John Stewart's American Privilege History Lesson

[Mr Bean]

Mediaite

Jon Stewart opened his show tonight by ripping into Mitt Romney (for possibly the last time) over his claim that President Obama beat him because he offered gifts to people. Stewart mocked Romney by pulling out a literal giant gift bag filled with weed, contraceptives, and a piñata full of green cards. But Stewart saved his sharpest jabs for Bill O’Reilly over his implication that Obama’s reelection represents the end of traditional America.

RELATED: Bill O’Reilly Decries ‘Secular Progressives’ Who Are ‘Bent On Destroying Traditional America’

Stewart highlighted how much O’Reilly has bemoaned the end of traditional America, which apparently is a stake in the heart of “Leave it to Beaver” or something. When O’Reilly got around to the issue of whites now in the minority, Stewart pointed out that demographics in the United States are always changing, and there’s nothing you can really do about it.

Stewart got a little personal with O’Reilly, pointing out the United States’ history of bigotry against the Irish. As Stewart pointed out, newspapers that referred to the Irish as horrible people were at least progressive in the sense that they accepted the Irish were people.

Stewart also relaxed O’Reilly’s fears about American’s new religious outline and the “impact of creeping secularism” affecting Catholic support for Obama. As Stewart pointed out, Catholics were marginalized for decades in the U.S., and considering that a former president once sent the army into Utah to fight the Mormons, it’s pretty remarkable we almost had a Mormon president.

Stewart offered O’Reilly some soothing words of advice, telling him not to worry so much, because “America’s greatest tradition” is a “frightened ruling class lamenting the rise of a new ethnically and religiously diverse new class,” and every generation rises in the United States in order to give themselves and their children the opportunity to “shit on the next group” to show up.

This segment was award worthy in my opinion. Not sure what award but how Stewart covers the long American tradition of coming to America destitute and despised, working hard and making something of yourself. Becoming accepted and establishing your place in society. And then hating the next group of immigrants who come to America destitute and despised.

[JLTucker]

If O'Reilly was on the show, Stewart wouldn't have said any of that. He'd be his usual jokey self. If he had balls he would have called O'Reilly racist.

[Channel72]

Stewart's bit was pretty funny, but his focus on the racial aspect is somewhat of a strawman (I say somewhat because there's undeniable racism at work here). But if we really want to get down to it, conservatives like O'Reilly are scared shitless over what they see as the "anything goes" social aspect of liberalism - way more than they're scared of shifting demographics. I'm pretty sure the GOP and people like O'Reilly would embrace the Latino community if Hispanics typically voted Republican.

O'Reilly's argument is basically that the liberal agenda of on-demand abortions, legalizing pot (and I guess gay marriage) is part of an overall liberal/progressive social attitude where judgments about private behavior are off-limits. So why does O'Reilly think this is a bad thing? He argues that the erosion of "traditional values" (meaning a judgmental society rooted in a Christian ethic) leads to out-of-wedlock births and the destruction of the traditional family unit, which in turn drives poverty and crime.

http://www.foxnews.com/on-air/oreilly/i ... t_id=86923

So - that's the argument we should be attacking - not just "conservatives are racist!"

O'Reilly is obviously correct that poorer communities have higher rates of out-of-wedlock births, and that higher crime rates and less social mobility are also associated with these communities. But he's simply wrong that this is somehow associated with an overall liberal social agenda - it really has nothing whatsoever to do with abortion. The states with the highest rate of out-of-wedlock births are places like Mississippi, Louisiana and South Carolina - all conservative strongholds. Whereas, liberal Massachussets has one of the lowest out-of-wedlock birth rates. This indicates that out-of-wedlock births are mostly a result of socio-economic factors, rather than any kind of social ideology.

