Clear...as mud

I used to really enjoy Jon Stewart, and get a real kick out of the Daily Show and its mockery of the media's sensationalism and garbage. Stewart makes a better Daily Show host than Craig Kilborn ever was: nebbishy and self-mocking where Kilborn was snide and above-it-all (not that being snide and above-it-all wasn't funny. But Stewart's funny is far more welcoming). And most of the time Stewart, though an out-and-out Democrat, wasn't so doctrinaire as to ignore the insanity coming from his side of the aisle. I recall just before the start of the Iraq War, Stewart made a point of mocking the conspiracy hippies who opposed the war.


I haven't watched the show once since the spring, but I haven't watched much of any TV since the spring, since I don't have TV (culture rebel am I). But when the opportunity to watch TDS has arisen, I've made a determined effort to avoid it. The politics is wearing on the funny. Mostly this is because sharing a joke requires a shared sense of what is absurd, and Jon and I don't necessarily share that anymore. I can appreciate his technique but still find the end product annoying instead of amusing.


The post-debate commentary I caught at my folks' house over the weekend provides the clearest example. They showed the clip of Kerry saying something to the effect of:

I have always said that Saddam was a threat, and that there was a right way and a wrong way to disarm him. This President chose the wrong way.

To which Steward commented:

Blah-de-blah, there he goes again...wait a minute, that was pretty clear.

And I was left with this warm explosion of "NO IT WASN'T!" inside my head.


Kerry's statement gives us no details as to a) why the President's way is the "wrong way." or b) what the "right way" is, and why it's the "right way." Yet the media fawns all over his performance, as shaking off the "flip-flopper" vibe. But the statement and much of what else he said in the debate was vintage Kerry: trying to be on all sides of the issue. He sounds like he's for war in principle, and he sounds like he's against this particular war, or how it was waged, or how it was declared, or something, and he sounds like he's making a clear statement when he's doing nothing of the kind.


And this is why I avoid debates. They're not just boring, they're empty: two guys trying to put on the show of being presidential without actually revealing anything that might actually change anybody's mind. Kerry has no policy on Iraq, other than Bush did it wrong, and he'll do better because he'll be nicer to the world. And to listen to Bush, you'd be hard pressed to know what he's doing in Iraq, other than not running away.


We know why this is: television is awful at conveying anything other than the immediate. It's a phony alternate to reality. The debates don't gauge anything but which guy acts most presidential when the cameras are on, when 90% of what the POTUS does is off-camera: policy meetings, intelligence briefings, signing executive orders, etc. I want to have the guy who knows what he's doing when its time to push legislation through or make a decision and stick with it. Bush's legislative and foreign policy record have demonstrated to me that he knows how to do that. Nothing Kerry has done (done, not said) has indicated the same.


But his mush is treated as gold, and this gets ignored.