Jon Stewart to Bill O'Reilly: Hey, No Fair Using Context!

What are we, in round 9 now? Can we go fifteen?

In the video above, Jon Stewart does a good job catching the story up to speed, so rather than me recap, go ahead and press play. What you’re going to see is Stewart doing a lot of hair-splitting and then insist the argument remain narrowly confined to his terms. But the crux of his argument goes something like this: Megyn Kelly says you guys never speed and I caught you speeding. Period. End of argument. Context doesn’t matter. Why you were speeding doesn’t matter. Well, how far is Stewart willing to take that argument? Since someone calling for the death of an elderly woman based on her politics doesn’t qualify as a justifiable reason to, uhm, speed, what does? What if we find out the HuffPo commenter sports a little Charlie Chaplin mustache? Or what if he’s 95 years-old and made his way to America through South America somewhere around, say, 1949?

But, as always, Stewart is only Captain Literal when it suits him. On goes the clown nose and he then goes on to make it sound as though FNC uses Nazi references as frequently as a teenager uses the word “like.” But then he has to go back years to nail O’Reilly — which brings this argument full circle to where it all started…

Criticizing political speech is a fool’s errand, especially in this era where everything you say and every word you write is warehoused forever. Besides, whether you’re Stewart or FNC or anyone, “Don’t call me a Nazi!” is a dumb response. I much prefer, “No, you’re a Nazi!” And when will everyone finally begin to see the big picture here? This! You think maybe there’s a reason why Mr. Cable News Civility is playing gotcha with Megyn Kelly while Chris Matthews rampages all over Michele Bachmann with lies. Well, to be fair, Stewart isn’t completely ignoring the anti-substance personal attacks on Bachmann, he’s kinda piling on.

But now that Stewart has planted his tit-for-tat argument with O’Reilly in the only ground where a Lefty feels safe — the unicorn land of No Context Allowed — give this round to him. But anyone watching our self-anointed watchman knows that he’s the one who stood on the Mall in DC, admonished the media for their lack of civility, and then raced back to his studio to go about the dirty work of dehumanizing people into punchlines — not as frequently as a teenager says “like,” but often enough.

Sorry, I forgot that he’s a satirist and therefore above his own rules. Besides, I brought a whole lot of context to this analysis and that’s not fair.

Nevermind.

ADDED: When Stewart said FNC uses Nazi references as often as a teenager uses the word “like,” wasn’t that a lie? If we’re going to get all literal here, if we’re going to say “You can’t use the term Nazi because it’s not literally true,” let’s get all literal across the board.

I know what Stewart meant when he used the “like” crack and I know what people mean when they use the “Nazi” reference.

Both are full of it, but I get it. But if Stewart wants to get all literal, let’s lay that gauntlet down on him. If he wants to strip away context, let’s have that debate. There’s tape on him, too.