Of course, there's no question that out-of-wedlock births are increasing overall - and this trend is likely the result of myriad factors, including an increasingly less judgmental society. But conservatives argue that out-of-wedlock births are associated with poverty and crime - and they're right - but they're missing the larger picture. Out-of-wedlock births in places like Iceland and Sweden are also very high, but in these countries there is no correlation between out-of-wedlock births and crime/poverty, because single parents and children who fall through the cracks are better taken care of through government programs. Whereas, in the US, there IS a strong correlation between low-income/education levels and single parenting, because the US doesn't provide sufficient social safety nets. Yet, conservatives don't like government social safety nets - they want things like religious institutions and "traditional values" (Christian ethics) to act as the cohesive force that raises our children into productive citizens - because that's how they were raised.

So in order to really attack conservative ideology, we need to demonstrate that government social programs are better at raising happy, productive citizens than a society filled with judgmental Christians. This is pretty easy to do, given the various statistics relating on lifespan, education levels, and overall quality of life in places like Canada, Norway and Sweden versus the United States. Of course, even if we grant that religious institutions and traditional Christian ethics are somehow better at raising productive citizens than secular government social programs, the conservative position is still muddled and inconsistent. Abortions and homosexual marriage - far from actually causing out-of-wedlock birth or destroying families - actually decrease out-of-wedlock birth by definition.

[Simon_Jester]

If O'Reilly was on the show, Stewart wouldn't have said any of that. He'd be his usual jokey self. If he had balls he would have called O'Reilly racist.

He's a professional comedian, and not a shock comedy guy. Only shock comedy guys make a routine of insulting people to their face, I think.

[Themightytom]

If O'Reilly was on the show, Stewart wouldn't have said any of that. He'd be his usual jokey self. If he had balls he would have called O'Reilly racist.

He's a professional comedian, and not a shock comedy guy. Only shock comedy guys make a routine of insulting people to their face, I think.

I don't think O'Reilly would have any idea what to do if Stewart came directly after him and it would cost Stewart the opportunity to engage him in the future. As long as O'Reilly can tell himself Stewart is just a comedian at the end of the day the dialogue continues.

[JLTucker]

If O'Reilly was on the show, Stewart wouldn't have said any of that. He'd be his usual jokey self. If he had balls he would have called O'Reilly racist.

He's a professional comedian, and not a shock comedy guy. Only shock comedy guys make a routine of insulting people to their face, I think.

That's the problem. People take Stewart seriously when they shouldn't. Just look at Bean: he's praising someone who doesn't do this shit during an interview when he should. Stewart would have said none of this and would put up with it by casually throwing out a joke.

Themightytom: the dialogue is worthless when people joke instead of engaging ridiculous arguments.

Stewart could be so much more if he was like Bill Maher but toned down because of network standards.

[Grandmaster Jogurt]

I think Stewart probably does more good by keeping up a veneer of civility in all but the worst situations from his view. The people who'd enjoy him going for the throat are probably already on board, while such aggression would turn away a lot of people who appreciate his humorous spin on things.

[Mr Bean]

That's the problem. People take Stewart seriously when they shouldn't. Just look at Bean: he's praising someone who doesn't do this shit during an interview when he should. Stewart would have said none of this and would put up with it by casually throwing out a joke.

Excuse me, did you miss his interview Jim Cramer? Or the interview most view to getting Tucker Carlson laughed out of his hosting job? Or the last time he went on O'Riley's show? Heck do you not remember the 9/11 first responders show?

John Stewart has done more than any major media figure to change Washington narrative by lambasting the media time and again. And he does it by being funny and polite, not by being a dick and angry.

Stewart could be so much more if he was like Bill Maher but toned down because of network standards.

Yeah because remember when Barack Obama went on Bill Maher... oh wait.... the last time anything of consequence happened on Bill Maher show was when he went against the Bush administration and got kicked off the air for his troubles. Bill Maher does not get to ask important people big questions because he's an asshole and important people who don't want to answer questions don't go on his show for exactly that reason, they expect to be sandbagged.

By contrast Billo goes on time and time again despite being made to look like a fool at least once a week because Stewart does his job so well in being polite...funny and just as bitingly accurate as it is possible to be while still seeming polite.

