Haha, IEDS!

John McCain's appearence on the Daily Show was a watershed of sorts - in 10 or so interviews Jon Stewart has evolved from cuddling up to the senator to clobbering him with his own talking points. Which isn't to say Stewart pulls a Ed Murrow on McCain. He has the studio audience on his side and occasionally only needs to say a cliche to get them whooping. (He makes one analogy about a house with no doors that makes zero sense, and it gets an ovation.) But he's hostile, and that makes it easy for McCain to angrily implode before the interview even begins. In the first 30 seconds after he sits down, McCain jokes about putting an IED under Stewart's chair and about kicking his dog. Have you ever wondered why politicians don't joke about kicking animals? Hey, here's why.

(If the video doesn't embed, go here.)

Matt Welch's cover story, which inspired McCain to actually set up a roadside bomb on Welch's driveway, is here.

Comments

[Iconoclast]

It was all downhill after the Snickers commercial.
Zzzzzzzzzzzz.........

[stephen the goldberger]

Mccain's been dead in the water for months.

[abdul]

When McCain really gets angry, he threatens people with vietnamese POW camps.

[creech]

His time passed in 2000. The country got Bush instead. McCain must, late at night over a drink, wonder what woulda/shoulda been.

[SugarFree]

No, you see it's funny, because McCain is a Sunni insurgent and Stewart is a US Army patrol. Get it? Damn, I can't believe you people can't see the humor in that!

Next week, McCain will crank call some Chinese restaurants and ask for "flied lice." I can't wait 'cause that's going to be hee-larious!

Can someone pin-point the exact moment McCain went from "a la carte cable channels" to the guy that can't learn from the mistakes of history that he spent five years in a bamboo cage because of? I sure hope a Clinton / Barack ticket doesn't give the White House to Grandpa Nutbag. or Creepy Uncle Romney. or Shit-his-pants Brownback. or...

[mediageek]

I can only hope that this signifies McCain's downward slide.

Giuliani, thankfully, isn't looking so bright, either.

And Comedy Central's video delivery system sucks. It's idiotic that they made them pull Daily Show clips from YouTube.

[ed]

It's idiotic that they made them pull Daily Show clips from YouTube

Perhaps Comedy Central wishes to control ad revenue generated by their product? Just a guess.

[Alan]

Why is everyone letting Stewart off the hook, though? He was practically frothing at the mouth. He was going totally "Crossfire." That's the reason is was a crappy interview. McCain might have been testy, but Stewart was yelling at him - it's a good reason to be testy, regardless of the wisdom of his opinions.

[Eric the .5b]

Don't tell me Jon Stewart is huuurrrrrrrrrrting America, now...

[Eric the .5b]

Geeze, what has the guy done to be compared to Steve Allen?

[Eric the .5b]

Oops, wrong thread.

[pinko]

"He was practically frothing at the mouth."

No. He was trying to get a blabbering McCain to stop spewing absolutely meaningless talking points. Watch the interview again, the froth was coming from McCain. Without taking a more aggressive tack, Stewart wouldn't have gotten a word in edgewise, resulting in extremely bad TV. Stewart, though he's not the best interviewer, was particularly light on his feet in this little sparring match.

McCain has been beneath contempt since he started polishing Falwell's knob. Get over it Alan.

[BakedPenguin]

Oops, wrong thread.

The funny things is, Eric .5b, your "wrong" post works just as well on this one, too.

[ChrisO]

Y'know, life really is a lot more pleasant if you avoid TV.

[Eric the .5b]

Now that I'm able to see the video...OK, wow. McCain is out. I can't imagine he'd put in an appearance like that if he didn't think it was hopeless. When you show up on TV making humorless remarks about kicking dogs and giving someone an IED, you can't possibly believe you're on the road to the White House.

Now, if Hillary Clinton drops out, I'll be even happier about voting next year...

[Chrisd]

Actually, I sort of found McCain a little refreshing. He was unpolished and defensive, sure, but he was irritated, and that made him seem more human than the usual run of the mill politico. How often do you see a politician acting like a normal person (I wasn't sure that they WERE normal people).
Not going to vote for him, of course, but I wasn't going to vote for him prior to the interview, either, so nothing changed there.

[Eric the .5b]

Actually, I sort of found McCain a little refreshing. He was unpolished and defensive, sure, but he was irritated, and that made him seem more human than the usual run of the mill politico. How often do you see a politician acting like a normal person

Ehn, I've seen plenty of people in authority act something like this when someone's questioned their authoritah and they don't have any method of direct petty vengeance handy.

[Pro Libertate]

I'm voting for McCain, because he's the most Scottish of our remaining candidates. If a candidate isn't Scottish, then he's CRAP!

[mnuez]

Just on the subject of Stewart, do any of you remember when Jon Stewart was actually funny? When his show first started out it was slightly funny but the few times that I forced myself to sit through a few minutes of it over the course of the past two years or so, he is so increedibly non-funny that I've come to the conclusion that his audience must be composed of some of the stupidest young people available in our glorious country. (Were I to mention how the yelps from the unseen audience sound like the sort you here on MLK tapes I might be accused of racism or some such, so I won't say it.)

And all that can be said for Jon Stewart's embarrassingly unfunny show can be said LOUDER and with twice the feeling for Colbert's show.

For some reason, these folk are worshipped as representing the "voice of the future!" or some such from practically all podiums (including some current GQ type magazine that I just saw on the magazine shelf), despite the fact that were the intelligence of everything said by Stewart and Colbert over the past year to be added together they would amount to less intelligence found in any given (serious) reader discussion on this fine blog.

Seriously - I. can. not. stand. those. morons. (or, at least in Stewart's case, his moron writers. I think that he has the capacity for intelligent humor but unfortunately it is rarely seen.)

Cheers,

mnuez