Did anyone see that British drunk right-wing bastard on the daily show? It's sort of scary that the only person who can report news and question far right-wingers bullshit is on comedy central.
If you are referring to Christopher Hitchens, yes I saw it. I've been reading his columns for awhile now. Most of the time I do not agree with him, however, I thought he came off more coherent on the Daily Show than in his more recent columns. It was one of those interviews where my admiration for Stewart increased and left me wondering why you don't see that sort of thing in "real" news.
In "real news" they never ask tough questions because they need to have the reputation for asking soft questions if they want to have any interviews with big name guests who can pick and choose their interviewers. Hitchens needs exposure to remain in the pundit circuit. Hitchens can't pick and choose his exposure. The daily show is very big and doesn't have the normal news talk audience of mostly 50 years old and older people so daring guests might tollerate troublesome questions from Stewart that they would not tolerate from anybody else.
The Daily Show and Jon Stewart in particular have been praised highly in all quarters. "Real" newspeople feel honored to be in his presence and regard him as serious competition. Politicians of every stripe fall all over each other to make an appearance on the show. Its target demographic is suspicious of the "regular" news sources and arguably gets as much or more information from Jon Stewart as all other sources combined. Considering this heavy responsibility, he does a great job. The fact that the cable channel on which the show appears is called "Comedy Central" is amusing but not troublesome. After all, there's another cable channel called "Music Television" that has not broadcast a significant quantity of music for more than a decade. Is anyone else old enough to remember when TRL showed videos in their entirety? Viva Jon Stewart!
