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Wednesday, October 08, 2008

Stewart & Colbert - the best satirists of my generation. Easily.

Hard figuring out what to excerpt, cause it's all so damn good. Click over to read the whole thing.

Stewart & Colbert: Exclusive Q&A | 2008 Presidential Elections | Cover Story: Q&A | News + Notes | Entertainment Weekly | 1:
"ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Forget the two presidential candidates: The most prominent person in this election right now is Sarah Palin. With the attention she's getting, you'd think she was running for president.
JON STEWART: Everyone likes new and shiny. We're bored. What's great about that is [Democratic VP candidate Joe] Biden is an absolutely eccentric character. That's how powerful Palin's story is — it has cast the first African-American presidential nominee, the oldest [non-incumbent] presidential nominee, and a really wild cork vice presidential candidate completely out of the picture. The press is 6-year-olds playing soccer; nobody has a position, it's just ''Where's the ball? Where's the ball? Sarah Palin has the ball!'' [Mimes a mob running after her.] Because they can only cover one thing.

...If there is something quintessentially or authentically American about her, I sort of feel like, you know what? You ''good values people'' have had the country for eight years, and done an unbelievably s---ty job. Let's find some bad values people and give them a shot, maybe they'll have a better take on it.


Many people saw the conventions as little more than a series of talking points.
STEWART: We're all sort of complicit in forcing them to make those narratives in the first place.
COLBERT: You mean us, or the real press?
STEWART: Everything. The whole mechanism of dissecting their every waking moment has created somewhat of a paralysis. We have drained them of their ability to remain human. Because any human moment will be so fiercely dissected and digested and metastasized by the media.
COLBERT: People can be hung by anything they say. We've done it.
STEWART: We've done it too. You can kill people all the time for things that are absolutely human frailties.
COLBERT: You can even manufacture the frailty, and then hang them with it.
STEWART: That's why I don't excuse what I guess you'd call the satiro-industrial complex from culpability.
COLBERT: That's funny: I absolve me. I could absolve you if you want.
STEWART: That's the beauty of having a demagogue on right after your show — he can actually absolve our show, which is incredibly convenient...

[On 24 hour news]
STEWART: We've got three financial networks on all day. The bottom falls out of the credit market, and they were all running around. On CNBC I saw a guy talking to eight people in [eight different onscreen] boxes, and they were all like, ''I don't know!'' It'd be like if Hurricane Ike hit, and you put on the Weather Channel, and they were yelling, ''I don't know what the f--- is going on! I'm getting wet and it's windy and I don't know why and it's making me sad! Maybe the president could come down and put up some sort of windscreen?'' By being on 24 hours a day, you begin to not be able to tell what's salient anymore.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Is this election any different from the last two you covered?
JON STEWART: I was convinced an Obama/McCain campaign would be measurably different on almost all standards. And to watch it become Bush/Kerry, Bush/Gore, has been one of the most dissatisfying experiences...

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Do you think anything will change if the Democrats control the White House and both houses of Congress?
JON STEWART: Look at what they promised when they took over Congress. I've never heard such hardcore rhetoric. ''The era of the blank check is over! And we will send a sternly worded memorandum — nonbinding — to somebody at the White House. Not necessarily the inner executive circle, we certainly don't want to offend, but...'' And then they got in and were like, ''Really, you want to eavesdrop? Okay, we'll let this one go. But this is the last blank check! Unless you want another. But let me say this: The next one will not be blank, because we'll just write in the memo line. Can we write in memo? Would you be bothered by that?''
STEPHEN COLBERT: One of the things I love about my character is I can make vast declarations and it doesn't matter if I'm wrong. I love being wrong. So my character can tell you exactly what's going to happen: The Democrats are going to change everything. We're going to have gay parents marrying their own gay babies. Obama's gonna be sworn in on a gay baby. The oath is gonna end ''So help me, gay baby.''
STEWART: Then they'll head right over to the abortion mixer. There'll be a dance, and then there'll be a little tent set up outside, just in case anybody wants an RU-486..."

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