Oh shit Rach, I know we just talked about the senate minority issue, but I have to take some exception to your claim that Jon Stewart just completely discredited Betsy McCaughey (someone who in my mind was already discredited). By using the same tactics as the town hall crashers (talking over her, cracking wise, allowing a studio full of Jeep Wrangler-driving stoners who just got back from seeing Dave Matthews at the Gorge to jeer her at every turn) in his interview, Stewart not only looked pretty unclassy, but managed to persuade me that, right or wrong, McCaughey's interpretation of the bill might well gain considerable traction once put into law.

I actually went into this believing she was talking shit (still do, I guess), but now I am slightly less sure about the wording of this bill not totally being twisted to meet certain bottom-line ends. Far from making me feel better, Stewart kind of makes me want to take a long shower, and your gross exaggeration of his effectiveness in explaining how full of shit McCaughey is, well, it's starting to make me doubt the validity of many of your own claims.

You've always come a distant second to Olbermann in terms of a (excuse the term) "gentlemanly fair use" of the facts at hand, but at least you are usually right about the heart of whatever you are saying, if not the specific rhetoric. But that's twice in one show now (and I've got the bastard paused with 19:07 left to go!) that I've felt you've come off as excessively partisan with a tendency to distort the nature of the debate.

We're still on the same side, and we will remain so, but the world of politics is not yet big enough to have two figures who make integrity the mainstay of their arsenal while compromising it with regularity and still winning by it (the other being born in Hawaii in 1961).

Entirety of the Daily Show episode:
(though not the entirety of the interview)

The Chickpea to my Atticus

"Quo usque tandem abutere, Catilina, patience nostra? Quam diu etiam furor iste tuus nos eludet? Quem ad finem sese effrenata iactabit audacia? Nihilne te nocturnum praesidium Palati, nihil urbis vigiliae, nihil timor populi, nihil concursus bonorum omnium, nihil hic munitissimus habendi senatus locus, nihil horum ora voltusque moverunt?"
-Cicero





Though dramatic, I think the comparison bears scrutiny. When I was a student-lad, I had chills the first time I translated Cicero's attacks on Catiline. Similar chills to what I feel everytime Olbermann delivers a Special Comment. This one more than most. Who can doubt mere words, when heard them spoke thus?

Keith's Back

Vacation's over, and Olbermann has brought us a stunner. Tonight, his Special Comment on Health Care Reform and "Blue Dog Democrats."