[JLTucker]

Excuse me, did you miss his interview Jim Cramer? Or the interview most view to getting Tucker Carlson laughed out of his hosting job? Or the last time he went on O'Riley's show? Heck do you not remember the 9/11 first responders show?

Perhaps he should run for office if he is able to influence policy from his entertainer's chair. Did you see his interview last night? That's what happens almost every night. It's boring and pointless.

Yeah because remember when Barack Obama went on Bill Maher... oh wait.... the last time anything of consequence happened on Bill Maher show was when he went against the Bush administration and got kicked off the air for his troubles. Bill Maher does not get to ask important people big questions because he's an asshole and important people who don't want to answer questions don't go on his show for exactly that reason, they expect to be sandbagged.

As they should be. Stewart is too polite. They don't go on Maher's show because they would be demolished and not pampered by a compromising fool who lets horrible arguments slide by throwing out jokes.

[JLTucker]

If he's going to be hard on Cramer, which was nice, he should be hard on the governmental officials who come on. He picks and chooses when to be tough on the guests and it gets old. Did he put Obama to task on his failures? The drones? His lack of spine in fighting for single payer health care? I'm not talking about one off questions. I'm talking about going at him hard for being a failure in these areas. Stewart didn't. He decided to show a photo of Obama and Michelle instead.

[Block]

Tucker your argument is retarded. Just because style doesn't matter here, doesn't mean it doesn't matter. It is extremely important when dealing with people. Maher is basically everything that's wrong with the liberal left in this country, he is a smug asshole who belittles everyone who disagrees with him, lives a lifestyle that most people find morally repulsive, and throws that in everyone's face as an example of how enlightened he is. His message may often be right, but the way he presents it makes even people who agree with him turn away. Stewart realizes that even if he's right, if you smugly proclaim that to everyone who will listen as evidence of how much better you are, you turn them off. He can be harsh when he needs to be, like with Carlson and Cramer, but it's not his default mode, and it is so much more effective. You apparently didn't watch the extended interview with Napolitano if you think it was boring or pointless.

[JLTucker]

Who the hell is saying he should completely replicate Maher? I'm talking about going after people on his show in a consistent manner instead of picking and choosing. He doesn't have to have the assholish demeanor like Maher. He needs to quit throwing out stupid jokes to make serious topics light hearted. When he does that it comes off as him not having a rebuttal.

Why the hell would you be hard on Cramer but not Obama? The interview with Cramer was fantastic and if he employed that shit with every guest who he disagrees with, the interviews would be more tolerable. You can be harsh on someone's argument and not be a dick.

[Block]

He asked Napolitano last night about how he can stand by the unjustified conspiracy mongering about the Benghazi attack last night. He did so in a relatively gentle way, but still got his point across. As far as Obama, he teased him about the debates and asked what the hell happened within the first two sentences of the interview. He was fairly hard on him considering it was a couple weeks before the election and it was the candidate he supports. Did you want him to do Romney's job for him?

[JLTucker]

Tucker your argument is retarded. Just because style doesn't matter here, doesn't mean it doesn't matter. It is extremely important when dealing with people. Maher is basically everything that's wrong with the liberal left in this country, he is a smug asshole who belittles everyone who disagrees with him, lives a lifestyle that most people find morally repulsive, and throws that in everyone's face as an example of how enlightened he is. His message may often be right, but the way he presents it makes even people who agree with him turn away. Stewart realizes that even if he's right, if you smugly proclaim that to everyone who will listen as evidence of how much better you are, you turn them off. He can be harsh when he needs to be, like with Carlson and Cramer, but it's not his default mode, and it is so much more effective. You apparently didn't watch the extended interview with Napolitano if you think it was boring or pointless.

How is Maher's lifestyle remotely relevant to his ability to argue with his guests? And how is that any of your concern and why does it matter?

And yes, I saw the full interview. It was jokey bullshit mixed in with serious discussion. I don't like that. I want the subjects at hand to be given the amount of serious discussion they call for. Guests wouldn't be inclined to joke as often as they do to cover their arguments if Stewart didn't give them an environment to do so.

