O'REILLY: OK. You know what's really frightening?
STEWART: Uh oh.
O'REILLY: You actually have an influence on this presidential election. That is scary.
STEWART: If that were so, that would be quite frightening.
O'REILLY [classy, as always]: But it is. It's true. I mean, you've got stoned slackers watching your dopey show every night, OK, and they can vote.
STEWART: Yeah.
O'REILLY: You can't stop them.
STEWART: Yeah, I just don't know how motivated they would be, these stoned slackers.
O'REILLY: Yeah, it just depends if they have to go out that day.
STEWART: What am I, a Cheech and Chong movie? Stoned slackers?
O'REILLY: Come on, you do the research, you know the research on your program.
STEWART: No, we don't.
O'REILLY: Eighty-seven percent are intoxicated when they watch it [whaaa????!!]. You didn't see that?
STEWART: No, I didn't realize that.
O'REILLY: Yeah, we have that there.
Now, I don't know what bullshit "research" O'Reilly was citing...but someone did some real research on the "Daily Show" and smoking dope must make you pretty damn perceptive. From the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg Survey:
No Joke: Daily Show Viewers Follow Presidential Race
Sep 21, 2004 12:20 p.m.
PHILADELPHIA -- Viewers of late-night comedy programs, especially The Daily Show with Jon Stewart on the cable channel Comedy Central, are more likely to know the issue positions and backgrounds of presidential candidates than people who do not watch late-night comedy, the University of Pennsylvania’s National Annenberg Election Survey shows...
...The Annenberg survey found that people who watch The Daily Show are more interested in the presidential campaign, more educated, younger, and more liberal than the average American...“In fact, Daily Show viewers have higher campaign knowledge than national news viewers and newspaper readers -- even when education, party identification, following politics, watching cable news, receiving campaign information online, age, and gender are taken into consideration.”
If "Daily Show" watchers are "stoned slackers," what does that make his viewers? Jackass.
UPDATE: There's a movement afoot to have John Stewart officially endorse Kerry. Sign the petition here if you agree. I personally don't care one way or the other, I think Stewart's opinion is clear, and if an offical "endorsement" lends creedence to call from the right of liberal bias and such, it's not worth it. But the site did offer this link to what is perhaps the best moment in journalism of the last year.
2 comments:
In O'Reilly's defense, the entire exchange was in jest and anyone who was watching could see that. If I recall correctly, he even held up an imaginary piece of paper as he cited that "research".
I only read the transcript, so the paper reference was lost on me.
Even though I think O'Reilly is a blowhard, a bully and usually full of shit, for some reason I don't completely hate the guy. Almost, but not completely.
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