IT shows how gifted Jon Stewart is that his best moment happened on someone else’s show. He appeared in 2004 on “Crossfire,”
a CNN yelling program, and asked the hosts to take seriously their
responsibility to public understanding by having useful conversations
instead of shouting matches.
It
was Mr. Stewart’s finest hour. He made an earnest pitch for civility in
a place where there really was none. Which makes it too bad that in his
16 years of hosting “The Daily Show,” he never lived up to his own
responsibility. His prodigious talents — he was smart and funny, and
even more of both when he was mad — perfectly positioned him to purge a
particular smugness from our discourse. Instead, he embodied it. I loved
watching him, and hated it too.
Many
liberals, but not conservatives, believe there is an important
asymmetry in American politics. These liberals believe that people on
opposite sides of the ideological spectrum are fundamentally different.
Specifically, they believe that liberals are much more open to change
than conservatives, more tolerant of differences, more motivated by the
public good and, maybe most of all, smarter and better informed.
No comments:
Post a Comment