As far as Obama, he teased him about the debates and asked what the hell happened within the first two sentences of the interview. He was fairly hard on him considering it was a couple weeks before the election and it was the candidate he supports. Did you want him to do Romney's job for him?

I expect him to be tough on a person whose policies and strategies he disagrees with, like the excellent health care line last night. His support for Obama shouldn't preclude him from asking hard questions.

[Block]

He asked Obama about trading liberty for security, about wiretapping and reducing the powers of law enforcement, asked about Guantanamo, about the confusion about the reports from Benghazi, etc. He wasn't particularly soft on him. He wasn't as hard as he could have been, but why should he be? It's not his job, and guests come on because it's not a hostile environment, but they still get asked harder questions then they'd get asked in the main stream media.

[Carinthium]

Wish to nitpick a point here- if the US REALLY wanted to do something about shifting demographics, it wouldn't be as hard as they claim. A United States willing to be close to consciously racist could easily make a policy of expelling all people of Hispanic ethnicity without extraordinary proof of identity, for example. The trouble is that they can't use such policies without being able to rationalise them well (saying that it's the best way to expel massive numbers of illegal immigrants is the best I can think of, but probably not good enough).

Basically, the problem is that the conservatives who want these things done are too restrained, and that the American people, even the conservative ones, are too restrained to get the job done. Theoretically speaking, if it somehow got the support of the rest of the American people even a genocide of Hispanics would be feasible.

[Darth Wong]

Silly Americans ... you are just demonstrating why you need Question Period.

[Vaporous]

Silly Americans ... you are just demonstrating why you need Question Period.

That's true, but we'd turn it into a meaningless circus anyway.

[Flagg]

Silly Americans ... you are just demonstrating why you need Question Period.

We do, but it would just be Republicans calling Obama a nigger by the third time.

[Mr Bean]

Silly Americans ... you are just demonstrating why you need Question Period.

We do, but it would just be Republicans calling Obama a nigger by the third time.

And that would be useful use of their time. I see no downsides to Question Time (Which is what I thought it was called)

[JLTucker]

And that would be useful use of their time. I see no downsides to Question Time (Which is what I thought it was called)

That's what it's called in the UK.

[Darth Wong]

Stewart's bit was pretty funny, but his focus on the racial aspect is somewhat of a strawman (I say somewhat because there's undeniable racism at work here). But if we really want to get down to it, conservatives like O'Reilly are scared shitless over what they see as the "anything goes" social aspect of liberalism - way more than they're scared of shifting demographics. I'm pretty sure the GOP and people like O'Reilly would embrace the Latino community if Hispanics typically voted Republican.

O'Reilly's argument is basically that the liberal agenda of on-demand abortions, legalizing pot (and I guess gay marriage) is part of an overall liberal/progressive social attitude where judgments about private behavior are off-limits. So why does O'Reilly think this is a bad thing? He argues that the erosion of "traditional values" (meaning a judgmental society rooted in a Christian ethic) leads to out-of-wedlock births and the destruction of the traditional family unit, which in turn drives poverty and crime.

This itself seems like a strawman. Nowhere did Stewart say that any particular "new demographic" must be defined by race. He simply used race as an example of previous new groups which were shunned and accused of causing moral decay and economic ruin. In the past, it was the Irish ("lazy, criminal, drunkards, religious fanatics"), the Jews ("greedy, dishonest, untrustworthy"), and they always manufacture reasons why this group is dangerous and is leading to the downfall of society. Today it's gays and anyone else who doesn't follow "traditional morality", by which they mean "sexual norms".

The rationale keeps changing, but the basic mindset is the same: "it's different from us, so let's manufacture excuses to say that it will ruin society and must be eliminated".

