Third World Health Care - Knoxville, Tennessee Edition

[PainRack]

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/thu-m ... ee-edition


The most........... amazing turnabout as the Fox news commentator struggled to find his way back to a talking point when he realized Asif Mandi was talking about America instead of some Third World shit hole....... And his amazingly stupid fumble.


Ah........... Court Jestors, daring to tell the King that the French are so brave, jumping into the sea unlike the cowardly English who cling to their ships tenaciously.

[Iroscato]

"This clip only plays in the United Stats"
Grrr...

[Temjin]

Wow. "If you're poor, just stop being poor."

I am in awe of the overwhelming stupidity in that line. It really shows you the mentality behind it. "It's you're own damn fault you're poor, and you deserve whatever happens to you because of it!"

[Gaidin]

Personally my favorite part was the total silence when he found out it was Knoxville he visited.

[PainRack]

"This clip only plays in the United Stats"
Grrr...

Does this link work?
http://www.upworthy.com/watch-15-magica ... g=2&c=ufb1

[PainRack]

Wow. "If you're poor, just stop being poor."

I am in awe of the overwhelming stupidity in that line. It really shows you the mentality behind it. "It's you're own damn fault you're poor, and you deserve whatever happens to you because of it!"

Let's be fair. He was flailing around for a lifeline and just didn't see how Asif was mocking him

[Vendetta]

This one has a video you can watch

[Simon_Jester]

I think that is being fair. It's such a fatuous, ridiculous thing to say that it suggests that there is literally nothing in this man's mind that can be filed under "this is what we should do regarding Americans are poor." He not only doesn't have a plan or a policy, he doesn't even have the rudimentary awareness that there might be something to have a plan or policy about.

In short, we've come full circle to the days of the Forgotten Man.

It is said that Napoleon lost the battle of Waterloo because he forgot his infantry--he staked too much upon the more spectacular but less substantial cavalry. The present administration in Washington provides a close parallel. It has either forgotten or it does not want to remember the infantry of our economic army.

These unhappy times call for the building of plans that rest upon the forgotten, the unorganized but the indispensable units of economic power, for plans like those of 1917 that build from the bottom up and not from the top down, that put their faith once more in the forgotten man at the bottom of the economic pyramid.

Obviously, these few minutes tonight permit no opportunity to lay down the ten or a dozen closely related objectives of a plan to meet our present emergency, but I can draw a few essentials, a beginning in fact, of a planned program.

It is the habit of the unthinking to turn in times like this to the illusions of economic magic. People suggest that a huge expenditure of public funds by the Federal Government and by State and local governments will completely solve the unemployment problem. But it is clear that even if we could raise many billions of dollars and find definitely useful public works to spend these billions on, even all that money would not give employment to the seven million or ten million people who are out of work. Let us admit frankly that it would be only a stopgap. A real economic cure must go to the killing of the bacteria in the system rather than to the treatment of external symptoms.

How much do the shallow thinkers realize, for example, that approximately one-half of our whole population, fifty or sixty million people, earn their living by farming or in small towns whose existence immediately depends on farms. They have today lost their purchasing power. Why? They are receiving for farm products less than the cost to them of growing these farm products. The result of this loss of purchasing power is that many other millions of people engaged in industry in the cities cannot sell industrial products to the farming half of the Nation. This brings home to every city worker that his own employment is directly tied up with the farmer's dollar. No Nation can long endure half bankrupt. Main Street, Broadway, the mills, the mines will close if half the buyers are broke.

I cannot escape the conclusion that one of the essential parts of a national program of restoration must be to restore purchasing power to the farming half of the country. Without this the wheels of railroads and of factories will not turn...

It is high time to get back to fundamentals. It is high time to admit with courage that we are in the midst of an emergency at least equal to that of war. Let us mobilize to meet it.

Now, we don't have 50% of America living in rural areas and depending in whole or in part on the economic fortunes of small farmers- it's more like 10-20%. But the basic idea remains: the country cannot function "half bankrupt." Forgetting about the individual people who have become poor, while fixating on institutions, is disastrous folly.

And when a "business advisor" for a major organization claiming to be a news network is totally unaware of this, when he can talk in facile terms about "the greatest health care system in the world" while showing no sign of awareness of what is actually happening to people on the ground... No, it is NOT unfair to say that he's a blithering idiot.

[Iroscato]

This one has a video you can watch

Thanks - god, that was worth the wait. I've never seen a man so profoundly shit himself in an interview.

[Kitsune]

This one has a video you can watch

Thanks - god, that was worth the wait. I've never seen a man so profoundly shit himself in an interview.

Shouldn't you expect that from a Daily Show interview?

[Iroscato]

This one has a video you can watch

Thanks - god, that was worth the wait. I've never seen a man so profoundly shit himself in an interview.

Shouldn't you expect that from a Daily Show interview?

I wouldn't know, generally speaking. I live in the UK, don't get CNN and have only seen a few clips from the Daily Show and Jon Stewart in general.

[Vendetta]

Most of the times I've seen someone getting that kind of treatment on the Daily Show haven't had the self awareness to realise that they've fucked up.

[Kuja]

Most of the times I've seen someone getting that kind of treatment on the Daily Show haven't had the self awareness to realise that they've fucked up.

People are too used to softball questions and pussyfoot interviews. Just a handful more of Jon Stewarts (et al) would wreck havoc in the current political climate.

[TheHammer]

Most of the times I've seen someone getting that kind of treatment on the Daily Show haven't had the self awareness to realise that they've fucked up.

People are too used to softball questions and pussyfoot interviews. Just a handful more of Jon Stewarts (et al) would wreck havoc in the current political climate.

John Oliver will be starting his own HBO show along the same lines. It's just a weekly show, but will be along the same lines I expect. Its sad that this show, along with Colbert, seem to care more about getting facts straight and accurate reporting than the so-called "hard" news organizations.

