anyone here say “I pity those out of touch fools who waste their time and money reading “The Nation”, “The Progressive”, “Mother Jones”. The Daily Show is better than all three of those rags combined”? Did anyone here say “Jon Stewart’s five minute interview with B-Mac was a better refutation of her bullshit and of right wing bullshit in general than every article ever published in the Nation; so much so that Victor Navasky and Katrina vanden Heuvel‡ should just kill themselves in shame over their wasted, futile and misspent lives”? Did someone say “Boy, that Jon Stewart, he’s so awesome! Compared to him Paul Krugman, Josh Marshall, Thomas Frank, William Greider and Rick Perlstein‡ are just a bunch of candy-assed poseurs who ought to give up any pretension that they’re doing *serious* work and go write for Teen Beat“? Well, OK, let me rephrase that; did anyone here, anyone other than the shrill and squealing voices in your head, say those things?
And then there’s this little gem:
Gee JK, I don’t know. I’m afraid that subscribing to Pacifica or donating to FAIR would make me all indignant and stupid, albeit very *serious*. I’m afraid I’d start ranting and claiming that since Jon Stewart hasn’t used his vast and mighty powers to compel Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly and Rush Limbaugh to consent to being interviewed on TDS that he’s a failure. I’m afraid that I’d start ranting that since Stewart not only failed to compel these luminaries to appear on TDS but also failed to interview them so forcefully and so masterfully that they had no choice but to confront their lies, repent their evil ways, donate their ill-gotten gains to progressive causes and spend the rest of their lives volunteering in homeless shelters, that Stewart was a complete fraud and total failure. I’m afraid that I’d start ranting about how anyone who watches TDS is an ass-kissing lightweight who mindlessly worships at the altar of Jon Stewart. I’m afraid that subscribing to Pacifica Radio or donating to FAIR might turn me into some angry old man who screams “Hey you kids, get off of my damned lawn, and take your Daily Show with you!” In short , I’m afraid that subscribing to Pacifica Radio or donating to FAIR might turn me into a dull, witless and not particularly intelligent name-dropping douchenozzle like you, and I just don’t need that. I’m broke-dick enough as it is what with missing most of my left leg below the knee, having a wrist that’s held together with a titanium screw and what’s even worse, having a problem with completely out-of-control run-on sentences (and parenthetical phrase abuse).
What’s next JK? Are you going to completely lose your shit and in your next post channel Jack Nicholson from A Few Good Men and start screaming “You can’t handle the truth” and then rant about how freedom has to be defended by rough men standing ready in the night at FAIR, TPM and Pacifica Radio and not by Jon Stewart and the comedians at TDS? That would be entertaining, if not particularly surprising.
†I have to say that I think JK is just name dropping here. I would be surprised if he had ever sent money to FAIR, subscribed to “The Nation”, “The Progressive” or “Mother Jones” or subscribed to Pacifica radio.
‡I can name drop too. Aren’t I cool?
ghb
No, she wasn’t effective. And if you think differently, I’m right and you’re wrong…
Mnemosyne
That’s why Mark Twain is completely unknown today — because political satire has no value to the world.
SixStringFanatic
Wile E. Quixote (and, man, I absolutely love that name),
You, Sir, deserve a standing fucking ovation for that rant!
I will now stand on my computer chair and applaud for 30 seconds……
Bravo, Sir.
Mr. Furious
Good stuff, Wile E.
Anne Laurie
@Ash Can:
And some of us progressives, as well. Because when I listen to people like Betsy McCaughey and her cheerleaders, I find myself thinking, “That’s it, we’re done, if this kind of Malignant Stupid is running around unchecked it’s time for a good plague to thin the herd.”
Darkrose
@Wile E. Quixote:
Wow. That was a thing of motherfucking beauty.
Sasha
He then goes on to a lengthy discussion of why what she did worked in a weird way, including various emails. He also predicts that Republican operatives will emulate what McCaughey did. It’s an interesting discussion .
I think part of what allowed BM to not get totally hammered is the fact that she’s a she and Stewart has an innate sense of chivalry. If it were a dude, Stewart would’ve called bullshit often and unveneered.
Pooh
“I have in this envelope the names of 130 card carrying communists who support universal healthcare”
Jacquelyn
@Wile E. Quixote & @JK & @DougJ
Folks, if we ever needed a lesson on why we fail, it would be this. Our voices even among ourselves are raised and hyper-critical to OURSELVES. Whether or not Jon Stewart is here to entertain AND inform us; whether or not Betsy McCaughey was or has ever been “weirdly effective”; whether or not I can name drop…None of these questions, nor any answers to them (including my own) are germane to the issue. There was an interview. The interviewer had his facts straight. The interviewee bs’d her way to finding the ‘missing’ page and then flat lied. Then, to add insult to injury, the interviewee attempted to make an audience complicit to her lies by declaring the interviewer “cute,” a less than winning strategy (if we choose to dignify what she did); and the coup de grace: the letter from the doctor in San Francisco! ‘This bill is dangerous!’
Are we hanging out at congressional town halls in our own districts? Where is our press coverage? We can continue to argue semantics among ourselves….OR, we can choose to be as stalwart as the Wingnuts, and UNdistracted by the fabricated message drowning out rationality. “It’s a bird!” “It’s a plane!” Y’all know the rest…
Ginger Yellow
I’m kind of baffled by all the reactions saying McCaughey somehow bested Stewart. I thought she came across as deceitful, arrogant and most importantly, wrong. And when he did the yakety-sax thing, she looked like a fool. Mockery is an incredibly effective political weapon, and that segment probably did more to undermine her than any refutation of her arguments.
I can understand people feeling she did “better” than Cramer, but you have to realise that they were completely different cases. In Cramer’s case, all Stewart had to do was play tape of him being spectacularly wrong or hypocritical and then laugh at him. McCaughey isn’t as high profile (at least on TV), so he couldn’t just run the tape. Instead, he had to have a command of the detail, and he did. Her central argument was that the wording of the bill meant that there were actually death panels, and he demolished that argument completely and made her look ridiculous in the process.
satby
@Jacquelyn:
What Jacquelyn said.
When the wingnuts are falling behind, out come the red herrings and orange threat levels. And the progressive side gets tied up in knots discussing the meta of whether Stewart’s the right one to refute the BS.
We’re all the right ones to refute BS when it’s shoved in our faces, and props to Stewart for taking on the job. But the rest of us have to step up too.
Silver Owl
At some point people need to stop saying things about really poor behavior and even worse performance as “weirdly effective” or he/she has “chutzpah.”
Crap is crap even if it sits pretty all dressed up in front of camera.
Nelson
Completely divorced from any attempt of presenting a clear and reasoned argument, she was as effective as Monty Python’s black night –
BLACK KNIGHT:
‘Tis but a scratch.
ARTHUR:
A scratch? Your arm’s off!
BLACK KNIGHT:
No, it isn’t.
ARTHUR:
Well, what’s that, then?
BLACK KNIGHT:
I’ve had worse.
Cpl. Cam
While I do think Jon could have been a lot more effective on this one I definately don’t think there was anything effective, “weirdly” or otherwise, about B-Mac’s performance. She came off as a loon, the audience was laughing at her not with her. She claimed she wanted everyone to have access to healthcare, she brought a six-hundred page document proporting to provide just that and insisted we throw the whole thing out based on her flawed interprtation of one single paragraph. What part of that trainwreck was “effective?”
I doubt Jon’s performace won over any tea-birfers but considering Jon’s demographic…