Thursday, December 16, 2010

Making a point

Thursday night on The Daily Show Jon Stewart interviewed a group of 9/11 first responders to find out how they feel about the fact that our political leaders would rather filibuster over a tax bill for millionaires than pass a bill providing better health care for the people who risked their lives and contracted life threatening diseases from working at Ground Zero.

It's sad to see our leadership so out of touch with what's important, but what's great about what we do as entertainers is encapsulated in that Thursday night episode. We have a pulpit from which to explore the issues that matter. Jon Stewart makes no bones about leaning liberal - he doesn't claim to be unbiased - but he has always embraced his opportunity to point out madness in our society.

I'm glad there's still at least someone out there who is using television to make us aware of the crazy. That's what we get to do when we tell stories.

Personally I like to make people aware of big guns and explosions. But sometimes I make a point or two about women being all badass or something.

Anyway, thanks Jon. Thanks The Daily Show. You did a good thing.

3 comments:

  1. Yeah, it's always disgusting to see the system ground to a halt by partisan politics but this 9/11 Responders mess is a particularly repugnant example of the GOP acting like spoiled babies. I liked Jon's piece on Monday that pointed out how they'd never hesitated to exploit 9/11 for political gain. The line of the night might have been, "If you don't owe them medical costs, don't you at least owe them royalties?"

    On another note, Jon's hardly a hard-core liberal either, and most who've studied his opinions on the issues seem to conclude that he's a Libertarian. He did have great affection for the man McCain used to be and said on more than one occasion that he'd have voted for McCain in 2004 had it been an option over the other two guys.

    I don't think he considers himself Republican or Democrat, as it's pretty clear that his opinion of both parties is pretty low.

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  2. Poe's Law says a parody of the right is indistinguishable from the real thing. Like Fox News believing Onion stories (here) or a really special Christmas tree (here) (wait, that's real, oops, my bad).

    On the left, Jon Stewart, whose resorts to truth for parody. And in truthland (aka reality) heroes aren't being treated like heroes. This world is messed up.

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  3. Anonymous7:30 AM

    Hi Emily,
    This Christmas 2 week vac, I got some time to review script blogs and deciding which one to read. I'm going with yours. As for John Stewart, he is one smart cookie. One of the sharpest star on TV right now. Keep up the impressive work in 2011. He's awesome and very confident.

    Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays.
    Janice

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