Papa Bear was on The Daily Show last night, and it made for some rich viewing:
Stewart: I keep watching on your network, everyone is saying, Look, this is a center-right country, and he'd better govern that way.
And uh -- How is this a center-right country? Because it seems to me that it is not.
O'Reilly: Look, the problem is you never leave New York City. OK? That's No. 1.
Stewart: I'm a standup comic.
O'Reilly: Yeah, but if you're Jon Stewart, and you go to Alabama you're going to get killed. You can't go where these center-right people are. Because they'll stone you to death.
Hmmm. What passes for the "center right" part of the country for most of us -- say, suburban Milwaukee or rural Montana -- would be unlikely to react violently to a Jon Stewart. They might ignore him or think him rude, but most likely it would be civil and polite.
In fact, I happened to be in Wasilla, Alaska -- Sarah Palin's hometown -- when a crew from The Daily Show was there filming a segment on the town. No one was about to hurl stones at them. In fact, most of them seemed pretty eager to belly up to the table with Jason Jones inside the Mug Shot Saloon to be interviewed on national TV.
Now, I'm sure there are some quarters of the country where a city guy like Stewart might be wise to go well-armed and guarded -- probably some of them in places like Alabama. But to nearly everyone else in the country, these are the far right corners of the nation.
And it's pretty telling that O'Reilly thinks that's the center.
Later on, O'Reilly tells Stewart:
You should get out and meet some of the folks. They're not bad people.
That's true, except for that part about wanting to kill you.
