How did we get Stewart's interview so wrong?

[jpgray]

The two main charges against Stewart are that he is defending the Bush administration, and drawing a false equivalence between FOX and MSNBC. It's my respectful submission that neither of these charges are true. At all. Some statements snipped from the main interview but available on Maddow's site show this best.

On war criminal accusations:

STEWART: I would be surprised if, you know, Barack Obama then wouldn’t fall under that rubric. He’s, he’s—extraordinary rendition still goes on. Or, you know, there are things that are going on at Bagram Air Force Base. You know, things are happening in the world that under that same definitions— Is it as clear-cut maybe as “Yeah, yeah, water-boarding? Sure, I did that! Happy to do it again.” Maybe not. But you know, Franklin Delano Roosevelt interned 120,000 Japanese-Americans. Is he a war criminal? If you say he’s a war criminal, is that kind of an incendiary thing and kind of a conversation ender? So I view it as something that is done for emotional impact, something that should be discussed, but discussed in a way that takes into context other presidents, what war really is, others that have been accused of war crimes, what they are.

On bias in cable news:

STEWART: We have a tendency to grant amnesty to people that we agree with and to overly demonize people we don’t. I do the same thing, I think everybody does. Bill Clinton, if he were a Republican, would be strung up by the ladies at NOW, by all the people that—he’d be strung up. But they like him. Clarence Thomas was accused of kind of the same thing, sexual harassment? Now, everybody jumps into, “But that was fabricated, the Clinton thing never happened and he did the thing—but the, but the thing— And Clarence Thomas, that really did happen, and they were so mean to that lady!” But it all comes from the perspective of defending your guy and defending your turf. And what I’m saying is, let’s stop just defending teammates.

Now there are two problems with media today. One is to create a truly false equivalence. To say that Clinton and Thomas are the same as far as sexual harassment goes is plainly inaccurate. It is likewise plainly inaccurate to say that Obama is as criminal in his conduct of the wars as Bush. But Clinton isn't a saint, and Obama's war policies are often hideous in their disregard for due process and civil liberties. There has to be a way between claiming that two different cases are the same and claiming that only one side's bad actions warrant consistent attention.

Finally, on FOX vs. MSNBC:

STEWART: My plea is not to silence MSNBC or even to silence Fox, but to not fight Fox with Fox. And you’re not Fox. But if I were to say they’re a cyclonic typhoon that is now covering half of Asia, every now and again on MSNBC you look over and go, “I think there’s a tropical depression forming in the gulf. Is there a tropical depression?” Do you understand what I’m saying?

Stewart acknowledges the difference in quantity and quality of bias between FOX and MSNBC. But you can't ignore that some of the bad habits of FOX are clearly represented in MSNBC. The same focus and expenditure of air-time on the trivial narratives, the same inclination to pass over similar if lesser crimes for our side, while constantly hammering those of the other. One side will be mocking Sarah Palin tweets, Juan Williams and a nobody Florida pastor, the other will be telling us how Bill Ayers, ACORN, Sharia law and birth certificates will destroy us all.

A thread that encapsulated some of this for me on DU was the one excoriating the lack of prior office holders in the freshmen GOP legislators. It's ridiculous. Paul Wellstone likewise had held no office prior to his election in '90. Being a relative neophyte is not bad in and of itself--there are plenty of horrible things about these incoming congresspeople to point out, but instead we are inclined to reach for the superficial narrative of inexperience and ignorance, even if the substance of the charge doesn't really point to anything terrible. You can -certainly- produce evidence of ignorance, but a lack of prior office, lack of passport, whatever--those are hardly sufficient, and are not evidence of awfulness at all. They are only used to fulfill a sneering narrative, we know they are bad, so even the innocuous constitutes irrefutable proof of evil.

Does any of that make sense?