Jon Stewart and his producers over at The Daily Show have been missing the mark all week by playing into the corporate media's scandal-mongering over the IRS and their so-called "targeting" of conservative groups. Following one segment after another on the topic, they finally wrapped things up this Thursday night with this "interview" segment with former Libertarian Party candidate for vice president, Wayne Allyn Root who claims he's been unfairly targeted by the IRS for audit.
Instead of going after Root for the fact that he probably deserved to be audited by the IRS, they decided to go after him for being a complete hypocrite when it comes to targeting Americans in any way, shape or form at all, and the fact that he doesn't care so much about those being profiled for their race or religion, as long as it's not someone like him affected by the profiling.
While I do not expect anyone at The Daily Show to take the place of journalists and realize fully that this is a comedy show, and that what they are paid do is to make people laugh, I do still find it incredibly sad when what is usually one of the retreats where you can go and find a lot more truth than fiction behind the comedy and a place that generally calls out the lies being told by the media, buying into the bullshit being fed to the public right now with this IRS "scandal."
What they ended up doing here was giving credence to the notion that somehow, Root had been unfairly targeted by the IRS, when, as Mother Jones recently reported, it seems their decision to take a closer look at his taxes was completely warranted. Instead, they decided to take him out of context and paint him as a hypocrite who doesn't like being targeted himself, but doesn't mind when it happens to someone else.
It appears Root wasn't too happy with the interview as well after reading his carping that his fellow Libertarian and Koch friend Nick Gillespie published for him over at Reason: Wayne Allyn Root Calls His Daily Show Interview a "Fraud.". While I can sympathize a little bit for what he went through after reading the article, I have to ask: Has Root ever watched The Daily Show and The Colbert Report before agreeing to go on one of them? Because unless you're a complete moron, you should already be aware that taking you out of context and mocking what they decide to show of what you said is what they do when you agree to do one of these segments with either Jason Jones or Stephen Colbert. It is what they do to everyone, and if you don't realize that before you go on there, sorry, but you're an idiot.
Back to the original intent of this post, which is the fact that The Daily Show gave this guy a complete pass for the fact that if the IRS had not audited him, they would not have been doing their job. Sorry pal, but if you make $215,000 in gross income as you did in 2007, but managed to find enough deductions to only claim a taxable income of about $25,000, you're begging to have the IRS audit your ass.
Mother Jones has more on Root and his tax problems here: Conservatives Crawl out of the Woodwork to Claim IRS Persecution.
Shame on The Daily Show for aggravating the hell out him while giving him a pass on his taxes and for playing into the Fox narrative that the IRS was secretly scheming with the Obama administration to get him re-elected. I thought your writers were better than this, but so far, you should be given a big grade of FAIL on this one.
