Rachel Maddow interviews Jon Stewart which should fill me with happiness, but which ended up leaving me wearing my sad face. Update.

It is not hyperbole on my part to say that my two MOST FAVORITE television personalities, both on and off cable, are Jon Stewart and Rachel Maddow. So much so that when there was a screw up and I was left without Comedy Central Tuesday night I became very upset and kind of took it out on the cable representative after they told me that they could not do anything about it until 7:30 the next morning when business hours resumed. (By the way if you are that technician I want to apologize to you for my harsh language.  I am sure that nobody actually had to tie a porkchop around your neck to get the dog to play with you and that your parents were indeed married when you were born.)

So of course the very idea of Rachel interviewing Jon kind of made my nipples stand up and say "Howdy."

However after watching the interview I, and my nipples, are feeling very.......confused and unsatisfied.  How could this be?

Here is the first segment where Rachel tries to get Jon to clarify what he was trying to say during the "Rally to Restore Sanity."

Umm does anybody else feel that Jon just ran over Santa Claus with his car?

Part Two. Okay in this portions I am able to see what Stewart is saying but my defenses keep going up everytime he seems to portray Fox News and MSNBC as two sides of the same coin. I understand his point about raising the decibel level but I also know that when somebody is addressing the crowd with a bullhorn and telling them to riot while you are whispering for the crowd to stay calm, that the bullhorn is going to have a much greater impact. In other words what choice did MSNBC have if they wanted to be heard over the cacophony issuing forth from Fox?

Now for this third portion I am going to embed the video. I want to make sure everybody sees it for themselves because watching Jon Stewart serve as an apologist for George W. Bush makes me feel like I am losing my grip on sanity.



There is NO way to excuse what Bush did.  He DID in fact engage in war crimes.  He DID destroy the economy through insane policies.  He DID purposefully lie to Americans to start war unnecessarily and sent thousands of soldiers to their death for NO GOOD REASON!  He DID allow torture to be used on enemy combatants even though it is against our laws and has seriously damaged our credibility throughout the world.
Those are facts. And until today I believed that Jon Stewart knew that at least as well as I did.

Here is part four, in which Jon seems to walk back the idea that he should be considered a credible source of information on par with actual news programs.

In this last part Stewart tries to define the line between what he does and what people like Rachel do.

I have no idea how many of these any of you are willing to sit through, and of course you probably did not visit my blog to sit and watch an entire Rachel Maddow show.  But I thought there was something very informative and, in many ways, important about this interview.

So for those of you without the time, the inclination, or the high speed internet connection to watch these videos let me see if  I can sum up what it feels to me Jon Stewart is trying to say.

In my opinion Stewart has begun to feel that certain people want him to be a leader, when all he wants to be is the court jester.  In order for him to do his job, he HAS to stay somewhat neutral but people are demanding that he pick a side and ONLY make jokes at the expense of the OTHER side. When he pokes fun at the liberals some of his fans clearly feel a sense of betrayal.

That makes Stewart feel like he is boxed in and essentially takes away half of his material.  Those of us old enough to remember Johnny Carson know full well that he glibly made jokes at the expense of BOTH Republican and Democratic Presidents. In fact nobody really knew what Carson's politics were until after he left the Tonight Show.

Jon Stewart let the cat out of the bag concerning his political point of view a long time ago and now feels that it has caused people to have unrealistic expectations about who he is and what he should do with his show.

I get that.  But after all of those years of Stewart applying comedic comfort to my badly damaged psyche during the terrible, and painful eight years of the George Bush administration I am not sure I can just accept the idea of him going back to being JUST a comedian.  There were times when his ability to find the humor in the most horrible situations helped me to hang onto my sanity when I seriously was not sure I could do it anymore.  Later on Keith Olbermann did much the same thing for me, but at first it was all Stewart, and thank God he was there.

I am not at all convinced that after becoming a culture hero to millions of Americans that Stewart can go back to simply being the court jester, but it IS his life,  and if that is what he wants to do I guess we will just have to accept it.

Update:  Here is the entire uncut interview on The Maddow Blog.

Commenter's were right in suggesting that seeing it in its uncut version does change the perspective to some degree.  I am still left feeling a little abandoned, but perhaps I feel a smidgen less sad.