Honesty

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Friday May 25, 2007 · 10:37 AM PDT

2007/05/25 · 10:37

I love The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. To find such good satire one must return to Jonathan Swift. As Nancy Pelosi put it there is a new congress in town. Sadly the new congress is better fodder for satire than the old.

There are two tricks for appearing on either show. One is to enjoy. The other is to be honest. When Nancy Pelosi says don't go on The Colbert Report to her fellow representatives, what she is really saying is that Colbert enjoys nailing liars. So does Stewart.

I watched Al Gore last night on The Daily Show. Al was plainly enjoying himself and telling the truth. He even caught John Stewart, pointing out that in medieval times the court jester was the only commentator who could tell the truth without fear of losing his head.

Al made some good points. Among them 1) television is a passive medium; 2) once news shows in television became profit centers the emphasis shifted from what is important to what people wanted to hear; 3) journalists and politicians who did not support the president after 9/11 were branded unpatriotic; and 4) politics has shifted from debate to the 30 second advertisement. Al believes the Internet is capable of changing some of that.

I wish Nancy and Harry were listening. A little truth from them would be helpful. They could start by saying with the latest Iraq spending bill they caved in to the president's wishes. They could have said they caved, because they did not feel they had the public support necessary to force the president to bring the troops home now. They could have then said, that in their opinion the president is so stubborn that the president would rather needlessly kill American soldiers to blame congress than to do the right thing. Given this difficult choice of President Bush needlessly causing American soldiers to die and blaming congress, or reducing the death toll by funding the troops; they chose at this time to fund the troops. There will be other opportunities and if the American People increase their support to bring the troops home, then they will be able to override the president's veto and force the president to bring the troops home. Such honesty would bring the troops home and give John Stewart and Stephen Colbert less fodder.

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