YES! jon stewart continues to give me hope. i wonder if anyone under 40 even got the campell's soup bit...

one of his best bits, in general. taking out fox is going to require this kind of thing on a regular basis, though, and not just making fun of the easy targets like beck and hannity. does he have the stamina? megan kelly is dying to find out...

:)

Even after so many years of Stewart and TDS brilliantly deconstructing the readily- apparent (and laughably so at that) specious horseshit and right-wing sophistry peddled by FOX News (aka Crackpot Central), you know the millions of drooling redneck morons who watch FOX (and cannot wait to parrot the FOX News daily sound bites) will never, ever doubt what their beloved propaganda network broadcasts.

After all, when you've suspended all reason and doubt and made a complete break from reality as most of these people have, what are a few more happy lies to digest?

Seriously: The Daily Show is the best news program in broadcast media, hands down. It remains a bastion of enlightenment in a growing sea of moronic drivel that passes itself off as "news" on the boob tube.

The smiling Jesus guy in the photo is Flip Benham, head of the hate group, Operation Save America. He once threatened to physically attack me. Of course he didn't, he's a coward.

That TDS has made satire the 5th estate.

Would whoever wrote this please step forward and accept your prize. Brilliant!

The problem is there is no anecdote for Fox News. The “mainstream media” as it is called is just another version of stupidity and has been for a long time. Dan Rather running around looking at earthquake damage while wearing—inexplicably—a safari jacket is not journalism. Most of what passes for news on television is just some twat narrating over footage of the latest disaster or a story about a run-a-way bride or a kid trapped in a well. It is also almost impossible to do an actual piece of journalism and “jam it down our throats” in a 22 minute nightly news program.

The brilliance of Fox News is how they have legitimized the basic fears, prejudices, and ignorance of the ignorant. And then Fox News took this one step further by actually creating new fears, prejudices, and ignorance which they spoon-feed to their faithful flock.

Here is my dream world of American TV journalism: programs that actually investigate instead of simply rolling film of a disaster. In the healthcare debate this would entail going to a country that has good healthcare (which is a measurable service, it’s not a simple matter of opinion) and showing just how we could be providing medical services in America. Of course, Fox News just picks one anecdotal story of some socialized medicine outrage and blows it up as representative of the system. I can tell you that here in Spain there is not much of a health care debate, and no, they aren’t going broke because they provide health care for everyone.

Stewart and Colbert have made satire into the fifth estate.

anwaya wrote this

What makes FOX News so effective is that the American right is led by a group of handlers who are cowardly, vicious, ruthless, and don't give two shits about the truth, democracy, or the public weal. They are about acquiring power and enriching the pockets of their overlords.

The true genius of this class war is that these right-wing handlers (corporate media, powerful media relations and lobbying firms, think tanks, et al.) have brilliantly convinced working and middle class people to fight their class war battles for them by proxy. Even if this goes against their own best interest (e.g. Health Care Reform).

You watch those stupid old people on FOX News in the above TDS clip badmouthing government-run health care--using, almost like those old pull-string talking dolls of old, the same ad nauseam talking points FOX has been promoting for months--yet, as John so rightly points out, every one of those moronic coots is on Medicare. Fucking hell, that's brilliant propaganda to use useful idiots like that to do the dirty work of the right-wing elite.

Don't you love how the FOX News talking heads always invoke "the American People" - which is a dog whistle to mean WHITE evangelical Christian and Catholic people from the suburbs and rural areas? That's the FOX News constituency. But that's most certainly NOT the American People.

The American People as some sort of unified, like-thinking entity is a goddamn myth that has never existed. There is no single body of American citizenry speaking as one. And let's not forget, shall we, that this Democratic President and Democratic majorities in BOTH houses were elected by a majority of American citizens to enact the very legislation FOX's bogus polls now indicate don't support it.

FOX's invoking "the American People" is much like Nixon's old "silent majority," which was, of course, the same dog whistle to mean those same redneck white white folks.

It's all vile. disgusting, puerile, anti-egalitarian, and anti-democratic claptrap, but the morons who watch FOX eat it up.

Anyhow. I digress. It's just so dismaying to witness the abject level of stupidity in this country and how the powers that be can, as Leftbanker stated above, not only manipulate it to their favor, but shape it too.

The Communists used to be experts at this kind of specious agit-prop. You have to think the best and brightest right-wing minds religiously studied Lenin and Trotsky and now employ the very same propaganda methods. Brilliant.

Without people like Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert, I might wonder if I got moved to an alternate reality. I haven't given up on the possibility that those on FOX are living in an alternate universe.

Unfortunately for America, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert don’t represent the opposition. They are more like the fools in a Shakespeare play. They have no power and serve as a harmless safety valve at the behest of the few souls who control about 99% of American television news.

The meager audience of the faithful at TDS can’t compare in number and furry to the army of brain-dead slobs who gobble up the gruel at Fox News every day. The liberal propensity for doubt and self-reflection is no match for the unwavering certainty of conservatives who have all of the answers (even the answers to questions no one is asking). Doubt equals weakness to stupid people.

I don't know that the numbers of supporters on each side are that different

The numbers are hugely different. Fox is on 24/7 while TDS is on five times a week for a half an hour (and TDS takes vacations). Rust and the Fox ignorance/propaganda machine never sleep.