If anyone else was wondering if The Daily Show's Jon Stewart was going to respond to Fox's Eric Bolling challenging him to a debate last Saturday, after Bolling was pissing and moaning and misrepresenting just what Stewart said on the air -- where Stewart took Bolling and his cohorts to task for their constant attacks on those living in poverty and food stamp recipients -- well, we got our answer this Thursday.
I did not expect Stewart to accept Bolling's challenge to a debate, which he did not, but he was more than happy to take him to school in the segment above for his hackery on Fox's Cashin' In last week.
After first recapping some of his segment from earlier this month, and Bolling claiming that he was going to take Stewart to school for his criticisms, Stewart welcomed the criticism and said he was ready for class.
BOLLING: We are talking about the waste, fraud and abuse in a lot of the programs.
STEWART: Oh. I'm sorry. I see the disconnect. You thought we were ridiculing you for exposing government waste. That's a reasonable thing to expose. That's not what we were talking about. What we were ridiculing, was the way you exaggerate the scope of public assistance abuse, through random, often unprovable anecdotes, hour long specials, and for some reason, this hand bursting through the heart of America, for apparently reaching into America's pockets for taxpayer lobster and titty bar money. Get a job you lobster eatin' hand.
Stewart went onto give more examples of Fox doing just that while contrasting their coverage attacking food stamp recipients to corporations taking advantage of every loophole available to them and wrapped things up with pointing out that JP Morgan Chase has been more than happy to be sucking up some of that corporate welfare by profiting off of those receiving SNAP benefits.
STEWART: It's kind of genius. Since 2004, 18 of the 24 states JP Morgan handles have been contracted to pay the bank over $560 million. It's a brilliant business model. You make a ton of money selling sub-prime mortgages and derivatives. And then when that business crashes the economy and millions of homeowners find themselves under water and foreclosed upon and have to go on food stamps, you get a little taste of that too.
But don't think of it as JP Morgan shorting homeowners. Think of them as going long, on hunger. But I assume, they then put some of that money that they got, that $560 million into creating jobs, for the few non-lazy Americans left.
Cue the news report that they've outsourced their benefit card service card calls to India.
STEWART: Well, that makes sense. You don't want to hire Americans. That would cut into your lucrative food stamp business. You've gotta' maintain your customer base. So what I'm getting from Fox is this.
Exploiting government largess, while reprehensive and morally corrupting for an individual, is a-okay for corporations. So maybe this will help. Don't think about food stamps and Head Start and programs like that as feeding and helping a small child. Think about it as investing in a promising startup with a liquidity problem.
