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.

Conversations in My Head

Conversation 1:

(Note: I have no idea how Mr. O’Reilly feels about companies having to provide health care, specifically. I just know he’s a douche. I apologize in advance if in fact he actually believes all companies owe it to their employees to provide health care and should be forced to by the government. I’m just pretty sure he doesn’t.)

Edit: apparently Mr. O'Reilly listened to me? We have some telepathic connection? Or he's decided to let Beck carry on the torch.

Me: So you don’t think health care should be something that companies are forced to give their employees, right?

Bill O’Reilly: Absolutely not. Socialism blah blah blah….

Me: And do you believe everyone deserves health care?

Bill O’Reilly: Blah blah blah self-determination blah hard work blah blah

Me: So people should only choose to get jobs where they get health care?

Bill O’Reilly: Corporate rights, the market place, blah blah blah

Me: So what we’re saying here is that Wal-Mart is a bad place to work, because no one would work someplace without health care if they had a choice. Right?

(Here Mr. O’Reilly’s head slowly starts to inflate and turn yellow)

Me: Of course, I’m assuming that all human beings believe everyone deserves to have an option for health care, if they are hard working and taxpayers. I mean, I believe EVERYONE should have health care, but at the very least your constituents should have it. I mean, here’s the ironic thing. Probably most of the people who watch your program DON’T have health care, if they’re so working class and blue collar and redneck and American ect. You don’t get health care by being a roofer, construction worker, gas station attendant, ect. But they’ve been raised to feel like unless they earn it by being some successful stockbroker, lawyer, or demagogue, they don’t deserve it. You are telling your listeners that unless they are rich, they are not entitled to expect anything of their government, that in fact the fight of their life is to stop the government from interfering with money they have not made, nor can realistically expect to ever make. And you’re telling them that if they are stupid enough to work at Wal-Mart, screw them.

(Completing its transformation, O’Reilly’s daffodil yellow smiling round face rotates in a circle, like a trapped balloon. It slowly starts to float in my direction, opening its black slash of a mouth to reveal great white shining teeth)


Conversation 2: (this happened to a friend of mine, and while it did not end this way, it should have.)

Abortion protester: Evil! EVAAAL! Take a picture of the sinner!

Me: But they don’t even do abortions here. I’m getting birth control.

Abortion protester: EVIL!

Me: Wait, you don’t believe in birth control either?

Abortion protester: All methods of stopping God’s holy swimmers are the work of the Devil.

Me: Is it more evil for me to prevent getting pregnant, or to get pregnant and have an abortion?

Abortion protester: It is evil to have sex outside the holy covenant of marriage.

Me: Who said I wasn’t married? How do you know? (I’m not)

Abortion protester: People who get married don’t use birth control.

Me: Listen, you’re obviously not a logical person, but try to understand this. You think I’m evil, and a bad person. So why would you want me to have kids? Why wouldn’t you want everyone who believes such bad sinful stuff to stop having children, so your kind can overpopulate the planet and have a chance at the general election?

Abortion protester: Your children are innocent, and should be raised by good Christian families.

Me: So you want me to have the child, and then give it to you?

Abortion protester: Yes, the baby deserves a chance to know God’s love.

Me: I can guarantee you that raising a bastard child who’s told not to become his sinful mother every time he does something wrong, who can’t even know his own bloodline because they were evil, is not the way to propagate your ideas. Also, Veggie Tales are secretly gay subversive.
Like you.