{"id":12542,"date":"2007-08-14T16:30:42","date_gmt":"2007-08-14T20:30:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/12542.html"},"modified":"2007-08-14T16:30:42","modified_gmt":"2007-08-14T20:30:42","slug":"stewart-only-anchor-in-the-country-to-see-through-the-nonsense","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/stewart-only-anchor-in-the-country-to-see-through-the-nonsense\/","title":{"rendered":"Stewart only anchor in the country to see through the nonsense"},"content":{"rendered":"

After the Michael O’Hanlon\/Ken Pollack op-ed<\/a> appeared in the NYT a couple of weeks ago, they did multiple media interviews, each of which characterized the Brookings’ scholars as war “critics” or war “skeptics.” The news outlets were, of course, wrong<\/a> — O’Hanlon and Pollack both supported the war and endorsed the so-called surge.<\/p>\n

As Oliver Willis noted<\/a>, CNN<\/a> screwed it up, as did CBS<\/a> and Fox News<\/a>, among others. The good news is, last night, one cable outlet pushed back against the bogus narrative. The bad news is, it was Comedy Central who showed journalistic chops.<\/p>\n

Here’s the exchange between Bill Kristol and Jon Stewart on The Daily Show:<\/p>\n

Stewart: Can you see how someone who is skeptical, basically we’re hearing from people like yourself, people like the president, ‘Trust us to undo the terrible thing we did.” Don’t you, you see where it’s tough.<\/p>\n

Kristol: Don’t trust me, not that you were going to–<\/p>\n

Stewart: Who should I trust?<\/p>\n

Kristol: Trust skeptics of the war, like Mike O’Hanlon and Ken Pollack who went over, who’d been there before–<\/p>\n

Stewart: They weren’t really skeptics.<\/p>\n

Kristol: No, they were, who came back, had seen it in real-time–<\/p>\n

Stewart: Ken Pollack would like us to invade Iran for God’s sake. He’s–<\/p>\n

Kristol: It’s an idea. It’s an idea.<\/p>\n

Stewart: Those are very hawkish guys.<\/p>\n

Kristol: It’s not a bad idea.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Putting aside, for a moment, Kristol’s penchant for yet another war, this simple exchange was what was missing from all of the major media coverage when O’Hanlon and Pollack were all over every network. Jon Stewart — who, you know, heads a fake news show — managed to challenge a bogus assertion and convey useful information to his audience.<\/p>\n

Now, was that so hard?
\n
\nHere’s the whole thing, for your viewing pleasure:<\/p>\n

<\/embed><\/p>\n

Notice that quick reference to letting Iraq play out “for the next six months”? I thought you might.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After the Michael O’Hanlon\/Ken Pollack op-ed appeared in the NYT a couple of weeks ago, they did multiple media interviews, each of which characterized the Brookings’ scholars as war “critics” or war “skeptics.” The news outlets were, of course, wrong — O’Hanlon and Pollack both supported the war and endorsed the so-called surge. As Oliver […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12542","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12542","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12542"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12542\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12542"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12542"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12542"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}