I have watched my quota of Fox News for the year.

So last night we watched the two parts of John Stewarts interview on O'Reilly. Watching anything on Fox is something best not done alone, it's like a team sport. You have to support each other and rally the team on and occasionally dump cold drinks over each other. Also, it's particularly fun to watch anything political with someone you're newly dating, because then the actual talking about things starts. Like, do you vote in local elections? How did you feel about Kerry? Exactly how libertarian are you?

From the start, the Boy said that John Stewart always comes off looking like a loser from these sparring matches, because he looks diminutive. It's true that next to O'Reilly he looks smaller, and a little tired. But I think I only love him more for lack of sweeping gestures and spray tan. After all, Stewarts best interview skill is that he knows what he's fucking talking about, and he doesn't talk about what he doesn't know. O'Reilly kept trying to make the point that it was ridiculous for Stewart to be seen as a serious newsman, to which Stewart kept agreeing. But I think he should be taken seriously as a pundit. I like him more when he's talking seriously about a subject than when he's making Jewish jokes. He's articulate and reasonable and passionate. He always takes the high road in argument, like for instance when Beck was brought up. He could have gone off about so many apeshit things that man's done, but instead his only rebuttal was that Glenn Beck wasn't Everyman because he had a tv show. Short, sweet, dismissive and yet not insulting. O'Reilly, of course, was pretty much himself. His cameramen kept laughing the whole time, which was kind of nice. He DID look diminutive though, and kinda gray at the gills. I think the Fox News makeup artist did it on purpose, OR he wouldn't let them put makeup on him cause it might have been poisoned with narrative minded nanobots.

I wonder why Stewart did the interview in the first place. I imagine it was some sort of trade off agreement for guests that have been on his show, or maybe he just does it for himself, to have a chance to be serious.

Regardless of whether or not its a good thing, I agree Stewart is the Anchor of our generation. There's no one else I can think of who would even begin to qualify. I grew up with Gwen Ifill and Morley Safer, but I'm safely in the minority there, because I come from a weird family. And maybe the point is that within our generation, the news is so utterly ridiculous, it can't be stomached without a filter of incredulity and impotent rage. Also, the Daily Show is sort of like the accompaniment to your daily intake of internet news. You have to be prepared before you watch it, know the back stories, know the headlines, to really appreciate what they choose to comment on. So its News Cliffnotes, but also Destinos? It's not like we really get our news from the Daily Show. More like we get our fortitude to keep reading and watching news from the Daily Show.

In related thoughts, I'm trying to force myself to think of the internet differently. Specifically as not "the internet" cause I feel like I should be living in Seattle about to foreclose on my house every time I say that. It's archaic. It doesn't begin to encompass what the network actually is, and what it does for us, and what it should do for us. I really want us to recognize the extent of how much we changed in the past ten years, how all our internet growing pains resolved themselves into neater more maneageable adult neuroses. But instead it will be forgotten as people push past their iphones and kindles into the brightly lit LED future.

But seriously, fuck the term Social Media.

Oh Sarah...

The transcript of my notes from yesterday's Sarah Palin interview on Oprah. I was going to liveblog it, but like a snake eating an alligator, I was transfixed and couldn't be bothered to post this right away. I needed time to digest.

November 16th, 4pm I have not watched Oprah since her damn book club put Ulysses on their list, which made me want to vomit my eyeballs from my nose.

Oprah immediately brings up the "snubbing" ie the fact that she didn't have Palin on last year during the campaign because she absolutely hated all Republicans and thought they were morons and was hypnotized by Obama's magnetic stare. Oprah +2

Sarah shrugs this off. Apparently, she wasn't even "aware" this snubbing was going on. "I didn't hear anything, it wasn't the center of my universe". It's a free market, you can have whoever you want on, cause you're a tv host and I was running for vice president. Fuck off Oprah. Palin +3 (c'mon, it a classic Queen Bitch move)

Who's hair is bigger? I think Palin's is, but she also has glasses that match her jacket. With those wide colored sides? Palin +1

Oprah asks why Palin thought she was "qualified" to run for office, only in a nicer more backhanded way. With a thoroughly incredulous look. Oprah +1

Palin says she didn't even take the rumors about getting the spot seriously, because of the grand ol' names that were also being bandied about. Which raises serious questions about what the vetting process found out about those guys. Palin -1.

