The other day I was watching The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and he did a brilliant impression of Glenn Beck. He had the chalkboard, the glasses, the shoes, and Beck’s entire act compiled into one hilarious skit. I thought it was great.
Today I was reading over LRC and noticed a blog post entitled “Jon Stewart’s ‘Daily Snow.’” Of course, it was about Stewart’s Beck impression.
On last night’s program, Jon Stewart had an uncontrollable outbreak of giggling in his efforts to tie Glenn Beck’s “conservatism” in with a “libertarian” philosophy. That the highly-unfocused Beck has tried to pass himself off as a libertarian — something even Ronald Reagan tried to do for himself! — confirmed how utterly desperate the statists have become in their efforts to destroy the only intellectually-respectable source of criticism of the omnipotent state. Taking apart the word “libertarian,” Stewart finally settled on the final syllables of the word: “arian,” as in “aryan,” his infectious giggling spread to his audience in what must have seemed a self-congratulatory response to ideas he seems unable to challenge on substantive grounds.
Then there was a reply to the above-mentioned post.
How “clever” of Jon Stewart, considering that the last three letters of his beloved political affiliation (Democrat) blatantly spell the word “rat.”
UPDATE: Scott Evans points out:
“And that the last four letters of his surname spell “wart,” a form of persistent viral infection!”
Of course, I know Beck is not a libertarian by a long-shot. But, is it just me or do some of the LRC bloggers lack a sense of humor?
Here is the video if you all wish to watch it. I thought it was hilarious:
Stewart is a bit smarter than Beck, even if Stewart is not exactly philosophical.
It seems Beck and Stewart tend to derive most of their thinking by either analogy or by comparison. This is why they need each other. It’s like Wiley Coyote and Road Runner. You pretty much can’t run a political outfit unless you have some type of persecutory complex and imagined enemies blocking the roads or storming the gates.
I thought the sketch was funny, but I felt a moment of embarrassment when I saw Glenn Beck calling himself a libertarian… thats setting back our movement a couple hundred years in terms of respectability.
Stewart is basically a wanker, that is, a socialist who thinks he’s not partisan because he’s critical of both sides. Critical in the sense of a plastic bag fluttering in the wind.
The fact that basically kids watch his rubbish reveals the analytical quality of his dialogues. And that he lumps Beck with serious classical liberals reveals his intentions are and always have been libel.
As a libertarian and as a Jew as well, I’d like to knock (in a pejorative way) some sense into Stewart as well as Ben Stein who are in club of libeling classical liberals as espousing anti-semitism (Stein pulled the same crap with Ron Paul). Reminds me of the propaganda Stalin told Feutchwanger, way back when: ‘Monopoly Capitalism’ means Nazis, so Jews must be communists.
To be honest I didn’t see much harm in Stewart’s skit. He was making fun of Beck, using words such as “Conservative” and “Libertarian” in the same way that Beck throws around “Progressive” and “Socialist.”
I’ve stopped watching Stewart some time after Obama came into office. The kinds of things he defends and the way he defends them are both deplorable. Stewart remains forever in the ‘Republicans are bad and therefore socialism is good’ mindset. As the nation is crumbling in debt Stewart is shouting at the politicians to ‘get things done’, and completely failing to understand that politicians can only loot wealth from other people.
I used to watch Daily Show and Colbert Report every night in high school, then I found something better to do with my time like read LRC. I think the time I actually stopped watching them was sometime before the election. At that point I tried to stay away from any mainstream program with politics.
It would seem so. I mean quite a few times they would write blogs trashing Glenn Beck. If anything I see Stewart’s skit as a supplement to their previous posts, regardless of his liberalness.
Let’s be honest here. The author(s) took the “arian/aryan” part seriously…
