Educating Jon

by Scott Creighton

Absent the naive expectation of any meaningful catharsis on the part of Jon Stewart (after all “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it” Upton Sinclair), the ambition of the following revelations rests primarily in the “hearts and minds” of his audience.  Make no mistake about it, whether by absence of conscious or by sloppy investigational practices (both equally inexcusable), Jon Stewart is peddling neoconservative propaganda disguised as “insightful liberal comedy” and the intended outcome of that propaganda, quite simply, is to create an atmosphere in Progressive America conducive to actions resulting in dire consequences to people all over the world. There will be blood.

Without my having to resort to breathless hyperbole (again), simply allow me to say that in these difficult and dangerous times, Jon Stewart’s cavalier attitude about the deliberately misleading and  inaccurate messages he gives to his audience is so remarkably hypocritical that any self-respecting liberal must either publicly call him to account for his recent behavior, or simply leave him to rot in his own cesspool of deceit. And as his Nielsen ratings drop because his progressive audience has grown tired of hearing his neocon talking points glibly regurgitated and as his network, Comedy Central (Viacom), begins to consider less prominent roles for Stewart in their organization, it is reasonable to expect an entirely new production direction to be laid out for the Daily Show (a “retooling” if you will), complete with a drastically improved vetting process by their writing staff minus the Karl Rovian talking points circa 2003. 

The “market” is a terrible and powerful thing and understanding its nature can be quite useful.

In the ‘news” business and the “fake news” business alike (aren’t both “fake” anyway?), the key to sustainable marketability and ratings points/share growth is credibility. Without it, you have nothing. Without credibility you have no “trust” and without “trust” you have declining market share (Just ask Goldman Sachs what stock value they place in “trust” as they squirm and wiggle from one congressional committee investigation to the next).  It is that declining market share which will ultimately facilitate the title of this article. It is not within this writer’s limited purview to compel one such as Jon Stewart to forgo his darker vocation, but it is well within yours.

Part 1. The Contrivance of the ”Fake News” Smokescreen 

“The world stands on three things: justice, truth, and peace as it says ‘Execute the judgment of truth, and justice and peace will be established in your gates’ (Zaccariah 8:16).” 38 Rabbis

The idea that one would attempt to hide behind the facade of being “fake news” while condemning the MSM for producing “fake news” is patently absurd to the point of “Horton Hears a Who” – “I meant what I said, and I said what I meant. An elephant’s faithful one-hundred percent.”

But that is exactly what Jon Stewart did in his October of 2004 “Stop hurting America“  contrived bid to garner liberal credibility and thus more shares of that ever important ratings market at the expense of Tucker Carlson’s precious credibility.  Carlson’s show was cancelled a few months later but Stewart had achieved his desired goal; the video of his Crossfire interview went viral on the web and Jon Stewart was instantly accorded a “Nader’s Raiders” level of populist credibility along with the inevitable ratings boost that went with it.

The story is that Jon Stewart went to do an interview on Tucker Carlson’s highly popular CNN show “Crossfire” and Stewart came on the show like a man on a mission. The first thing he did was to tell the two hosts that Crossfire was “bad” and that it was “hurting America”. The show went downhill from there.  “Stop. Stop hurting America…. come work with us…. it doesn’t pay well, but you can sleep at night.” “The thing is.. we need your help and you are helping the politicians and the corporations… you’re not too rough on them, you are part of their strategies. You are partisan hacks.”

At that point Tucker Carlson had a list of some of the “hard-hitting” “public service” type questions Jon Stewart had for then Democratic Nominee John Kerry, which included questions like “How are you holding up?”… “Is it hard not to take (the attacks) personally?”… “Have you ever flip-flopped?”  Stewart’s demeanor changed almost instantly from one of condescending self-righteous piety to pure defensiveness.

Stewart’s response would become his typical smokescreen from then till now; he would deliberately hide behind his facade of being a “comedy show”.  “I didn’t realize that the news organizations looked to Comedy Central for their cues on integrity.”… “you have a responsibility to the public discourse… and you failed miserably.”

At the heart of this painful exchange, somewhere rooted way down in Stewart’s own defense, is a very disturbing revelation about how Jon sees his own responsibility and his integrity. He simply doesn’t have any.  His implications are very clear once one separates themselves from the desire to see Jon as right (the power of celebrity transference mixed with identity politics) and they are that he neither needs nor has integrity about what he produces nor does he possess the responsibility to care, because after all, the show leading into his has puppets making crank phone calls.

Ultimately Jon’s argument is “do as I say, not as I do”. 

Tucker Carlson is clearly not an intellectual match for Stewart yet by continuing to point out Stewart’s hypocrisy ultimately reduced Jon to sophomoric insults and name calling… Carlson stated “I do think you’re more fun on your show.”, Stewart retorted, “You’re as big a dick on your show as you are on any show.” At one point Carlson tried to get Stewart into a more congenial tone by giving him a compliment “I think you should teach at journalism school.” to which Stewart arrogantly replied “I think you should go to one”

Stewart’s attitude and demeaning tone is sickening to watch, even if you don’t take his hypocrisy into account.  Beating up on someone the likes of Tucker Carlson is bad enough, but to do it as a guest on their show, to ambush them, knowing it is going to harm their ratings (and Carlson lost his show as a result) and potentially cost him his job is even worse.  I guess that is one of the reasons Jon Stewart doesn’t have the likes of Noam Chomsky on or Norman Finkelstein…. he’s afraid they will do to him what he did to Tucker.  Typical cowardice of an intellectually gifted bully.

