Here's a great clip from last night's episode of Real Time with Bill Maher. As you can see, at one point, she has to go pretty far just to get a word in edgewise.
While I love the fact she stood up to make her point, I'm not sure her claim about median income during the 1980s is actually true.
Stewart occasionally preaches Broderian false equivalence, and it's easily his most annoying trait, but while the Broders beg for a Serious Grownup to rescue idiot Americans from their own passions, Stewart's message is basically that all Americans have the ability to just not be assholes, and the press has a responsibility to not reward being an asshole.
(The only actual moment where everyone's worst fears about the event came true was the horrible Kid Rock song about how influential millionaires can't do anything to make the world a better place besides care, a bunch, about war and stuff.)
As a piece of politicking, the Rally to Restore Sanity got a couple hundred thousand young liberals excited about sincerity and inspired about their nation on the eve of the midterm elections. I can't really see a downside, unless you think tepid criticisms of MSNBC's tone will convince liberals not to vote this Tuesday.
via www.salon.com
Some people I know went to the rally, but left feeling underwhelmed. One took the Kid Rock/Sheryl Crowe duet as a cue to leave. I saw the rally on TV. I laughed a couple times, and was annoyed by Stewart's false equivalences. If we're making errors in reasoning to appear non-partisian, objective or fair and balanced, then we're making a mistake. One of the main things I like about The Daily Show and Stewart as a host is that he often tries to bring a little reason to political discourse. He often gets his laughs by pointing out blatant contradictions or fallacious reasoning in political discourse. So, when Stewart commits the very kind of error that he would normally be pointing out to get laughs I guess the joke is on him, this time. Let's not pretend the evidence in support of the claim that George Bush committed war crimes is not equivalent to the evidence in support of the claim that Obama is a Marxist. Let's not pretend like the right and left are equally culpable for the recent political violence. Right now the trouble pretty clearly is coming from the right.
It is precisely for this reason that his false equivalences are so problematic to me.
Salon.com's Glen Greenwald discusses executive power in the Obama era.
I was watching the talking heads on MSNBC today and a couple of them mentioned Obama taking over BP in some kind of temporary receivership to deal with the environmental crisis.
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If Obama took over BP to address the environmental crisis would it be the Obama version of the unity power of the executive the Bush Administration appealed to so much? I don't think Obama rolled back much of the expansion of executive power we witnessed during the Bush Administration.
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