I think the Atlantic's criticism is exaggerated, but so are the defenses of Stewart.
With response Dave, if the Atheist Community is unable to detect a difference between Scientology and the Presbyterian Church, then it suggests atheists can be as blind and irrational as christians. The expectation for questioning Cruise is not based on the implausibility of Scientology's theological claims (if so, then it would be appropriate to ask if we would expect Stewart to grill a Catholic celebrity on the logic of transubstantiation). The predicate here is the documentary "Going Clear", which was on HBO just this April, and has recently been nominated for several Emmys. The documentary does not make fun of Scientology's theology, it alleges clear instances of abusive and potentially illegal behavior, many specifically revolving around Cruise himself. As noted in the Atlantic piece: "The movie alleges, among other things, that the actor personally profited > from slave labor (church members who were paid 40 cents an hour to outfit > the star’s airplane hangar and motorcycle), and that his former girlfriend, > the actress Nazanin Boniadi, was punished by the Church by being forced to > do menial work after telling a friend about her relationship troubles with > Cruise." Not asking Cruise about these allegations in his first media availability since the doc aired is more like not asking a Catholic celebrity directly implicated in the pedophile controversy about those charges, than just a policy of not getting into an interview subject's religious beliefs. OTOH, The Atlantic does seem to overstate its criticism of Stewart, almost as if it has never actually seen an episode of TDS. The Peabody's and other critical acclaim have not been based on Stewart's interviews of celebrities, but on his political satire and media criticism. Stewart has only one peer in interviewing non-fiction book authors (Colbert), and is among the best in interviewing politicians and journalists. But he has long been at the bottom when it comes to interviewing celebrities, and his Cruise interview was just as trivial and meandering as the vast majority of his celebrity interviews have always been. If Bill Cosby were doing a media tour I don't think Stewart or really most other reputable outlets at this point would not focus on the rape charges. I don't think Cruise is quite at the Cosby level, and it is a judgement call how to handle him. IN a six minute promotional interview it would be tough to pivot from "how do you do all those stunts?" to 2.5 minutes of "do you really let the church of Scientology pimp girls out to you, and then punish them if they say anything critical about you or the Church?". If Stewart had said to Cruise's people "he can come on the show, but we are first going to do a segment on "Going Clear", and then ask Cruise questions about it during the interview" I would not have criticized him (though of course Cruise would never have agreed to that). The real problem, also noted by The Atlantic, is that Mission: Impossible is a Viacom property, as is TDS. I doubt Viacom ordered Stewart not to embarrass Cruise, but under the circumstances, it would have been best practice if TDS had found some way of making the conflict of interest transparent on the episode, and perhaps noted that, as is almost always the case with celebrity interviews, they had decided to keep the interview light. If the Atlantic gives Stewart's Cruise interview an "F", I would give it (grading on the typical TDS celebrity interview curve) a "C". > On Fri, Jul 31, 2015 at 9:30 AM, 'Dave Sikula' via TVorNotTV < tvornottv@googlegroups.com> wrote: > Or maybe he didn't ask him anything because he was there to promote a > movie and not Scientology. Unless we expected that he'd ask a Christian > guest (out of nowhere), "Hey, what's the deal with that coming back to life > thing? Was Jesus a zombie, or what?" To some of us in the atheist > community, Xenu isn't that far removed from Jehovah. There was no reason > for him to go there and I'm glad he didn't. Who cares, ultimately? > > --Dave Sikula > > > On Thursday, July 30, 2015 at 1:58:59 PM UTC-7, Steve Timko wrote: >> >> I was wondering the same thing. Stewart was such a fan boy. >> >> >> http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2015/07/tom-cruise-jon-stewart-the-daily-show-scientology-mission-impossible-rogue-nation/399956/ >> > -- > -- > TV or Not TV .... The Smartest (TV) People! > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google > Groups "TV or Not TV" group. > To post to this group, send email to tvornottv@googlegroups.com > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > tvornottv-unsubscr...@googlegroups.com > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/tvornottv?hl=en > --- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "TVorNotTV" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to tvornottv+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. > -- -- TV or Not TV .... The Smartest (TV) People! 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