Jon Stewart has taken on the bias of cable news, which he described as a “brutish, slow-witted beast” and criticized Fox News as “an appendage of the Republican Party.”
Wearing a gray T-shirt, khaki pants and a healthy stubble, the “Daily Show” host told reporters at a University of Denver breakfast that Fox’s “fair and balanced” slogan is an insult “to people with brains” and that only “Fox News Sunday” host Chris Wallace “saves that network from slapping on a bumper sticker. . . . Barack Obama could cure cancer and they’d figure out a way to frame it as an economic disaster.”
“I’m stunned to see Karl Rove on a news network as an analyst,” he said of the Bush White House aide turned Fox commentator. Stewart, who voted for John Kerry in 2004, said he didn’t see CNN’s James Carville, the former Bill Clinton aide, in the same category because “I don’t think he’s being passed off as a sage.”
Not that Stewart’s statements should be that remarkable – anyone with an eighth of a brain knows Fox News is as biased as they get (I even knew that when I -briefly – considered myself a conservative who actually liked Fox News).
He’s probably right about Carville, too -to the extent he appears without a GOP counterweight, Carville is in many ways invited on because of his entertainment value, much in the same way as a more affable Ann Coulter. That said, I think conservatives were at one time justifiably upset at the fact that George Stephenopoulos became regarded as a sage worthy of being entrusted with “This Week” as a moderator. Not that Stephanopoulos is remotely on the same par as Rove in terms of his past behavior, just that it was too conveniently forgotten how he made his pre-media living.