Broknhead said:
Undead Dragon King said:
I call bullshit. This move is Jon Stewart-eque.
Say something provocative to try and send a message that you believe in. Then when the move backfires and more people end up angry at you than angry at the issue your were trying to promote, try to pretend that it was all a joke.
I call this move "Putting on the clown nose"- and a great form of cowardice.
Go to hell, PETA.
glenn beck is that you??
JON STEWART IS A COMEDIAN. you should be expecting everything he says on his show to be a joke.
That is his ideal cover. He would like it very much if you would see the statements he makes on his show to be nothing but comedy, with no thought-provoking potential. But watch some of the interviews he does on his show and you can see he can be dead serious with his opinions. Also, read the contexts of his jokes, and you can easily see the acerbic social commentary that orients them.
Do you think his "Restoring Sanity" rally last year was simply a joke? Do you think he mobilized tens of thousands and spent that much in dollars, all for the sake of a punch line? Even if you would argue that he did indeed use mocking humor at that rally, do you think he considered himself primarily a comedian then? Or did he see himself as an avant-garde social commentator, a champion for the Left, a progressive counterweight to Glenn Beck and his "Restoring Honor" rally?
And when Stewart's statements aren't taken favorably? Like when he considered Harry Truman to be a war criminal for dropping the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and sparing America 1,000,000+ casualties from amphibiously invading Japan?
"Hey, I'm just a comedian! Don't take what I say seriously."- Putting on the clown nose.
It's this cowardly two-faced approach to political commenting that I've got a serious problem with. You're a socially daring political commentator operating under a mask of comedy when you say something popular, and you're a comedian operating under a mask of socially daring political commenting when your statements are unpopular.