Jon Stewart slams Mitch McConnell for taking credit for economic recovery
Jon Stewart called our Mitch McConnell. Inasmuch as this is funny, he is doing us all a favor. The traditional mainstream media allows obstructionists to get away with their bad deeds and then take credit for the fruits of those that cultivated success.
Jon Stewart first played a montage of clips where Mitch McConnell was disparaging all of President Obama’s policies. He shows McConnell blasting the stimulus as not working when the fact is that without a shadow of any doubt, the stimulus worked. He claimed that the bill to reign in Wall Street would stifle growth when Wall Street reform has proven more successful than expected. McConnell claimed Obamacare would cost jobs. It turns out the opposite is true.
Why is a comedian/satirist important in our ‘news’ coverage? Because the news media is scared of providing news by challenging misinformation. How do we know that? We know that because they told us so not implicitly but explicitly. NBC’s Chuck Todd said as much in the following exchange on Meet The Press.
Lewis Black had a backhanded stab at Chuck Todd and the traditional mainstream media news that caused Chuck Todd to tell an inconvenient truth.
“I have watched you and everybody else where somebody comes on,” Lewis Black said. “I don’t know how you do it. Because I would be barking at them. Because they sit there and go ‘glib glib [blah blah]’ and you sit there.”
Chuck Todd then interjected. “We all sit there because we all know the first time we bark is the last time we do the show,” Chuck Todd said. “… All of a sudden, no one will come on your show.”
W. Kamau Bell came in with an interesting point. He said that many times the traditional mainstream media uses the comedian’s satire to say what they dare not say. In effect comedians get to bark. He points out an interesting exception.
“The weird thing is that Fox News also gets to bark,” W. Kamau Bell said “And I think sometimes the left leaning media is afraid of barking.”
One hopes that as the traditional news media continues to be challenged by ‘good reporting by satirist/comedians’ they will change. Better, one hopes Americans become more discriminating with their sources of information as they become less gullible to the sound bites.