from Comedy Central
Jon Stewart devoted over a third of the broadcast last night — a full 10 minutes, and remember there are commercials — to unpacking Wolf Blitzer's interview with Dick Cheney on CNN, and if anyone ever sputters that "The Daily Show" isn't news and is pushing a biased agenda, direct them to this clip. Not only did Stewart go through numerous highlights from the interview, but the "Daily Show" staff went and gathered supporting video clips from elsewhere to provide context for the interview, using previous statements of position and policy to hold the veep accountable for the stuff he was saying now. Media junkies may take for granted statements like "We'll be greeted as liberators" and "The insurgency's in its last throes" but for many people, these soundbytes put into context help to clarify the narrative immensely. For someone who failed to catch the Blitzer interview on TV or online (and there are such people, you know, many of whom have jobs on location or who perhaps do things in their spare time that doesn't involve being mesmerized by the glow of an LCD screen), this segment brought the highlights of the Cheney interview to the fore against the backdrop of the event of his time in office. Sure, there were jokes — Stewart loves doing his so-bad-they're-good impressions, and the bit in the hunting cap and Darth Vader mask were obviously gratuitous from a hard-news point of view — but for anyone who came into it tabula rasa, that segment provided all they needed to know and then some.
Note also that this was just one segment; after the break, Stewart welcomed New York Senator and Dem bigwig Chuck Schumer to discuss his new book, Positively American. Let's see, Senator...book...elections '06 and '08...nope, nothing newsworthy there!
(By the way, the "Daily Show" modus of tag-teaming similar clips into one damning collection is so effective, it's amazing that more news channels haven't caught on.)
