Jon Stewart Lets Barton Lie. Again.
I’m sure many of you watched the Daily Show the other day when Jon Stewart lobbed a few softball questions to professional liar David Barton and let him promote his book full of lies without putting up any resistance at all. It was a truly pathetic performance, as bad as the first time he had him on the show. Here’s the video:
And yes, the story about the kid being punished for praying is nonsense. If you’re not going to challenge the guy, why bring him on? You know he’s full of shit, you know he’s lying but you’re letting him get away with it. If you aren’t going to defend reality, don’t give him the platform. Jon Stewart has done a great job challenging other right wing figures, but for some reason he lets Barton off the hook.
By the way, I’ve got an interview on my radio show soon (not sure whether it will be May 8 or May 15) with a former writer for the Daily Show. Much to my surprise, he absolutely lit in to Stewart and spent several minutes hammering him for a number of things. This is a guy who has also written for Bill Maher and many other shows. Stay tuned for details.
Ellie:
May 3rd, 2012 at 2:17 pm
It was a terrible interview, and Stewart should be ashamed of himself.
Doug Little:
May 3rd, 2012 at 2:25 pm
Yeah it was fucking pathetic. Stewart didn’t learn a thing from interviewing him the first time around.
John Horstman:
May 3rd, 2012 at 2:53 pm
I almost couldn’t stand to watch. Barton was lying left and right. Another example is the Supreme Court case he claimed banned moments of silence, Wallace v. Jaffree, which was in fact about school prayer. Add to that the fact that Stewart didn’t challenge his Christian-presumptive framing of the entire discussion, and it was just awful. I really don’t know why they wanted to give Barton any sort of platform.
unbound:
May 3rd, 2012 at 3:15 pm
To be honest, while Jon Stewart happily goes head on against political douchebaggery, he has shown in the past that he is clearly not on the side of atheists (I recall an episode a good while ago where he took atheists to task over a statement that wasn’t even particularly bad), and this isn’t the first theist he’s given a easy pass to. Unless the theist is doing something clearly wrong (e.g. creationist nonsense, sexist), I don’t actually recall Jon Stewart ever taking a theist to task in general.
So when someone like David Barton shows up with something that sounds fine on the surface, Jon Stewart accepts it uncritically. We each have at least one blind spot in our lives. For Jon Stewart, that blind spot is theism.
Stevarious:
May 3rd, 2012 at 3:44 pm
This interview was infuriating. Dammit Stewart!!!
Jordan Genso:
May 3rd, 2012 at 4:05 pm
I remembered that Jon Stewart didn’t do as well as I would’ve hoped last time, but when watching this interview, it seemed to me like he was even less prepared this time.
There was a part of me that wanted to watch the “bonus” part of the interview online after seeing the televised part, in hopes that the “bonus” portion would actually contain a good moment, but I ended up assuming it would just be more disappointment.
Michael Heath:
May 3rd, 2012 at 4:10 pm
unbound writes:
Jon Stewart’s blind spot isn’t merely theism, it’s allowing a known propagandist use his show to promote himself and his product. And Mr. Barton has clearly done something wrong, he continually demonstrates incredibly contemptible behavior.
I don’t watch Jon Stewart’s show though I recorded this one and watched it last evening thanks to a heads-up by another commenter in a recent Barton post. I do see the segments which go viral and are posted either here, at Andrew Sullivan’s blog, or at the Huffington Post. I can see Stewart’s greatest hits and what’s he’s capable of on the downside are an enormous distance in quality, that really surprised me. I had no idea Mr. Stewart was capable of such cowardice; does he think he can someday backfill for David Gregory or even sooner, Bob Schieffer? Two of the biggest cowards ever to get such influential slots.
And not only did Stewart allow Barton to exploit his show with nothing to show for it in return, Barton also gains a little more of an aura of credibility given that Stewart treated him like an actual expert with whom Stewart merely disagrees.
