But how long until he shoves it back up there?
At OpinionJournal James Taranto provides the transcript from an interview on The Daily Show (I’m only providing a few highlights here, follow the link above for the hilarity in its entirety):
Stewart: But what do you make of–here’s my dilemma, if you will. I don’t care for the way these guys conduct themselves–and this is just you and I talking, no cameras here [audience laughter]. But boy, when you see the Lebanese take to the streets and all that, and you go, “Oh my God, this is working,” and I begin to wonder, is it–is the way that they handled it really–it’s sort of like, “Uh, OK, my daddy hits me, but look how tough I’m getting.” You know what I mean? Like, you don’t like the method, but maybe–wrong analogy, is that, uh–?
Soderberg: Well, I think, you know, as a Democrat, you don’t want anything nice to happen to the Republicans, and you don’t want them to have progress. But as an American, you hope good things would happen. I think the way to look at it is, they can’t credit for every good thing that happens, but they need to be able to manage it. I think what’s happening in Lebanon is great, but it’s not necessarily directly related to the fact that we went into Iraq militarily.
Former Clinton aide Nancy Soderberg was there to pimp her new book, “The Superpower Myth: The Use and Misuse of American Might”, and seems to admit being a Democrat puts you at odds with being an American! WTF?
Stewart goes on to say:
Stewart: Do you think they’re the guys to–do they understand what they’ve unleashed? Because at a certain point, I almost feel like, if they had just come out at the very beginning and said, “Here’s my plan: I’m going to invade Iraq. We’ll get rid of a bad guy because that will drain the swamp”–if they hadn’t done the whole “nuclear cloud,” you know, if they hadn’t scared the pants off of everybody, and just said straight up, honestly, what was going on, I think I’d almost–I’d have no cognitive dissonance, no mixed feelings.
Whoops! There it goes, right back in.
(via Instapundit)
2 Comments
I read that last paragraph to say that if Bush hadn’t claimed WMD and had rather stated up front that he was just going in to take Saddam down, that John Stewart would have been ok with the decision to fight.
Right, that’s what I read it as, too.
The reason I’m citing it as evidence that his head has gone back up his ass is that it shows Stewart is unable to accept that his worldview has been (and still is) flawed.
1) Something like 20 reasons were given for the invasion. The liberal press has been busy pretending the only reason was WMDs simply because that none were found after the fact gave them a political advantage. Now they either think they’ve successfully re-written history, or they’re actually buying the shit they’re trying to sell to everyone else.
2) Stewart *never* would have been cool with a “we’re starting WW4 in order to drag SW Asia into the 21st century” justification. C’mon, man, that’s the height of fundy arrogance!
If you read the rest of it - or watch the show but I can’t really advise that anymore - you can see a little sense of the opinion he has of people who aren’t east-coast blue state progressives (if you aren’t one you’re either an amusing bumpkin or an evil fundamentalist redneck).
So, he’s better than some, in that he admits what’s happening is good, and that it’s probably due to the first Bush administration, but he can’t bring himself to admit that it isn’t an accident, or that the second Bush administration even understands what’s happening. But to try to suggest that he would’ve been supporting the winning team all along if only they hadn’t “lied about the WMDs” is just horseshit. If things keep going as well as they are, so many will come forward to claim paternity for Bush’s success that they’ll have to stop calling it Operation Iraqi Freedom and change the name to Operation Iraqi Gang-Rape or Operation Who’s Your Daddy? and start administering DNA tests.
Now, if he’d said “I would’ve supported this thing all along if only a Democratic president has proposed it and carried it out”, THEN I’d believe him.
Maybe I should add this to the post itself?