Enemy Combatant
Thursday, September 30, 2004
Daily Show Again Caught Telling Painfully Unfunny Truth
Here's a transcript of last night's Daily Show, courtesy of Angry Bear:
JON STEWART: …Can we talk a little bit about what’s really going to happen at the debates tomorrow?
ED HELMS: [Sarcasm] Ookaay. This is the report I’m going to file. [grabs notebook and starts reading, in a quick monotone]. The two candidates exchanged pointed barbs about our Iraq policy and the war on Terror. Senator Kerry made strides towards shedding what some of his analysts call a patrician image…yadda yadda yadda…but the president with his plainspoken words was more effective in communicating his vision by relentless ...
STEWART: [interjecting] Ed. Ed, I’m sorry. You’ve written your report as though it's already happened. This is, is…
HELMS: Yeah, I wrote it yesterday.
STEWART: You write you stories in advance? And then put it in the past tense?
HELMS: Yeah. We all do. All the reporters do that.
STEWART: Why?
HELMS: We write the narratives in advance based on conventional wisdom, and then whatever happens, we make it fit that storyline.
STEWART: Why?
HELMS: We…We’re lazy. Lazy thinkers.
STEWART: But what happens if actual news happens?
HELMS: That’s what bloggers are for.
And here's what ABC News had up on its site until just a few moments ago (courtesy of Atrios's Eschaton):
CORAL GABLES, Fla. Sept. 30, 2004 — After a deluge of campaign speeches and hostile television ads, President Bush and challenger John Kerry got their chance to face each other directly Thursday night before an audience of tens of millions of voters in a high-stakes debate about terrorism, the Iraq war and the bloody aftermath.
The 90-minute encounter was particularly crucial for Kerry, trailing slightly in the polls and struggling for momentum less than five weeks before the election. The Democratic candidate faced the challenge of presenting himself as a credible commander in chief after a torrent of Republican criticism that he was prone to changing his positions.
Bush was expected to confront questions about leading the nation into war on the still-unproven premise that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. He also has faced accusations that he lacked a strategy to deal with the violence and chaos that have left more than 1,000 Americans dead and that the Iraq war has diverted U.S. attention from al-Qaida and other terrorists.
Now, tell me again -- who's the real newscaster here, and who's the joke?
