The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart showed up on CNN’s Crossfire show yesterday and made co-host Tucker Carlson froth with indignation. He refused to “be their monkey” and actually proceeded to go after their entire format in a blistering indictment of their flavor of screaming partisan hackery.

As a member of Stewart’s “stoned slacker” audience, I found it great fun to watch.

What most of these shows don’t realize is that we are smarter than they think. Stewart had it just right when he told Carlson how he asked Daily Show guest John Kerry about Cambodia, but really didn’t care about the answer. The question is irrelevant. Bush’s suit bulge is irrelevant. Dick Cheney’s daughter is irrelevant. Whatever the hell Bill O’Reilly is doing is irrelevant.

We don’t care about these things, we care about actually getting this country on the right track. All we want is for leaders and journalists to actually speak honestly and intelligently, without resorting to pandering and rhetorical distortions. Believe it or not, we were raised to be media-savvy; we can see through the smokescreens and we can figure out the parlor tricks. Stop insulting our intelligence. We realize the issues are complex and multi-sided, but we are capable of understanding. Have faith in us. Speak clearly. Please.

One good thing: this election is mobilizing Generation X’ers to rebel against the existing politics/media mess. Life will be much simpler when they realize that we’re not stupid; we just refuse to pay attention to inanity. You might remember the old line from the early nineties: withdrawal in disgust is not the same as apathy. Today, we as a generation have much more power than we did 10-15 years ago. The old-line dismiss this at their peril. Apathy is no longer our sole option.

We’re not going to be their monkeys.

Here is a link to the CNN transcript of the show. If you’re on a broadband connection, you should download the video and watch it yourself.

This entry was posted on Saturday, October 16th, 2004 at 12:58 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.