If he believes he [Jon Stewart] has no political viewpoint, that’s ludicrous. For him to now say, ‘‘I’m not in the media, I’m not poised in this world of political expression, I never take gratuitous shots at people or go over the top and I’m not particularly pointed in one direction,’’ each of those things was ludicrous.
Keith Olbermann
Reaction, by ericmortensen:
I don’t think that’s what Stewart is saying. I think people are putting a lot of words in his mouth. The rally for sanity and the messaging around it was best summed up by the Oprah appearance he made before the rally:
“Seventy to 80 percent of the people in this country are reasonable, nice individuals, may disagree on principle on things, but could come up with rational compromises, could accomplish things, could get things done, could live with the results. And then the other 15 to 20 percent of the country run the place. People don’t have time to take sides and to shout. ’Crazy’ gets on television, but ‘normal’ has to make dinner.”
Let’s look at that last line again.
“‘Crazy’ gets on television, but ‘normal’ has to make dinner.”
The media is frustrated with Stewart because he rejects their framework. He’s not using the accepted narrative, which is, ‘Crazy Republicans’ get on television, but ‘normal Democrats’ have to make dinner. Or vice versa. He’s not talking about Republicans or Democrats at all.
This is very hard for those in the media to digest.
Olbermann refers to Stewart’s “political viewpoint”, which underscores exactly what Stewart is getting at. Not everything is political. Not everything is black and white, left and right, us versus them.
Much of the uproar over the rally came from the video montages, with most people focusing only on the yelling political pundits. But there was more. There was the montage of sensationalist news reports about dirty hotel remote controls. It was riddled with fear, despite the fact that virtually nobody has ever gotten sick from using a hotel remote control. Then there was the bit about people driving in their cars and merging into a single lane.
His criticisms of the media:
- 24/7 news yells at us all day. They insist on riling us up. The left, right and so-called moderate or objective news organizations do this.
- 24/7 news insists on framing everything as left versus right and us versus them. They tell us we’re different, or opposed, even though we spend 99% of our lives getting along just fine. CNN does it because they think that’s an appropriate way to report the news. Fox does it because it makes them a ton of money. MSNBC does it so they can compete with Fox. But they reduce every last American to the political left or right. They never dig any deeper. They never seek a different perspective.
24/7 news pits people against each other. Stewart calls it tribalism. I think that’s apt. And that’s what’s happening here. Stewart isn’t talking about left vs. right, but 24/7 news is turning it into that anyway.
But this isn’t some kumbaya shit. It wasn’t the rally for unity. It was the rally for sanity. It wasn’t, “can’t we just get along?” It was “most of us get along just fine so why is TV telling us otherwise?”
Reaction by me, bigboxcar:
I need to ruminate more on what ericmortensen has written above, but I really like the vibe of his analysis. I lament the way politics has become the ‘us’ vs ‘them’. Maybe it will work itself out. Or maybe the crazy will continue to get on TV and I will continue to have to make dinner.