The other night on The Daily Show, Bill O’Reilly showed up to yet again express his outrage at France. At once point calling Stewart a “pinhead” and urging him to “read a book” when Stewart dared to question the logic of boycotting a nation for doing nothing more than refusing to support our war with Iraq.
This is not the first time the two men have interacted. In 2004, Stewart appeared on the O’Reilly Factor and the two men had the following exchange:
O'REILLY: You actually have an influence on this presidential election. That is scary.
O'REILLY: But it is. It's true. I mean, you've got stoned slackers watching your dopey show every night, OK, and they can vote.
STEWART: Yeah.
O'REILLY: You can't stop them.
STEWART: Yeah, I just don't know how motivated they would be, these stoned slackers.
O'REILLY: Yeah, it just depends if they have to go out that day.
STEWART: What am I, a Cheech and Chong movie? Stoned slackers?
O'REILLY: Come on, you do the research, you know the research on your program.
STEWART: No, we don't.
O'REILLY: Eighty-seven percent are intoxicated when they watch it. You didn't see that?
Since that visit, of course, someone has been doing some research, and this is what they found:
The AP reported in 2004 that “viewers of Jon Stewart’s show are more likely to have completed four years of college than people who watch 'The O’Reilly Factor,' according to Nielsen Media Research.”
And that’s not all! “On top of that, "Daily Show" viewers know more about election issues than people who regularly read newspapers or watch television news, according to the National Annenberg Election Survey.”
I happen to dislike O’Reilly… nothing personal, mind you, simply a diastase for the continuous barrage of lies and bias that spews out of his mouth every night tends to vex me.
While O’Reilly relies on bullying and deception to make his point, Stewart relies on humor and occasionally, as when he appeared on CNN’s Crossfire to tell them how they are "hurting the country" through their senseless “gotcha!” punditry, some bluntness (NOTE: Crossfire was canceled shortly after Stewart's appearance).
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Marc --
I find Stewart's graciousness in light of O'Reilly's prickishness enlightening as to their respective characters. Stewart still has O'Reilly on, and often has guests with whom he agrees and in most cases defers to them. O'Reilly would never do the same. I love how his sole response to Colbert was that he was somehow french, as if being french and of french descent are somehow fungible. I am a bit surprised Stewart did not come up with a gentle Irish slur to parry O'Reilly's nonsense. In any case, O'Reilly is a clown one cannot take seriously. And as you've shown, BY HIS OWN ASSERTED STANDARDS, his audience skews dumb anyway.
dcat
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