Both Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert had unjustifiedly obscure but majorly important serious guests tonight. First, Jon Stewart interviewed Lara Logan, the chief foreign correspondent for CBS News, who said of the "mainstream media" news coverage of Iraq and Afghanistan, "If I were to watch the news that you're hearing here in the United States, I'd just blow my brains out, because it would just drive me nuts." I've posted a full transcript on my personal blog.
Stephen Colbert had interviews with the lawyer for one of the Gitmo detainees, and with the author of The Future of the Internet, and How to Stop It. [amazon.com]
Stephen Colbert interviewed Salim Hamdan's lawyer, "friend of the show, enemy of freedom" Neal Katyal. Katyal persuaded the Supreme Court in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld that U.S. military detainees at Guantánamo Bay have at least some right to challenge their detention in a civilian court — in other words, that the United States remains a nation of laws.
Colbert's main guest, though, was Jonathan Zittrain, talking about the good and the bad about the chaotic world that is the Internet. Zittrain argues that the Internet has made it possible for small players to compete directly with music publishers (file-sharing services) and telephone companies (voice over IP), to name just two, but it has also made it possible for "unknown, faraway evil-doers" to create the computer equivalent of "zombie sleeper cells" with the 250,000,000 or so PCs that have been subverted by malicious software. He also cautions against allowing Apple Computer, for example, to control the availability of third-party software for the iPhone — or by extension allowing the government that power.
Quite a night for Comedy Central!