In the end, after evaluating his body of work since, it appears that Tucker Carlson was absolutely correct. Jon Stewart has coddled neocon war-criminals, helped them sell their various books and remake their images, and he has deliberately continued to leave the real liberal left off his show entirely while endlessly sucking up to the Bill Clintons and the other DLC neoliberal/neocon tools of corporate governance in America.

By sandbagging Tucker Carlson, Jon Stewart bought himself more viewers, bigger ratings, a better contract,  and ultimately more credibility.  And with all that, he went on to do exactly what he accuse Tucker Carlson of doing, which is to support the status-quo regarding issues that really matter.  He has done something else as well, recently he has taken to regurgitating horrific propaganda about “Muslim extremists”, “the terrorist organization Hamas”, and even implied the children of Gaza are educated by Hitler-induced propaganda.  Which of course says what about those children?

This goes away and beyond any “hurting America” Tucker Carlson could EVER have accomplished because though Tucker may or may not be involved even now in propagating neocon talking points, his audience is already of the mind that “the terrorists” are lurking behind every tree and every Mosque…. whereas Jon Stewart’s used to think that kind of blatant propaganda was offensive and now they think its fact. When you deliberately lie in order to help build a consensus of hatred and fear, is that supposed to be “helping America”?  Or does it just not matter to Jon Stewart because a puppet show leads into his? 

The scariest part is how well Jon says he sleeps at night.

Part 2. Hurting America, the Jon Stewart Way

“Jon?… Stop it. Stop hurting America…. come work with us…. it doesn’t pay well, but you can sleep at night.” 100 million Liberal Americans

Well, we have established the fact that Jon Stewart feels no compunction about his lack of integrity, after all, he sleeps well at night because he feels he has no responsibility to tell his audience the “truth” since he does what he does with a smirk on his face.  Since his special brand of lies is all tongue in cheek, Stewart is ultimately free to say whatever misinformation he and his owners want him to say.  Ironically that is the same excuse Fox News gives for Glenn Beck, since Beck is an “opinion” show, he has no responsibility to tell anyone the truth.  Unfortunately the New York Times calls Stewart one of the most “trusted” newsmen in America, an accolade that surely wasn’t overlooked by Jon or his network for that matter.  An accolade Jon ambushed the likes of Tucker Carlson and Jim Cramer to achieve.

So what has he done with his newfound trust?  He has constantly brought one neocon Bush-era war-criminal after the other onto his show to help them rehabilitate their reputations and sell their respective books. Now you might think that is bad enough but Jon goes even farther than that these days…. Jon Stewart actually promotes hate filled propaganda from neocon Likud Party elites (MEMRI TV) as evidence of the animalistic nature of the Palestinian people;  he is helping neocon IDF and Israeli Intelligence officials demonize and de-humanize the Palestinian people trapped in the Gaza strip.

As offensive as it may be to watch Jon Stewart shill videos from a far-right Likud Party Zionist organization like MEMRI TV, I suggest you do it. And while you watch the video, pay careful attention to the part where Jon uses these obviously fabricated pieces of propaganda to insinuate that Hamas and the Palestinians are responsible for the inability to generate peace between Israel and Palestine.  CNN and others have already pointed out how many times MEMRI TV has been found to be mistranslating these videos and I can’t but wonder if they or fake Muslim groups are making them themselves…  But liberals must be smarter than to take Jon Stewart at face value anymore. We must ALL be smarter than that. 

MEMRI was co-founded in 1998 by Yigal Carmon, a former colonel in Israeli military intelligence, and another Israeli Meyrav Wurmser.

When founded in 1998, MEMRI’s staff of seven included three who had formerly served in military intelligence in the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF).

Yigal Carmon — MEMRI’s founder and President. Carmon is fluent in Arabic. He served as Colonel in the Military Intelligence Directorate (Israel) from 1968 to 1988.

Dr. Nimrod Raphaeli is a Senior Analyst at MEMRI… He spent most of his professional career at the World Bank, and has consulted for the International Monetary Fund.

Meyrav Wurmser (co-founding Executive Director). Wurmser was one of the authors of the “Clean Break” document which proposed reshaping Israel’s “strategic environment” in the Middle East, starting with the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.

