In den letzten Monaten dachte ich, Jon Stewart habe ein wenig seinen Biss verloren. Besonders die Interviews am Ende der Sendung erschienen mir doch etwas zu freundlich. Wer auch immer auf dem Stuhl neben Jon saß konnte sich darauf verlassen, dass Jon seine Arbeit toll findet, dass er sehr freundliche Worte findet. Selbst Bill O’Reilly, Scott McClellan oder Pervez Musharraf konnten sich willkommen fühlen – egal wie ätzend die Kritik an ihrer Arbeit und ihrer in der Daily Show vorher war. Sie saßen da, lachten über Jon Stewarts Späße und der hielt ihr Buch in die Kamera.
In der Sendung vom Mittwoch war dies anders. Da ging er plötzlich den Autoren einer Biographie des Vize-Präsidenten Dick Cheney direkt an, als würde der porträtierte Politiker ihm direkt gegenübersitzen.
STEWART: I was using hyperbole and also a funny accent. But the essence of their argument was, this isn’t going to be a problem.
HAYES: Yeah, when I asked him about that it was interesting because, he did, I mean, as you’ve pointed out on your show numerous times, he’s not somebody who likes to admit mistakes, and one of the things he did say was, we underestimated, obviously, how difficult it was going to be. He also spoke to, to the Coalition Provisional Authority and said that that was not the right way to have handled post-war Iraq.
STEWART: Then stop making the rest of us feel like idiots when we question their strategy in the war on terror. And stop making the rest of us feel like — and I don’t mean you, I mean them.
HAYES: Right.
STEWART: I think that they’ve gone — they, they’ve seemingly gone out of their way to belittle people. You know, he’s actually literally come out and said, „If you don’t elect us, we might get hit again.“ That to me, I — I can’t jibe the portrait you paint of the steadfast leader with the fear-mongering, not-bright guy that I’ve seen.
HAYES: Yeah, but I mean, no, really — I mean isn’t it that case that, I mean, that’s essentially what this debate has been about, the political debate has been about since 2001?
STEAWART: No. They keep saying we don’t understand the nature of this war. And critics keep saying, we understand the nature of it. You’ve been doing it wrong.
HAYES: Right, so why is that — what’s the, what’s the quality of difference there?
STEWART: Well, no the, the difference there is, we’re not calling them traitors.
HAYES: I don’t — yeah, but I don’t think that the administration has called anyone a traitor. When has it happened? I mean, I’m serious. When has that happened? When has that happened?
STEWART: Let me say this. I — I think that there’s a real feeling in this country that your patriotism has been questioned by, by people in, in very high-level positions. Not fringe people. You know, I myself had some idiot from Fox playing the tape of me after September 11th — very upset. And them calling me a phony —
HAYES: Right.
STEWART: — because, apparently, my grief didn’t mean acquiescence. So, I, I, I think that that’s — it’s a fair point to say —
HAYES: Look, look I think we can agree that, that we shouldn’t be questioning other people’s patriotism. On the other hand, I think it’s totally legitimate to talk about different ways of handling the war on terror —
STEWART: I agree with that.
