A few more thoughts on the Jon Stewart evisceration of Crossfire…
I've been watching that show — sometimes steadily, sometimes not — since the days when it was Michael Kinsley on the left and Pat Buchanan on the right. (Not exactly a balanced match-up since Kinsley was only a bit left of center and Buchanan was so far right, he was off the charts.) It's always been a frustrating bit of Theater since no pundit with a brain in his or her head is so relentlessly partisan as to always be able to defend the left or the right, as the case may be. Lately, there have often been times when I didn't believe that one or more of the show's hosts actually held the view he was advocating; that he just had to say it because that's what the format requires. Robert Novak will write a newspaper column about how Bush is in trouble, then go on Crossfire and denounce anyone stupid enough to believe Bush is in trouble.
So to the extent that some of that is Mr. Stewart's point, I agree with all that. I believe that the news media does routinely fail to give us content over Mud Wrestling, that interviewers do not demand straight (or straight enough) answers from public figures, that reporters are way too willing to broadcast — and sometimes even repeat "spin," as opposed to cutting through the Party Line for us. I believe all that.
I'm just not sure the guy picked the right target. He should have said that to Wolf Blitzer. Or Ted Koppel. Or Brokaw or Rather or Jennings or Brian Williams or the folks who put those men on the air.
He accused Crossfire of "partisan hackery" and was miffed that anyone would suggest that his show, being on Comedy Central and all, should be held to any sort of news standard. Fine, but Crossfire is a show that has rarely pretended to be about anything other than spin. Just because it's on CNN doesn't make it a hard-hitting news show. My God, the centerpiece of CNN's prime-time line-up is Larry King, who can't get off the Laci Peterson case and who hasn't posed a tough question since he asked Sinatra about his fight with Dino. When Tucker Carlson was berating Stewart for not challenging his guests, Stewart should have said, "Do you have basic cable, Tucker? Have you even watched what gets passed off as news on this network?"
More often than not, the guests they bring on Crossfire are party leaders whose job description just about requires that they never admit their side is wrong or that the opposition has any valid point. And accusing Paul Begala, James Carville, Tucker Carlson and Bob Novak — the last of whom Stewart routinely refers to as a "Douchebag of Liberty" — of partisan hackery is like that lame joke Kerry had about Tony Soprano. Those men are unabashed partisan hacks, and one should no more look to them for anything more than one should expect the show following Crank Yankers to ask incisive political questions.
The success of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart is just embarrassing the hell out of a lot of the news media…or it would if newsmen were more capable of being embarrassed. The surveys that suggest a substantial number of Americans get their news from The Daily Show or Leno or Letterman are not so much a compliment of those programs as they are indictments of the ones that are supposed to be filling that need. This has put Stewart in the amazing position of being able to criticize the media while assuming no responsibility for showing them how it should be done. I would hate to think that people will believe the problem lies with shows like Crossfire. Very few people watch Crossfire and almost none of us expect it to be anything more than it is. Isn't there some sort of old saying about how if you aim for a small target, you can easily miss the big ones?