Stewart v. O’Reilly–The Uncut Version

Jon Stewart appeared on Bill O’Reilly’s show in an interview divided over two nights. The interview as aired had many good lines:

Here’s what Fox has done, through their cyclonic perpetual emotional machine that is 24 hours a day, 7 days a week: They have taken reasonable concerns about this president and this economy and turned it into full-fledged panic attack about the next coming of Chairman Mao.

While Stewart made many points critical of Fox, Gawker compared the aired version with the full version posted on line (embedded above) and disagreed with O’Reilly’s claim that “It’s a fair cut.”

If by “fair cut” O’Reilly means “cut in a manner that left some of Stewart’s best lines, most effective arguments, and most convincing evidence out of the interview and hidden from the broadcast audience,” then he’s absolutely right.

They provided some examples:

Here’s the best exchange of the whole interview, in which Stewart gets O’Reilly to admit that he thinks Barack Obama believes in “tyranny and socialism,” and then asks him why Obama’s most generous spending has been to bail out banks. He closed with this unanswerable question: “How many tyrants do you know that really suffer because they can’t get cloture?” O’Reilly rejoindered with a lame joke about NBC, because what else could he do? None of this made the air…

There were also plenty of sharp points from Stewart that were edited down to, um, duller points. Take this exchange, from the Fox News cut:

STEWART: Here’s the brilliance – here’s the brilliance of Fox News. What you have been able to do, you and Dr. Ailes, have been able to mainstream conservative talk radio.

O’REILLY: Why wouldn’t John McCain come on this program during the last campaign? Why did he dodge us and not come on if you – (inaudible), if we’re in business to help the GOP, he wouldn’t come in.

STEWART: But you’re not in the business of John McCain. He is not GOP enough for you. You’re in the business to help Sarah Palin.

2 Comments

  1. 1
    Mill Messenger says:

    #liberal Stewart v. O’Reilly–The Uncut Version http://url4.eu/1KHnZ

  2. 2
    Mill Messenger says:

    #liberal Stewart v. O’Reilly–The Uncut Version http://url4.eu/1KHnZ

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