stewart does that fox news thing again
There is an ad out there, a Countdown clock counting down the days (0), hours (2 or 3 or 4 or 5 at this point) and minutes (however many) and seconds (SECONDS!!!) until the start of Keith Olbermann’s debut program on Current TV.
I can see the desire for this big push, and “EVENT” tagging. Keith Olbermann will surely do for Al Gore’s Current TV what Dan Rather did for Mark Cuban’s HDNet TV. (That’s not fair: Rather is in the “journalism watched by few people business but we’ll do it anyway“, Olbermann is in the loudmouth pundit business.)
Maybe you saw the Jon Stewart appearance on Fox News’s Chris Wallace? I suppose it’s one of those things you lob off to Stewart meeting with Bill O’Reilly on the matter of the “Common” “scandal“. Looking for some reactions, here’s the headline at “Red State”: Chris Wallace schools Jon Stewart. No, seriously. This is a fun-house mirror view which makes Jon Stewart’s point. But it could be worse — by way of moving into Internet comments threads — out of two dimensional thought processes and into one dimension.
What strikes me about Chris Wallace’s stances — having to move past the “Fair and Balance” positioning of Fox News while seamlessly without realizing the contradiction jumping to the line that Fox News finally “Provides the ‘Other‘ Side” —
No, that is at least understandable and fully expected– what strikes me more than that, is his bizarre look at “other programming on Comedy Central” — a clip of some instantly forgettable rowdy thing or other circa 2007 and some premises and titles for a few South Park episodes. I do not really know what this was getting at — the best I can think of is that it’s giving Fox News’s “cultural conservative” audience grist for their notions — South Park as the Barbarians bringing the culture to the Gates of Hell.
It is interesting to note that in the last decade, South Park was heralded and celebrated as heralding “Conservative” views, and to a pretty good extent Parker and Stone do bring forth a Libertarian-ish sometimes Conservative point of view within the show. (And, for that matter, their Broadway show about Mormons is seen as gracious and celebratory of the religion and religion in general, and “Team America: World Police” was essentially pro-war in its outlook.)  That being said, when South Park started being touted for its politics, Parker and Stone reportedly became a little nervous and purposefully steered the show away from such conclusions. (The better to avoid a type of cultural burn-out that comes with becoming a political barometer force.)