Sarah says she came right out to McCain with the dirtiest thing in her past, which was a D in college. There is a collective "really?" from Oprah and all of us, heard around the world. It disrupts the migration pattern of a flock of cranes, who then mistakenly land 300 miles from their destination. -4

Oprah brings up Bristol really early on. -1

Sarah says she wasn't given an "allowance to deal with it in a more productive way", and that she was surprised the media was interested in Bristol's pregnancy at all. She talks like a low level human resources manager. Palin -4

Sarah is actually incapable of finishing a sentence... -1
No, really... -1

Now she makes some point about her kids didn't have the same privilege of being left alone as the Obama kids did. Lay off Sasha and Malia yo. I don't see Sasha sleeping with an high school oxycotin dealer and getting knocked up. -3

Oprah brings up the stupid wardrobe crap. -3

Palin says that all her debate answers were written on note cards for her, and were "non-answers". She tells us that her handlers "couldn't find the script to stay on script". Did you hear McCain has been getting book offers to write about her? +2

Now we're on to Couric. Apparently Sarah really really hates "the perky one" who just kept "badgering" her with questions.

Oprah points out Sarah is pretty perky too. +2

Sarah says she couldn't answer the question about what books and magazines she reads, because she was so annoyed with Couric. She felt that it was such a condescending question, and that Couric was saying something about how Alaska is like a wilderness with no media or electricity or paper-making. Which it is. Palin -2.

Is there another kind of partisan besides political? Palin -1.

Sarah calls Levi "Ricky Hollywood", says he's doing "aspiring porn", and extends him an open invitation to Thanksgiving, because Oprah makes her. Palin +1 Cause Levi is a douche. Also Oprah +1, cause Palin is a hypocritical dancing monkey.

More importantly, she wasn't being mean, he's actually been calling himself Ricky Hollywood. Levi -14

There's a video segment about Sarah's home life. She lives in a big red house that looks like the petting zoo portion of the actual zoo.She takes her youngest daughter Piper to the gym with her. Piper tells her not to get out of the car for trick or treating. Oprah +2

Oprah asks her about how she would handle the vice presidency and being mother to 22 children. Palin points out TLC would have sponsored her.

No, that didn't happen.

But Palin is also pointing out that you can't be a career mom without a support system of ten million aunts and uncles and grandpappies. I think she meant to say "unless you have less than 4 children, in which case it's fine". Palin -2

Oprah looks like she's kind of vomiting a little in her mouth. Oprah +1

Sarah is telling everyone how her marriage has worked with Todd because she never sees him, because he's gone half the year. Palin +1

Then she says she gets by "with Todd and God". Palin -3

She refers to her grandson as the "most beautiful baby boy" so many times, I'm starting to believe she's organized a Palin supporters drinking game on her facebook profile. +1

I should have had a drinking game. Dammnit. Me -3

Finally we talk about why she quit as governor. Apparently there were so many opposition researchers and ethics violation investigators, invading Alaska like mosquitoes, that she couldn't do her job properly. She felt "shackled behind a governors desk". I take this to mean that before the campaign, she didn't really have to do, you know, governor stuff. But after the election, every one kept looking at her, and expecting her to do all this stuff, and she had to be so careful with money things, that it just wasn't so much fun anymore. Palin -2

Oprah asks her if she's going to be thinking about running in 2012, Palin evades. Then she asks her if she's going to be getting a talk show. Palin KIND OF evades. Palin -2.

But then Sarah points out that Oprah is the queen of daytime television, and that she used to watch her every day when she was a stay at home mom. Which means OPRAH CREATED SARAH PALIN. Oprah -32.