Friday, August 26, 2005
Stewart v. Hitchens
Christopher Hitchens was Jon Stewart's guest on the Daily Show last night; witness the carnage here. I think Stewart is a bit disingenuous about his own feelings about the president. But no one who saw his monologue on the first show back after September 11 could ever think he was anything but a patriot. In any event, Stewart does an excellent job of articulating one of the reasons Bush is so often so infuriating to me. Money quote:
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HITCHENS: The people who say that the violence with these people is our fault are masochistic and capitulationist and they should be ignored.Obviously Stewart's last point could be better phrased, but I agree with him 100%.When questioned about anything, Bush seems contemptuous of anyone that disagrees with him. And if you show me the question, I can pretty much figure out which stock phrases he's going to put in his answer. That's his right, and people who agree with him tend to forgive him that attitude, but it inspires a lot of loathing.
STEWART: The people who say that we shouldn't fight in Iraq aren't saying it's our fault. That is the conflation that's most disturbing to me.
HITCHENS: Don't you hear people say that we've made them nasty to us...
STEWART: I hear people say a lot of stupid shit, okay, but what I'm saying here is...
HITCHENS: Just promise me you'll never say that.
STEWART: ...is that there is reasonable dissent in this country about the way this war has been conducted that has nothing to do with people saying we should cut and run from the terrorists, or we should show weakness in the face of terrorism, or that we believe that we have in some way brought this upon ourselves. They believe that this war is being conducted without transparency, without credibility and without comments
HITCHENS: I'm sorry, sunshine, I just watched you ridicule the president for saying that he, he wouldn't give a..
STEWART: ...no, you misunderstood why...
HITCHENS...a timetable.
STEWART: ...that's not why I ridculed the president. Why I ridiculed the president was he refuses to answer questions from adults as though we were adults, and falls back upon platitudes, and phrases, and talking points that does a disservice to the goals that he himself shares with the very people he needs to convince.
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