Stewart Caught in the Crossfire
Something actually happens on a talk show!
By Dana Stevens
Updated Monday, Oct. 18, 2004, at 11:40 AM PT
Boy, I'm telling you. You spend one weekend in the boonies, visiting some crunchy friends with no TV set, and you miss out on the biggest television story in months: something actually happens on a political talk show! Moral of story: never go anywhere, and watch as much TV as possible. But meme time be damned: I just have to say a few words about Jon Stewart's live freakout on Crossfire last Friday. Well, perhaps not so much "freakout" as "searing moment of lucidity."
Hosts Tucker Carlson and Paul Begala had invited Stewart on the show to "take a break from campaign politics" (Carlson's words), have a few laughs, and promote his new book, America (The Book). Too bad for them that the host of The Daily Show had another agenda in mind. Within less than a minute, the interview degenerated (or ascended, depending on your point of view) into an encounter of the sort not often-OK, never-seen on the talk-show circuit. Stewart was like the cool college roommate you bring home for Thanksgiving only to spend the evening squirming as he savages your parents' bourgeois values. "Right now, you're helping the politicians and the corporations," he told the dueling pundits. "You're part of their strategies. You are partisan, what do you call it, hacks."
Things quickly escalated into a full-scale food-fight. Carlson accused Stewart of being John Kerry's "butt boy" and "sniffing his throne." Stewart parried by making fun of Carlson's signature bow tie and calling him a "dick." (Think I'm kidding? Watch the clip yourself.) When Carlson goaded Stewart to "be funny. Come on, be funny," Stewart responded, "I'm not going to be your monkey." The audience laughed uncomfortably. Begala hung back in either shame or fear, popping up hopefully every few minutes with another opening for a joke or a plug. "Let me change the subject," he begged as Stewart railed, "Where's your moral outrage on this?"
A trot through the blogosphere suggests that Stewart's hyper-sincere Crossfire turn may have cost him a few fans, even as it solidified his diehard base. I wouldn't be surprised if the news media's recent crush on Stewart -the rave reviews of America, the high-profile journalists appearing on his show-turned a corner after this. As America: The Book makes clear, nobody likes a civics lecture. But you'd be hard-pressed to ask for more entertaining television than Friday's live smackdown. Stewart's naked appeal to his hosts to "please stop, stop, stop. Stop hurting America," had a loopy, apocalyptic power. It burned a hole in the screen, like Peter Finch as the crazed anchorman in Network, bellowing, "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore."
A while back, I called Jon Stewart the "court jester" of this election. But he may be more like the fool in King Lear, speaking brutal truth to a king who is already too far gone to hear it. Sure, Stewart's job is to make us laugh, not to lecture us. But as Lear's fool asked, "May not an ass know when the cart draws the horse?"
Article URL: http://slate.msn.com/id/2108346/
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