When a few people own and run the entire news and entertainment industry, the result is mediocrity ....... hour after boring hour of getting the viewing public to create their own entertainment by being the star on their own television show. Add a few lights, sprinkle around a few dancers and voila ....... the cheapest show with the highest profit margin available. You only have to pay 10% of the cast, the cameramen, the lighting engineers, the director ...... and of course the judges ......... the rest turn up for free, allow themselves to be humiliated [for the publics entertainment] and disappointed ........ and this goes on and on relentlessly, week after week ....... month after month ...... It's a horror show.
Thank God that there is still some quality TV viewing out there for those that I like to call ' alive '. The walking dead can have their mind numbing drivel, they can order in Pizza every weekend and sit there like zombies as Dermot or Davina or Anton Dec teases them them with some idiot or other, " OMG, will he ? " .... " keep watching folks, you'll find out in a few months ".
The Daily Show is one of the few TV shows I watch anymore. I realize that it is a comedy show but I learn more from watching it than I do from watching actual news channels. The mixture of entertainment and real news, delivered by an unbiased, educated and enquiring mind like John Stewart's is a joy to watch. Many republicans will say that Stewart is very pro democratic, but the fact is that no side gets a free ride on The Daily Show.
Here's a clip of Barack Obama on yesterdays show
It says alot about the esteem that John Steward is held in that a sitting President is willing to be grilled on his show .............. " You ran on very high rhetoric, hope and change, and the Democrats this year seemed to be running on 'Please, baby, one more chance,' " said talk show host Jon Stewart last night, setting the tone for his interview with President Barack Obama.
Stewart asked, " Are you disappointed in how it's gone ? Are you surprised that other people, even your base, can be disappointed ..... ?"
Obama answered that on taking office his advisers, looking at what was happening in the economy, warned him, "Enjoy this now because two years from now folks are going to be frustrated." And that is what has happened, Obama said.
With unemployment running at 9.6 percent, housing values crashing, and the weak but slowly growing economy failing to replace the 8 million lost jobs, "folks are going to be frustrated." Obama made it clear that he was not surprised.
The president himself took a remarkably positive view of his term thus far.
" I look over the last 18 months and I say we prevented the second great depression, we've stabilized the economy, an economy that was shrinking is now growing, we've had nine months of consecutive private sector job growth, we have passed historic health care reform, historic financial regulatory reform, we have done things that some folks don't even know about .... "
Stewart interjected with mock surprise, " What have you done that we don't know about ?" Then he cut to a commercial break. The bell had been rung on the opening round.
On returning, Stewart went right back on the offensive, pointing out that the Democrats did not seem to be running on Obama's list of accomplishments. The president may be proud but many Democrats don't seem to share his sense of pride. Stewart pointed out that a commercial for the midterm elections running in West Virginia shows a fellow taking a rifle and shooting the cap and trade bill; the fellow's a Democrat !
" Is the difficulty that you have here the distance between what you ran on and what you delivered ? You ran with such, if I may, audacity. So much of what you said was, uh, great leaders lead . . . yet legislatively it has felt timid at times . . . (even) I am not sure what you want out of the health care bill," Stewart continued.
Obama profoundly disagreed. " I don't want to lump you in with a lot of other pundits," he said, and then went on to do just that by delivering a defence of the health care bill that answered the attacks of media pundits everywhere.
" You've got 30 million people who are going to get health insurance as a consequence of this, you've got a patient's bill of rights that makes sure that insurance companies can't drop you when you get sick if you've been paying premiums, makes sure there aren't lifetime limits, makes sure that kids . . . can stay on their parent's health insurance until they are 26, and cuts the deficit by over a trillion dollars."
Obama said the problem is that even though he got 90 percent of what he wanted, the focus is on the 10 percent he didn't.
But Stewart held to his position saying,
" I don't mean to lump you in with other presidents." [laughter] . . . You ran on the idea that this system needed basic reform. It feels like some of the reforms that have passed, like health care, have been done in a very political manner that has papered over a foundation that is corrupt."
" That I think is fair," Obama replied, and went on to point out that "over the past two years in an emergency situation our basic attitude was 'we've got to get some things done, in some cases quickly.' Under these restrictive demands, we worked with the process rather than transforming it. There's no doubt that that frustrated folk. It frustrates me."
He said that as president he would "love not to have a sixty vote requirement that is not in the constitution but is in the Senate rules right now . . . I can't get a deputy secretary of treasury in the middle of a financial crisis because somebody's holding it up . . . filibustering the appointment."
Obama made it very clear that there are many things in the political process that he would like to see changed and the filibuster rules are among those at the top of his list.
DON'T FORGET THAT JOHN STEWART'S 'RALLY TO RESTORE SANITY' [ALONG WITH STEPHEN COLBERT'S 'MARCH TO KEEP FEAR ALIVE'] ARE TAKING PLACE IN WASHINGTON DC ON THE 30th OF THE MONTH.
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