(h/t David)
I really did not think that anyone mentioned during his segment where Jon Stewart told the media to go f*ck themselves for using him to attack the Affordable Care Act would respond to Stewart's criticism, but I was wrong. I should have known Howard Kurtz and his ego weren't going to let it go without bringing it up.
On Fox News’ Media Buzz Sunday morning, host Howard Kurtz continued the back and forth between media critics who claim that the Daily Show host Jon Stewart’s mockery of Obamacare was a watershed moment for the law, and Stewart’s response that he’s just a comedian whose equal opportunity jokes shouldn’t be taken as bellwethers of political opinion.
“This is a neat little game that Jon Stewart is playing,” Kurtz said. “He wants to be a cutting-edge media and political critic—remember the Rally for Sanity in Washington?—and he’s good at it! But if you say he’s having an impact, he says, ‘Wuh? I don’t have any impact. I’m just a guy telling smutty jokes on basic cable.’” [...]
“Jon Stewart making fun of Obamacare was a symbolic moment, the same with SNL mocking Kathleen Sebelius, but these things matter,” Kurtz said. “Do we in the media overuse these clips to oversimplify issues? We’re guilty, Jon, we’re guilty! But keep ‘em coming.”
Which of course misses Stewart's main point, which is that they ignore him when it suits them. Kurtz played that portion of the segment from The Daily Show where Stewart mentions just that, but did not respond to it.
And I'm not sure just what "impact' Kurtz thinks that Rally to Restore Sanity had on anybody. We're still electing wingnut TeaBirchers to office, backed by billionaires that don't give a damn about the interest of their constituents and a whole lot of that rally was nothing more than a big heaping helping of the "both sides" false equivalency game where pretending that if everyone was just a little nicer to each other, all would be well with our politics, rather than focusing on policies that have been destroying what's left of the middle class in America. I guess the pundits believed it had an impact, since it gave them an excuse to justify playing the same game.