For some more hilarity the Napolitano "The Weakest Lincoln" is classic:

Preface:
http://www.salon.com/2014/02/25/the_dai ... m_lincoln/

"The Weakest Lincoln:
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/d ... -civil-war

[Simon_Jester]

The thing about the comedy-channel shows is that they can afford to permanently alienate the people they interview, because:

1) They typically do NOT go after the actual politicians, but rather after the pompous windbags, the talking heads and spokesmen, who build themselves up a reputation as "political commentators." These are people who are accustomed to exposing themselves in the public eye... but who spend the bulk of their careers writing and speaking for sympathetic audiences. They're soft targets, much easier to lampoon.

There are only a handful of actual right-wing politicoes who are this vulnerable, Michelle Bachmann being a poster girl for it who's got her own thread in N&P right now. Interestingly, almost all of those politicoes are "Tea:" Republicans from deeply red states, where all the selection pressure has been in favor of Republican candidates whose arguments are totally, ruthlessly optimized to appeal to the Republican base. If they alienate 50-70% of the national electorate entirely, who cares? That 50-70% is hugely underrepresented in their state, and thus in their political experience.

2) They can basically interview anyone and make it into comedy- they never find themselves suddenly forced to find a quote from someone with insider information about the dealings of the RNC. Therefore they can afford to burn bridges with people, people the conventional networks apparently consider too valuable as 'sources' to play hardball with.

3) Because news has become a partisan activity in America, with the right being able to basically route all their 'news' through their viewerbase through Fox and neglecting the other networks, while the left basically ignores Fox and talks to the others... basically, it creates a situation where no one has an incentive to do a hardball interview with anyone who might actually give them that interview. "The press" is no longer a united, nonpartisan body. Republican politicians can decline to give interviews to MSNBC, Democrats can decline to give them to Fox, the nominal reporters are all affiliated with one of the teams (if nothing else the "corporatist" faction that crosses the party divide at least among politicians). Comedians are more neutral because they can always retreat into making people laugh rather than making them think.

[CyrilsScribe]

Fortunately for the Daily Show and for its viewers, it appears that the Judge was enjoying himself during the interview and not taking themselves or their subject too seriously. I really liked the "You don't mess with the Lincoln" quote, got a great laugh out of than one!

[Gandalf]

People are too used to softball questions and pussyfoot interviews. Just a handful more of Jon Stewarts (et al) would wreck havoc in the current political climate.

I would agree more if his interviews were more like his segments.

On Monday he has a scathing condemnation of Obama's drone program, then follows that up with an interview with Obama where drones aren't mentioned, and on Wednesday resumes the condemnations, it's hard to claim he's any more of a news guy than O'Reilly.

[Simon_Jester]

Hm.

That's a fair point- you seem to be saying that when these guys actually get interviews with prominent figures they act just like everyone else (servile, for lack of a better term). And the hard-hitting stuff is reserved for segments and interviews with nobodies (i.e. random RNC talking heads)

Is that about right?

[Gandalf]

That's pretty much it.

[Gaidin]

To be fair I have a hard time finding a non-friendly Jon Stewart interview where the scathing stuff is done during the actual show material and comedian interviews. It's consistent so far as I've seen.

[Mr. Tickle]

"This clip only plays in the United Stats"

Little tip if you have Firefox. You can get some add-ons which let you access the content on dailyshow.com, I use one called ProxMate which does the job.

The site might still pop up with a message saying you are accessing from outside the US but the videos still load etc

[Scrib]

People are too used to softball questions and pussyfoot interviews. Just a handful more of Jon Stewarts (et al) would wreck havoc in the current political climate.

I would agree more if his interviews were more like his segments.

On Monday he has a scathing condemnation of Obama's drone program, then follows that up with an interview with Obama where drones aren't mentioned, and on Wednesday resumes the condemnations, it's hard to claim he's any more of a news guy than O'Reilly.

I remember that way back when this was the criticism thrown at him by Tucker Carlson as he came on Crossfire and slammed them for their Golden Mean, everything-is-equal bullshit: he had the democratic presidential candidate on and said nothing of importance. He never meaningfully addressed it, beyond deflecting and claiming that he was merely a comedian.

[Tribble]

As he put it, he's the guy who comes on after the TV show where puppets do prank phone calls.

[Mr. Coffee]

People are too used to softball questions and pussyfoot interviews. Just a handful more of Jon Stewarts (et al) would wreck havoc in the current political climate.

I would agree more if his interviews were more like his segments.

On Monday he has a scathing condemnation of Obama's drone program, then follows that up with an interview with Obama where drones aren't mentioned, and on Wednesday resumes the condemnations, it's hard to claim he's any more of a news guy than O'Reilly.

Wait, the White House actually let Stewart interview President Obama? If so, I wouldn't be at all surprised if Stewart was explicitly told what he may and may not ask the President, and it'd be a real dumb idea to ignore that.

[TheHammer]

People are too used to softball questions and pussyfoot interviews. Just a handful more of Jon Stewarts (et al) would wreck havoc in the current political climate.

I would agree more if his interviews were more like his segments.

On Monday he has a scathing condemnation of Obama's drone program, then follows that up with an interview with Obama where drones aren't mentioned, and on Wednesday resumes the condemnations, it's hard to claim he's any more of a news guy than O'Reilly.

http://dissenter.firedoglake.com/2012/1 ... -policies/

Stewart isn't "in their face" about it, but he does often ask the tough questions, even if behind the veneer of humor. There is a line there, because these are after all "guests" there voluntarily, and not detainees to be interrogated. Be too confrontational, you'll never get them on as a guest again. But he more often then not finds a way to say what needs to be said.