Michael Heath:
May 3rd, 2012 at 4:16 pm
This also illustrates the importance an argument I continue to make, that managing producers should book experts when they are knowingly hosting a liar and the host isn’t capable for rebutting the liar. Here Jon Stewart purposefully allowed a propagandist to promote himself and his propaganda and allowed Barton to misinform his show’s viewers, instead of using this opportunity to inform his audience.
Spanish Inquisitor:
May 3rd, 2012 at 4:16 pm
We usually think that humor and comedy are great devices for highlighting criticism, but it’s times like this that the tension between being spot-on and being funny tend to conflict.
He could have gone after Barton in a funny way, maintaining his comedic cred while getting the point across that Barton’s full of shit. He does it all the time. But he chose to stick with comedy, and in the end, got neither.
leni:
May 3rd, 2012 at 4:44 pm
Yeah. I DVR’d it and watched in mute horror as Stewart basically gave him the green light on pretty much all his bullshit.
That said, I feel slightly absurd expecting a comedy show host to ask the hard-hitting questions.
TX_secular:
May 3rd, 2012 at 4:45 pm
I have seen similar weaknesses in Bill Maher when it comes to vaccines (and other Hollywood woo). Sometimes these guys are out of their league with the guest and/or the topic and they remind us that they are comedians, not experts.
tacitus:
May 3rd, 2012 at 5:30 pm
The interview was very disappointing — I couldn’t watch any more than the first segment — but I’m not ready to call Stewart a coward for letting Barton off the hook. To me, the problem was three-fold:
1) Presidential history isn’t Stewart’s strong suit.
2) He went into the interview underprepared.
3) Barton is a past master at the Gish Gallop, and isn’t easy to pin down even when you know the facts are on your side.
For example, how would Stewart know that Barton’s story about the kid reprimanded for praying was made up? Perhaps, if he was lucky, one of his staff might have alerted him to that particular story, but then Barton as hundreds more like that, and would have simply moved on to another example if called out on it.
It’s disappointing that Stewart can’t bring it every night, but the truth is that he doesn’t, and sometimes he just isn’t well equipped to do so. I had my suspicions that this was going to be the case with Barton even before I saw the interview, and it turned out to be the case.
loren:
May 3rd, 2012 at 5:31 pm
“I have seen similar weaknesses in Bill Maher when it comes to vaccines (and other Hollywood woo)”
Stewart himself demonstrated a rather sizable blind spot on vaccines when he allowed Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to spew mountains of pseudoscientific nonsense on the show a few years back:
http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/wed-july-20-2005/robert-f–kennedy–jr-
Stewart’s interview with Barton was disappointing, but that interview with Kennedy was just disgusting.
jayliverstitch:
May 3rd, 2012 at 5:35 pm
I was rather disappointed in this interview as well. When I saw Barton was back on the show I figured Stewart was wanting to nail him this time to make up for his last disappointing appearance.
Having said that though, and to be fair, Barton is a sly interviewee, and uses a style of argumentation that’s particularly hard to counter unless you are personally aware and versed on every anecdote he’s likely to mention. Not unlike Kent Hovind, Barton’s style here is to throw out as many different “facts” as he can that support his claims, and by doing so, tacitly demand that his opposition counter each one, effectively tying him/her up in knots. Ofcourse it doesn’t matter that these “facts” are in almost all cases either outright fabrications, like the story of the 5 year old, or otherwise some misleading bastardization of a real event, because the end result for an audience member who’s not willing or able to pause every 30 seconds to google his claims is that Barton comes off looking well versed and knowledgeable, and his opponent appears dumbstruck by his argument.
Stewart often does a great job of letting people hoist themselves on their own petard, letting them have the floor at first to explain their point of view, then asking a simple question or two that reveals the fallacies in their logic. And there’s the problem with Barton, he doesn’t rely on logic to make his case. He just throws out a string of anecdotes and hopes nobody has the time to debunk them all.
