Jon Stewart on the Daily Show tonight ripped apart Chris Matthews' book. It was one of his best performances, up there with Tucker Carlson. I've seen Chris Matthews on at least three shows hawking his new book Life's a Campaign. He's told the same story about how Bill Clinton got girls in college by listening to them while he tried drinking beer and and bragging and it didn't work. All the other shows just asked him a question and let him give an answer. Not so much an interview versus an introduction.
Jon Stewart, as usual, actually the read the book. He begins by saying "What you are saying is, people can use what politicians do in political campaigns to help their lives. It strikes me as fundamentally wrong. It strikes me as a self-hurt book if you will." A minute later he says "I'm not trashing your book I'm trashing your philosophy of life." Just 5 minutes later Matthews says "Will you come on Hardball?" and Stewart replies "You know what, can I say this, I don't troll." Matthews then says "You are unbelievable. This is a book interview from hell. This is the worst interview I've ever had in my life." and then it gets even better!
I assume the video will be on the Daily Show web site soon. If you didn't TiVo it, Comedy Central is rerunning this Wed at 10am , 2pm, and 8pm.
Update: Video is here.
Update: Andrew Sullivan has some comments on the beating.
6 comments:
That was good. Video is available here:
http://www.comedycentral.com/motherload/player.jhtml?ml_video=104548&ml_collection=&ml_gateway=&ml_gateway_id=&ml_comedian=&ml_runtime=&ml_context=show&ml_origin_url=/shows/the_daily_show/videos/most_recent/index.jhtml&ml_playlist=&lnk=&is_large=true
My favorite part was the standard salesman's pitch "don't you want to be successful?" to which Jon could only answer incredulously, "I *AM* successful!"
I'm not sure I really agree with the Huffington Post. Jon really wasn't trying to be savage at all, the guy just kept handling himself more and more poorly and really just fed his own fire (the above quote being a perfect example).
I mean even the "self-hurt" comment seemed to be intended in a friedly spirit. Once Matthews *finally* got around to answering Jon's questions rather than being defensively retarded, Jon was finally able to help make the guy out not to look too ridiculous - and that could have happened much earlier to everyone's benefit.
Made for great television, though. (: most entertaining.
If you think of what Stewart did compared to other "journalists" he was savage, because he did what he was supposed to do but everyone else forgot to do. First of he actually read the book. I saw Matthews on the Today show and The View and one other show and you could tell none of them read the book. They all just asked "softball" questions and let Matthews tell his anecdotes. As he did on Crossfire, Stewart pointed out the hypocracy in Matthews show Hardball. Playing hardball isn't about talking over each other in political theater but in asking real questions and getting to facts and challenging views. Stewart did to Matthews what Matthews claims to do to his guests but doesn't (not that I've watched Matthews show that often). In the current pantheon of TV news that's "savage", sadly.
I do not think he destroyed him at all. I am with Stewart on the whole issue and I dislike Chris Mathews ... but I think he is pretty much describing a lot of American culture... sadly.
Destroy might be strong. Forgive me, it was late and I was surprised by how good the segment was. I stand by my previous comment.
I agree with your previous comments completely, actually. I found this segment to be good but not great. I guess, what threw me off was all the giggle and laughter in between verbal exchanges. Mathews sounded like an idiot and Stewart was laughing way too much. It sounded like: "I object to your philosophy of life... ha-ha-ha..."... In contrast, he was serious on famous CNN segment and made much stronger impression. I guess, I was expecting something Bill Maher style... something like: this culture is knee deep in shit, we have elected a current moron of a president, TWICE (according to your book - somebody has achieved all the success), Chris, why are you adding a bucket of shit to the mountain we already have with the your joke of a book? ...
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