O'Reilly is obviously correct that poorer communities have higher rates of out-of-wedlock births, and that higher crime rates and less social mobility are also associated with these communities. But he's simply wrong that this is somehow associated with an overall liberal social agenda - it really has nothing whatsoever to do with abortion. The states with the highest rate of out-of-wedlock births are places like Mississippi, Louisiana and South Carolina - all conservative strongholds. Whereas, liberal Massachussets has one of the lowest out-of-wedlock birth rates. This indicates that out-of-wedlock births are mostly a result of socio-economic factors, rather than any kind of social ideology.

One could have said the same thing about alcoholism, which was strongly associated with the Irish at one time. And yet, even though alcoholism was regarded as a moral failure for centuries, Americans eventually decided "OK, it's actually a sickness" and treated it as such.

Of course, there's no question that out-of-wedlock births are increasing overall - and this trend is likely the result of myriad factors, including an increasingly less judgmental society. But conservatives argue that out-of-wedlock births are associated with poverty and crime - and they're right - but they're missing the larger picture. Out-of-wedlock births in places like Iceland and Sweden are also very high, but in these countries there is no correlation between out-of-wedlock births and crime/poverty, because single parents and children who fall through the cracks are better taken care of through government programs. Whereas, in the US, there IS a strong correlation between low-income/education levels and single parenting, because the US doesn't provide sufficient social safety nets. Yet, conservatives don't like government social safety nets - they want things like religious institutions and "traditional values" (Christian ethics) to act as the cohesive force that raises our children into productive citizens - because that's how they were raised.

Again, this is really not so dissimilar from alcoholism. The question is whether we try to treat the problem, mitigate it, or just waste everyone's time with pointless preaching and demonizing.

So in order to really attack conservative ideology, we need to demonstrate that government social programs are better at raising happy, productive citizens than a society filled with judgmental Christians. This is pretty easy to do, given the various statistics relating on lifespan, education levels, and overall quality of life in places like Canada, Norway and Sweden versus the United States. Of course, even if we grant that religious institutions and traditional Christian ethics are somehow better at raising productive citizens than secular government social programs, the conservative position is still muddled and inconsistent. Abortions and homosexual marriage - far from actually causing out-of-wedlock birth or destroying families - actually decrease out-of-wedlock birth by definition.

That would require that everyone adopt an empirical mindset, which is unfortunately diametrically opposed to the religious culture which dominates everyman thinking.

[Vympel]

Wait - did Bill O'Reilly actually reference Leave it to Beaver? In 2012? I thought Republican's desperate pining for the fictional 1950s where everything was awesome didn't get that close to satire.

[Channel72]

This itself seems like a strawman. Nowhere did Stewart say that any particular "new demographic" must be defined by race. He simply used race as an example of previous new groups which were shunned and accused of causing moral decay and economic ruin. In the past, it was the Irish ("lazy, criminal, drunkards, religious fanatics"), the Jews ("greedy, dishonest, untrustworthy"), and they always manufacture reasons why this group is dangerous and is leading to the downfall of society. Today it's gays and anyone else who doesn't follow "traditional morality", by which they mean "sexual norms".

The rationale keeps changing, but the basic mindset is the same: "it's different from us, so let's manufacture excuses to say that it will ruin society and must be eliminated".

Stewart's bit likely took a cue from O'Reilly's sulking about "white Christian America" being in decline, but it seems the larger issue that conservatives are concerned about is a pan-demographic shift towards liberalism. In the past, allegations of moral decay were associated with an influx of new immigrants, like Irish or Jews, whereas now the accusations of moral decay are not particularly associated with any new demographic (except homosexuals). Conservatives complain about Latino immigrants stealing American jobs, not causing moral decay. Rather, the moral decay is associated with an overall social shift towards a more progressive, less judgmental attitude, with less emphasis on Christianity. The ironic thing, of course, is that today's Hispanic immigrants actually tend to be religious conservatives, but the GOP has so far been too stupid to capitalize on it.

[DPDarkPrimus]

Wait - did Bill O'Reilly actually reference Leave it to Beaver? In 2012? I thought Republican's desperate pining for the fictional 1950s where everything was awesome didn't get that close to satire.

I've watched a few episodes of Leave it to Beaver. It's actually way more progressive than the Right would like to remember.