Michael Heath:
May 3rd, 2012 at 6:20 pm
tacitus writes:
Why are you letting a successful TV talent off the hook in spite of acknowledging he wasn’t capable of handling #1 where he failed to mitigate for such and he #2, he phoned-in his show?
baal:
May 3rd, 2012 at 6:36 pm
I think that was back when he was sitting on the board of the NYC 911 memorial and was on the receiving end of a law suit from atheists who didn’t want a cross (cross shaped i-beam girder) presented. It was kinda silly suit but it’s not ethical to use your half hour comedy show to nail the plaintiffs when you’re the defendant.
Back to Barton, I had a hard time watching the episode yesterday. I guess John was trying to start with a ‘see I’m on your side’ at the start of the interview so he could be more ‘attackie’ at the end. I had to get up, however, when John threw in a throw away line (que stage whisper), “[atheists] no one listens to them anyway.”
Ophelia Benson:
May 3rd, 2012 at 7:22 pm
“2) He went into the interview underprepared.”
No he didn’t!
Ophelia Benson:
May 3rd, 2012 at 7:22 pm
Which just makes it worse. Argh.
tacitus:
May 3rd, 2012 at 8:31 pm
Not sure that saying I turned off the interview because it was so bad I couldn’t watch any more was letting him off the hook. I just don’t think his awful performance can be attributed to some form of moral cowardice or anti-atheistic bent.
Stewart can be brilliant when he’s in his element — at the intersection between the news media and politics — but he can also be a dud at times (and I think even he would agree with that), and his interview with Barton was one of those occasions.
Doc Bill:
May 3rd, 2012 at 8:42 pm
Why does Stewart let Barton lie over and over? I don’t understand it! Usually, Stewart is well-read on a guest but in Barton’s case, TWICE, Stewart has failed miserably.
Does Barton gaze at Stewart with his big blue eyes and fake him out, over and over?
A one-minute Google search debunked Barton’s claim of a 5th grader being reprimanded for praying at school. WTF?
jayliverstitch:
May 3rd, 2012 at 9:42 pm
Doc Bill said
That’s the thing though, Barton does this intentionally. He equips himself with an arsenal of half-truths to be showered on his listeners at any time. It’s a different thing that when Stewart is nailing a Politician or Jim Cramer about specific things they’ve said in the past.
We can hardly blame Stewart for not having heard of that particular incident, especially since Barton even got the age wrong. And as someone said above, even if Stewart had challenged him harder on it, Barton would’ve just come up with another misrepresented “fact” that seems to support his ideas.
I think there’s still a fair criticism to be made against Stewart here though, and that’s that he should have been expecting this, and not allowed him to control the conversation in that Gish Gallop way. It’s exactly what Barton did last time on his show, and Stewart actually got visibly frustrated by it then, saying “Sure we can point out anecdotal things all day…” and “You may be right about THIS CASE but the larger point is…”. Having seen Barton do this before, he should’ve put a stop to it, and done his best to force Barton to actually address the issue with rationale, not just let him spew anecdote after anecdote.
As for the little “nobody listens to those guys” whisper, yea that kinda bugged me too. But I think he was talking about some of the sillier things that get done in the name of atheism (the FFRF ground zero cross lawsuit is a good example imo) and not the larger issue of church/state separation. He did actually even mention those of no faith at one point in a non-negative way.
mrevan:
May 3rd, 2012 at 10:10 pm
Is it reasonable to suspect Stewart may have been trying to go easy on him (as he did with Tom Coburn the following night) in an attempt to seem less hostile to conservatives in the run-up to the election? It might be helpful in attracting other potential guests. Then again, for all his ripping on the “fair and balanced” model of (shitty) journalism, his idea of reason is often compromise. He did manage to point out that Barton’s trope of Christianity-under-attack was bullshit. He just did it with a complete lack of force.
As a huge fan of his work, I was horribly disappointed.
mithrandir:
May 4th, 2012 at 2:38 am
Does anyone know of a case where Jon Stewart actually ripped into an interviewee? My vague impression is that he seldom really tries to humiliate someone on the other side of the table.
