Well, not to overly defend Stewart but he was sick during the time of the interview and it was for 50 minutes. Watch the unedited version.
Last night I went out with friends, got home late and was only able to see an edited portion (maybe I just wasn't looking in the right place: I'd had a coupla cocktails), so I didn't bother responding, because I didn't have the proper info to do so intelligently.
I found this
link here, which
should go directly to the entire, unedited interview this afternoon, and watched it in its entirety. I found it fascinating.
First of all, in full disclosure, I'm a massive fan of both Stewart and Maddow;
The Daily Show is a staple of my entertainment diet and has been for at least ten years. I remember Maddow during the '08 election, before landing her own show, and was enormously impressed at how she effectively "contained" Pat Buchanan, all without breaking a sweat. She is perhaps the brightest and most passionate telejournalist I've ever seen: certainly of her generation.
That having been said, I believe that, in many ways, she squanders her brilliant talents on a show that, for all its earnestness, takes the
Daily Show paradigm and attempts to apply it to real journalism. As Stewart continuously points out, he's a satirist/comedian (though I truly believe he's being disingenuous as regards his influence, which I'll get to below) and he plays by very different rules: he doesn't have to get it right, he just has to get it funny.
People dismiss her as smarmy when she attempts this eye-rolling "humor", and if we're judging her by the strict criteria of professional journalism, they have a point. But her show is really an infotainment melange of reportage and commentary, and in allowing the commentary to overwhelm the topics she chooses, she misses more opportunities than she hits. This feeds the incorrect and distorted feeling of "parity" with some of the worst excesses of Fox, but she does that all by herself.
Just because I happen to agree with her commentary/POV doesn't mean that I don't recognize it. To a huge extent, the entire interview was Stewart continuously (if not especially eloquently) pointing this out, too. I found her defensiveness cagey, too: she'd ask him a question about "the left" then react that she doesn't do what he responds back with. This irritated me repeatedly: he'd respond in generalities and she'd take it personally. Then, when he spoke of her specifically, she'd hedge, parse and qualify. This was not Maddow at her best.
Obviously, Stewart was way off his game, too. Why he agreed on the timing of this interview, when he was sick as a fucking dog makes no sense. I also found him conciliatory when he could/should have been more combative: he drew blood with Tucker Carlson or Jim Cramer and could have done so with her if he chose. Instead, he feinted in a deference obviously coming from his admiration of her and an overall sympathy with her POV. He seems to have requested the interview with her specifically; I wonder how different it might have been with Olbermann or Chris Matthews.
I also find his crutch of being a satirist to be increasingly tiresome, in light of his actual prestige with the American people. Bill Maher doesn't do it, George Carlin never did it, nor did Richard Pryor, and frankly none of them had/has his impact or influence. His modesty, in this case, really is kinda hollow and pretty contrived (no matter how sincerely and frequently he repeats it). He's not a journalist, but he commands incredible power to shape the public narrative, and does so four nights per week. His political voice carries farther than does Palin's or Huckabee's, and he knows it.
He hints that, at some point, he'll probably leave
The Daily Show, with just the slightest tip of his hat to getting directly involved in politics. That would be extremely interesting, though obviously more constricting and less lucrative financially.
Back to the interview: it was a draw. Even as it stands it's compelling, but it could have been electric had Jon been really on his game.