Jon Stewart: Part of the Problem?

Now lest some recent conversations lead you to think that I don't greatly appreciate Jon Stewart let me make it clear. I like him a lot.

Monday night's episode of The Daily Show had a point to make. And perhaps he says it better than I did in my last post: it's not about the people. It's about the theme.

As you can see from tonight, we're all a little chafed here about this whole "some parts of the country are real and American and other parts are not. And uh this weekend I was performing at Northeastern and I kinda had just read the statements that Sarah Palin had made about you know the pro-America parts of the country and I think I might have said in response to that I think I mighta said uh…fuck you.

And…uh…you know that's just my way of saying I think that's a profanity to say, and I was answering with a profanity. But it's not really fair and it makes it seem like…uh…I'm just addressing Governor Palin about this and I'm not. It's really this whole entire theme that there's more-American areas, or some people love the country, some people don't. So I guess what I meant to say was Fuck all yall.

McCain: "I Screwed Up."

Letterman never rolls over for his guests but he has learned to be respectful and ask fair questions. He wasn't always like that. And every once in a while, when necessary, he can snap. Remember O'Reilly's appearance?

McCain's appearance was a fair encounter. He tried the stump speech lines. Healthy smatterings of applause. He made a few jokes. Some laughs. He explained his last cancellation as a clear mistake. I screwed up he said. Was he admitting that it was a campaign stunt? Or was he just patronizing Dave? Either way it was a little uncomfortable there for about a minute. The line got its laugh and applause. But it was probably more from agreement than amusement.

The meat of the interview came towards the end when Letterman decided to question McCain's ingenuousness in choosing the push the Ayers connection.

A two-fold challenge:
Is serving on a board the same as palling around? It's a thin connection and Letterman called McCain on it. Are they double-dating? Are they going to dinner? What are they doing? Are they driving cross-country? He made the point that Obama's connection to Bill Ayers should be no more damning that McCain's connection to G. Gordon Liddy. Letterman pressed, You will also admit that we cannot really control who we interact with in our lives a hundred percent.

He pushed another challenge that I hadn't heard yet. Palin said terrorists but they only named one. When asked why she made the accusation in the plural McCain had to resort to a There's millions of words said in the campaign. C'mon now. C'mon, there's millions of words. There's millions of words. So… we shouldn't listen?

It came through pretty clearly that Letterman wasn't buying McCain's lines. Especially on the preparedness of Sarah Palin. He probably could have moved in on some of those issues with specific challenges like he had on the Ayers lines. Because that's really an issue. I don't judge McCain if he really is afraid of Ayers. But if he isn't afraid of Palin being president I can only imagine it's because he knows that could only mean that he no longer has to worry about anything. And that's really selfish.