In which case Stewart should mostly be faulted for booking Barton at all, and doubly so for booking him twice.
Ichthyic:
May 4th, 2012 at 5:09 am
I think he was talking about some of the sillier things that get done in the name of atheism (the FFRF ground zero cross lawsuit is a good example imo) and not the larger issue of church/state separation.
Uh… the FFRF suit WAS about church/state separation.
Second… it’s sad that people now rely on comedians to be their heroes.
A little reflection should make folks wonder about being mad at Stewart, who is an entertainer, for failing at being a hard-hitting journalist.
Chris from Europe:
May 4th, 2012 at 7:12 am
There’s a reason I usually avoid the interviews on the Daily Show. Colbert is better at that thanks to his TV persona with abusive behavior on everyone.
Interestingly Stewart hung up in some nonsensical criticism when Al Gore was guest on the show.
@mrevan
I, of course, also skipped Coburn. I expect the worst about that interview.
Doc Bill:
May 4th, 2012 at 9:55 am
I agree that Stewart was not prepared for this interview. I wonder how many of the books he promotes he actually reads or even skims.
Stewart could have taken two or three chapters, researched Barton’s lies and confronted Barton with those. And, most importantly, not let Barton divert the conversation.
I have found that in dealing with Barton-types, i.e. creationists, if you pick a single point and hammer it, they wither or run away or both.
jaranath:
May 4th, 2012 at 12:29 pm
I think Ophelia’s right: I don’t think Stewart was unprepared. He’s done things like this too often where atheism’s involved.
I think Stewart is simply hostile to atheists. I don’t know why…maybe his love of civility and the middle ground runs up against our frequent righteous anger; maybe it’s religious. But I certainly don’t think this was just a screwed-up interview. I think Stewart meant to throw atheists under the bus from the beginning.
remysecor:
May 4th, 2012 at 3:52 pm
In Defense of Jon Stewart
I watch Stewart and Colbert frequently and Stewart’s interviews are rarely confrontational. He’s even been polite to Paul Ryan and Bill Kristol. The most “aggressive” interview he’s ever had was probably the one with Jim Cramer who, no shrinking violet, was surprised and shocked by the obvious questions – at the start of a massive global market meltdown!
Indeed, I can’t think of any interviewers on TV or radio that I listen to regularly who treat interviews as debates. The useless Sunday talk shows are just showcases for people to spout well-known positions. Even semi-hard questions are so rare, I can pretty much remember all of them:
Terry Gross – in what, 20 years?, one or two people have walked off in the face of an obvious but disliked question.
TTBOOK – one of my favorite public radio programs routinely interviews woo-masters and treats them with the same courtesy as non-woo purveyors.
Michael Feldman years ago interviewed Anne Lamott by phone and said that he didn’t like the main character in her new book. She was offended, hasn’t been on since, and he was criticized. Why? It could have been the start of an interesting dialogue: “Why don’t you like her?” “Well, x, y and z”. “Hmmm, that wasn’t my intention, although I did expect …”. But Lamott didn’t expect an interviewer to both have read her book and not have liked it.
On West Coast Live, Sedge Thomson interviewed Naomi Wolf about her book Misconceptions and very mildly questioned her wholesale dismissal of medical practices that saved the lives of women, women he knew. She became upset. He was criticized for being uncivil.
Today on Science Friday, Flatow interviewed Mayim Bialik about her exchanging TV for Science for TV. In response to some caller questions she asserted, re vaccines, that children today got way more vaccines than 40 years ago (as if this were not a sign of progress but of an assault on the health of children) and she had done a lot of reading and studying, and blah, blah, blah. Then there was her theory of attachment parenting which, I think, involves breast-feeding a two or three-year old. Flatow let her answer the callers’ questions but didn’t call her out on either subject.
