Jon Stewart long ago vowed that The Daily Show would never be a partisan screamfest. He has bent over backwards to welcome Bush administration members and sympathizers to his show and engage them in calm, constructive, and always entertaining and witty conversation.
Sometimes -- rarely, but sometimes -- it has irritated me how he cheerfully engages such reprehensible figures as Bill Kristol, deftly criticizing them with solid arguments, but never quite as emphatically as my sense of outrage craves, and always with a punchline never far off.
But he seemed to have turned a corner tonight in his interview with Stephen Hayes, who wrote a hagiography of the decidedly non-hagic (I know it's not a word, dont bother correcting me) Dick Cheney.
Perhaps Hayes visited the show on the wrong day. Just recently, Stewart had endured an undistinguished mocking from John Gibson of the raw, emotional words Stewart spoke during the first TDS show after 9/11 -- Gibson's appalling display was covered by Media Matters here and thoroughly savaged by Keith Olbermann (via C&L) here. So Stewart was possibly not as cheerfully obliging as he usually is. But he laid into Hayes in a way that I have not previously seen him do to any guest, no matter how deeply and completely he disagreed with them.
Stewart was positively sober in discussing Cheney's manipulation and complete lack of candor in discussing the chaotic and violent unraveling of post-invasion Iraq, which was not only predictable, but ACTUALLY PREDICTED BY CHENEY HIMSELF in 1994 footage that TDS aired earlier in the show. Stewart was clearly not in the mood for light-hearted sallies, as this man sat in front of him and defended Cheney's actions and motives.
Now I doubt highly that Stewart is going to turn into Angry Liberal Celebrity. And I'm one who thinks that Lenny Bruce died when he stopped being funny, when his concerts became law lectures instead of comedy performances. But sometimes the sheer audacity of the lies and incompetence of the administration and their water carriers are just not adequately served by the satirist's rapier, and require the bludgeon of direct confrontation.
Stewart took off the fool's cap tonight and spoke with fury. It was wonderful to see. I'm curious to see how he handles John McCain tomorrow night.
And in case you could have possibly missed it, tonight's Daily Show and Colbert Report were classics tonight. Please watch the reruns tomorrow.
Comedy Central's website hasn't posted the Hayes interview yet, but I will update this post to link to it as soon as I find it. I will also try to transcribe the key portions of the interview so you can see his words for yourself.