Jon Stewart Is Getting Serious

[HomerRamone]

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/marty-kaplan/62776/jon-stewart-is-getting-serious

But as his last show approaches, Stewart himself has been turning that question inside out. We may laugh at the emperor's nakedness, but so what? He's still emperor. A montage of clips can eviscerate hypocrisy. Wit can slice the stuffing from a bully. Evidence can unmask ignorance; analysis can debunk deception; and sometimes a pun or a snort can kick a candidate or a correspondent in the kishkes. But really: besides a little laughter making us feel a little better, what difference does that make to our lives? With the end of his 17-year run in sight, that's the doubt Stewart himself has been wrestling with...

But as "We Got Him!" and fireworks flashed on the screen, Stewart found himself unable to gloat, calling it a "strangely hollow" win. "You know," he said, "I placed a lot of stock in the idea" that catching Rumsfeld -- or Bush, Cheney or Rice, or Douglas Feith or Judith Miller, or Richard Perle or Paul Bremer or any of the other architects or enablers of the Iraq War -- "in some sort of logical trap, or forcing them to admit the errors of their ways, would be an ultimate victory. But now I wonder.... If you can get one of these guys to admit their mistakes, you may have a moment of satisfaction and catharsis. But it doesn't mitigate the horrible consequences of the decision, and doesn't seem to stop the next guy from repeating the mistake."...

"People of the future: Is it futile to try to pin these people down? Yes. Would it be easier to give up and let Rumsfeld go, preferably on an ice floe in the North Atlantic? Yes. Because no matter what evidence, no matter what arguments or historical facts you put in front of these people, they think learning curves are for pussies. And even if they did learn, it wouldn't change the past, or prevent the same mistakes in the future. Which is why I want to say to you, in the future: Please, never stop trying anyway. Because there's always hope that one day, they'll think, just for a second, and that second will be enough time for us to shove those motherfuckers onto that ice floe."...

Last week, on the day that nine African-Americans were slaughtered in their Charleston church by a white supremacist, a somber Stewart quieted his audience at the show's start. I have a pretty simple job, he said.

"I come in in the morning, and we look at the news, and I write jokes about it.... But I didn't do my job today, so I apologize. I got nuthin' for you.... And maybe if I wasn't nearing the end of the run, or this weren't such a common occurrence, maybe I could get pulled out of the spiral, but I didn't. And so I honestly have nothing other than just sadness once again that we have to peer into the abyss of the depraved violence that we do to each other, and the... gaping racial wound that will not heal yet we pretend doesn't exist. I'm confident that by acknowledging that, by staring into it, we still won't do jackshit. Yeah, that's us.... You know this is going to go down the same path."...

No evidence, arguments or historical facts, and no comedy, will defeat the gun lobby and its enablers; learning curves are for pussies.

[Initech]

1. He's absolutely correct. We won't do jack shit about guns.

In fact the idiot Republicans who run Congress will only make things worse.

[zeemike]

2. You cannot shame sociopaths into changing

They view people with morals and principles as weak.
The only thing you can do is keep them away from power.

[gratuitous]

3. I think I'll keep trying anyway

I got nothing better to do in the time I have left.

[nevergiveup]

4. Yep,

I am with you.

[Moostache]

5. NO...giving up the fight is NOT okay...

Its more than 'nothing better to do', or a 'valiant effort', or 'the lesser of two evils'...

It IS the only thing to do.
It IS the right thing to do in the face of evil, whether that face is sneering like Cheney, dull and expressionless like a Bush son, or smiling a fake smile like Palin, Coulter-geist or the bubble-head bleach blonde of the moment on Fox.

The heartbreaking slowness of the progress cannot overwhelm the impetus to slog on.
Evil is what we fight against. No less pervasive or insidious as the Nazis - both original and neo.

The enemy is winning, and has been for nearly all of my life.
Capitulation is not an option.

Beaten, bloodied but unbowed...we fight on because we are right and our cause is just. In the end, keeping the fight alive is the hardest thing to do (I am CONSTANTLY racked by doubt and a doom and gloom malaise too...which is why a place and community like DU is so important - we can pick each other up, we can dust each other off...we can take turns being buffeted by the winds of change or the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune), but keep it up we must and keep it up we collectively WILL.

Like huddled penguins on the Antarctic tundras, we will take turns, we will stand, and we WILL prevail.

[Snotcicles]

6. I'm not a religious person so I don't get to indulge in imagining the type

of hell those people should have coming to them. My only hope is they are religious, and I get to witness one of them having an awakening of what they are due.

[Baitball Blogger]

7. It's a game for them.

Saying that they made a mistake is just a Pyrrhic Victory. They'll allow you the win because they already made their mark in history and don't care what anyone really thinks about them.

That's why Obama's TPP is freaking me out. He's playing the game.

[Electric Monk]

8. k&r