Those Sunday talk shows? Think about it. The interviewers know who will be on, know what questions they will ask, could quite easily have their staff look up criticisms for the expected answers. Do they? Of course, not. The strongest question will be on the order of “well, what about?” Do they point out that there are no facts to back up the speaker’s position, or the study cited is bogus for the following reasons, or 2/3 of his campaign contributions come from the industry that will benefit from his legislation? No, of course not. It would be considered impolite and possibly mean a loss of access to an “important” person.
Almost everybody who gets interviewed on a non-political program is shilling a book or a TV show or a movie or a play. The interviewers may know something about the subject or have glanced at a few pages of the book but most probably not and nobody expects these segments to be other than polite opportunities for the interviewee to sell a product.
Stewart routinely limits his attacks to the first or, occasionally, second segment. Yes, he could choose not to let idiots use his program as a platform, but if even NPR, which doesn’t have to make a profit, will noncritically interview just about anybody, I think it unrealistic to expect Stewart to screen his interviewees for common sense or accuracy and to attack them if they lack those qualities. That is, quite simply, not his job.
(I’m listening to a KQED fund-raising segment right now in which the host is touting! the fact that you won’t find confrontation on KQED.)
If you know of interviewers who routinely engage guests in substantive debates, please give me their names.
jayliverstitch:
May 4th, 2012 at 7:56 pm
You’re right, I was mistaking the FFRF with American Atheists in the suit over the Ground Zero Cross. You may agree with that American Atheists over that suit as well, but personally I found it petty. There are real cases that merit bringing suits based on the establishment clause (the FFRF suit over the National Day of Prayer imo) but I just didn’t see the Ground Zero Cross as being one of them.
As for the comments on Stewart being a comedian and we shouldn’t expect him to be hard hitting. I agree, sort of. He is a comedian first, but often he does a better job than many real journalists at pointing out the absurdities of politics in this country. That is often the case with satirists.
Ichthyic:
May 4th, 2012 at 10:25 pm
You may agree with that American Atheists over that suit as well, but personally I found it petty.
why did you find it petty, though?
there are thousands of similar cases filed every day. Is there a real reason NOT to file them?
they are on point, they deal with the same issues…
there’s nothing stopping them from filing both small AND large cases.
He is a comedian first, but often he does a better job than many real journalists
But that’s the real issue here. Don’t focus on Stewart, focus on the fact that real journalism is dying, and we simply can’t afford for that to happen any longer. When large numbers of people are relying on a fucking entertainer as a source for news journalism… the system is fucking broke!
Michael Heath:
May 4th, 2012 at 11:27 pm
remysecor:
Scott Pelley, Steve Kroft, Anderson Cooper, and Fareed Zakaria routinely ask tough questions and follow-up with probing questions when their guests avoid the previous question. Mr. Zakaria does so even with heads of state, e.g., pressing China President Hu Jintao on human rights.
I think you also make the mistake of narrowing the possible framework on how to avoid misinforming one’s audience with a known liar as Mr. Stewart purposefully does here. The show could easily also have an expert versed in the particular lies of the booked guest who lies.
jaimey:
May 7th, 2012 at 7:17 pm
I think that Stewart had a difficult time with Barton because, as was said by one commenter, Barton uses anecdotes that are very difficult to disprove. The anecdote about the five year-old is nearly twenty years old (and completely false). Not only is it twenty years old, but the actual story was about a ten year-old who was put in detention for fighting, not praying. How can someone argue against that? It’s also more difficult to do that in real-time. The first bit in that episode (about President Obama and bin Laden’s death) was much more of a “shutting down” than the interview because he and his writers had time to prepare. You can’t really have written responses to interview questions in real-time.
Stewart, to the chagrin of many of you, is polite. I understand that that’s frustrating, but considering the culture of political media these days, he’s taking the high road. I don’t think he’s letting Barton off the hook; in the extended interview, he explained his point well and left it at “obviously we disagree.”
I’m far happier that Stewart conducts himself with professionalism and integrity rather than aggression.
ideas masivas:
May 11th, 2012 at 9:02 pm
ideas masivas…
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