As part of his ongoing Fast and Furious analysis, Jon Stewart took a look at how the media is covering the story on Tuesday night's "Daily Show."
Between pundits and anchors there seemed to be plenty of confusion and frustration about the executive privilege ruling to go around, with many Fox News personalities going so far as to call this Obama's Watergate.
The only problem? It's at least the fourth time the network has accused Obama of having a Watergate-level scandal.
So while Stewart clearly shares some of the sentiment, he couldn't help but wonder if media sensationalism has gotten in the way of people being able to understand how serious Fast and Furious really is. He joked:
If you become the Fox who cries wolf, your outrage repertoire has been so overused as to render justified outrage meaningless. 'This is Watergate!' Right. And what was it when second graders sang a song about Obama in their classroom... 'Khmer Rouge stuff.' Yes, who could forget the Khmer Rouge and the dreaded 'Singing Fields' of Cambodia?
Stewart noted a certain hypocrisy in the level of outrage for these previous, markedly less serious Obama infractions when, less than five years ago, the network seemed a bit more forgiving of executive privilege.
What did y’all think of the Bush years' shenanigans? Secret torture programs, wire-tapping citizens without a warrant, putting signed statements onto laws that negated what the law says, stonewalling Congress, holding Americans without trial by calling them 'enemy combatants'? What was your working theory on the tyranny and lawlessness of those secret programs?
“Seems like over the past four years Fox has lost the capacity to trust their leaders,” Stewart joked. “I think I can help. Close your eyes, guys, and fall backwards into my arms. We’ll catch you.” And then, in a whisper, “Nobody catch them.”
Watch part one above and part two below.