Yes, the failed actor and failed director, so-so stand up Jon Stewart had lousy reporter Judith Miller on The Daily Show and he ripped her a new one.
What a manly man he is, as Kat noted.
She was being sarcastic, so am I.
Is it sexism?
Yes, it is.
He'd never rip into Thomas Friedman, for example, whose efforts to sell an illegal war are largely overlooked today this despite the fact that Friedman's audience was larger than Judith Miller's (columnists are syndicated and Friedman had an audience -- a regular one -- across the nation; Miller's stories were syndicated and read by some but more people will read a column in a print newspaper than will read a news report -- and we were dealing primarily with print in 2002 and 2003).
Thomas Friedman's been a guest of Jon's how many times? June 2, 2004, April 5, 2005, June 12, 2006, October 3, 2011, November 11, 2008 . . .
That would be the same Friedman who Dan Murphy and the Christian Science Monitor would delicately label an "Iraq war booster." As Amitabh Pal noted last June at The Progressive:
Thomas Friedman can wax pompous on the Iraq disaster, as he did in Sunday’s New York Times, without acknowledging his own cheerleading for the U.S. invasion of Iraq, which led directly to the current catastrophe. In his piece, Friedman chastises everyone from Iran to the Arabs for the calamity in Iraq in his usual glib style. (He actually uses the phrase: “This Bud’s for you.”)
But one principal actor is missing: the Bush invasion Friedman backed.
Judith Miller's a disgrace, I'm not pretending she's anything but a disgrace.
But she's also the pinata and this is a round of bash the bitch, it is not accountability time.
Because she's a disgrace, Jon Stewart beats up on her to prove how manly he is.
But Thomas Friedman?
Jon Stewart just keeps bringing him back on and never holds Friedman accountable.
More to the point, Friedman and Miller are the press.
Kat pointed out that Jon Stewart went soft on Donald Rumsfeld.
That's far from the only war planner Jon's gone soft on.
He had Colin The Blot Powell on his program June 12, 2012.
And where was Jon's outrage?
The man who lied to the United Nations, whose lying remarks led to "case closed!" columns around the country on whether or not the US should go to war with/on Iraq and Jon had no harsh questions.
Nor when he had Colin on June 8, 20005 -- when he let Colin blame the international community for not stopping the Iraq War.
But Judith Miller? That's who he can rip apart.
Miller's a disgrace.
We've called her out.
But we've called out other journalists who sold the illegal war to the public and we've called out the War Hawks in the administrations that keep bringing us war.
All Jon Stewart did was go after the easiest target in the world.
And he wasn't funny, let's point that out too.
Judith Miller is a disgrace and a very easy target.
Let's not mistake Jon's bullying of a disgraced reporter as bravery or humor.
He's a coward who has played the coward in public throughout the last seven years.
It's past time for him to go.
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