What stands in stark contrast to Jon Stewart’s new-found barely concealed mission of hate and fear-mongering is nothing short of a world consensus of facts…

At each of the parleys with Hamas members I repeated the same message: the current diplomatic posture of Hamas seemed in alignment with representative political organizations, respected juridical institutions, and major human rights groups. Many Hamas members appeared genuinely surprised when I rattled off the “pro-Palestinian” positions espoused by these mainstream bodies. If I was correct, then Hamas should couch its political platform in their language because the chink in Israel’s armor is its diplomatic isolation. Hamas must hammer away the critical point that Israel is the real outlier in the international community and obstacle to peace: not “Hamas says,” but “the UN General Assembly resolution supported by 160 nations says”; not “Hamas says, but “the International Court of Justice says”; not “Hamas says” but “Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International say.” Norman Finkelstein

160 nations every year vote to sanction Israel for their illegal treatment of the Palestinian people living in the occupied territories of Palestine, only to be vetoed year after year after year by Israel’s beacon of “democracy” (aka “client state”), the United States.

The International Court of Justice ruled in a 14-1 vote that Israel’s settlements are illegal under international law and even the dissenting vote kind of agreed.

Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, leading human rights organizations, have joined their collective voices along with other groups such as the Israeli human rights organization B’TSelem, in condemning Israel’s actions, not just during Israel’s recent bloody attacks in Gaza, Operation Cast Lead, but also the day-to-day occupation of Palestinian territories.

The Goldstone Report was a scathing indictment of the IDF’s behavior in Gaza during Operation Cast Lead. Contrary to popular propaganda, Goldstone’s report was largely based on testimony from IDF soldiers themselves about how they used “crazy” amounts of firepower directed towards Hamas fighters “they never even saw”. Since we now know over 1,400 Palestinians were killed during the Israeli offensive, and that schools and other civic buildings were deliberately targeted, one must ask one’s self if the majority of IDF soldiers never even saw a Hamas fighter, who exactly was the “crazy” amount of fire-power targeting?

Lastly, but certainly not least, at least 38 Rabbis stand in opposition to Jon Stewart’s not so subtle propaganda…

… We are deeply saddened by the controversy around the report. We affirm your findings and believe you set up an impeccable standard that presents strong evidence that during the war in Gaza Israel engaged in war crimes that revealed a pattern of continuous and systematic assault against Palestinian people and land that has very little to do with Israel’s claim of security. Your report made clear the intentional targeting of civilian infrastructures such as hospitals, schools, agricultural properties, water and sewage treatment centers and civilians themselves with deadly weapons that are illegal when used in civilian centers.

This is the ugly truth that is so hard for many Jewish people to face. Anyone who spends a day in Palestinian territories sees this truth immediately.  Rabbis Letter to Goldstone

In summary, the “systematic assault against the Palestinian people” will be impossible to continue, it will be impossible to justify and impossible to hide, were it not for an ongoing campaign of public relations propaganda. It is this propaganda campaign that has been ramped up recently on shows like Glenn Beck’s and Rush Limbaugh’s and now … we can add Jon Stewart’s.

What is at stake here, aside from the act of fostering more fear and loathing in the liberal Americans, is far greater than most can imagine.

Norman Finkelstein has recently pointed out in his work “This Time We Went Too Far”, that as bad as Operation Cast Lead was, what is happening is a kind of awakening in Israeli and American jewish culture. There is an awareness growing of the humanity of the people on the other side of the wall and of the extremist actions taken by the likes of the Likud Party radicals. Never before has this kind of ground-swell taken place and therefore it presents a deep and lasting threat to those who would stand to lose the most were Israel’s hard-core Zionist policies to come under attack from the general majority of these groups.

So in steps Jon Stewart with his new mandate of hate-mongering. To imagine the damage that he and his ilk are causing, one must first imagine this current atmosphere that Norman Finkelstein speaks of may actually produce a legitimate and lasting agreement between both sides… a lasting peace in which both Israel and Palestine can co-exist and thrive together.  That is where we are, that is what is at stake. How could that benefit the families and the lives of Palestinians and Israelis alike? How could that make the Middle East a safer place? Could it be a catalyst for the reduction of other tensions like Syria and Iran?  Could that make life safer in America or for our troops? That is what is at stake right now and Finkelstein is right to see some kind of potential hope building out of the ruins of Operation Cast Lead.

But the vile propaganda of Jon Stewart threatens that because for some greedy people, Israelis and Americans, the prospect of peace bears no fruit. 

I cannot imagine a more dangerous series of lies than those recently espoused by Mr. Stewart on his show. “Hurting America”?  By feeding the neocon/neoliberal war-mongering machine, by demonizing even the children of Gaza as they rebuild from the various war-crimes committed against them and being committed against them to this day, Jon Stewart is damning America. Damning us to hate and fear. Damning us to an endless war on terror. Damning us to dead soldiers and to murdered families abroad.

But even more, what Stewart is doing is damning our national soul.  He is rotting away at what little moral fiber the liberal class has here in America.  But he is not doing it in complete shadow. There are a few, only a few, who have openly called him to task for his transgressions. Glenn Greenwald was one, another appeared on the Huffington Post.  Apparently you can’t sellout the soul of our tattered left without reaping a bit of the bile you sow.

And thus the education of Jon begins.

No, Mr. Stewart. It’s you that needs to back to school.  Start with this…

“The world stands on three things: justice, truth, and peace as it says ‘Execute the judgment of truth, and justice and peace will be established in your gates’ (Zaccariah 8:16).” 38 Rabbis

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