Bill Moyers Interviews Jon Stewart
<http://www.pbs.org/now/transcript/transcript_stewart.html>
Stewart on Stewart:
MOYERS: You don't think of yourself as a social critic, do you?
STEWART: Social critic? No.
MOYERS: Media critic?
STEWART: No.
MOYERS: You don't?
STEWART: I think of myself as a comedian who has the pleasure of writing jokes about things that I actually care about. And that's really it. You know, if I really wanted to enact social change… I have great respect for people who are in the front lines and the trenches of trying to enact social change. I am far lazier than that.
I am a tiny, neurotic man, standing in the back of the room throwing tomatoes at the chalk board. And that's really it. And what we do is we come in in the morning and we go, "Did you see that thing last night? Aahh!" And then we spend the next 8 or 9 hours trying to take this and make it into something funny.
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Stewart on the media:
MOYERS: And what is the media doing to help us sort us out?
STEWART: Oh. they're not. Yeah, no. That's, yeah, they sat this one out. Yeah, they're not getting involved. It's very tiring. And they have weather reports to give. Nah, the media is not interested in fairness. The media is… Look, politicians have figured out the media. Let's face facts. When television first appeared it proved itself to be a vital insight into the process.
Nixon — you mentioned the Nixon-Kennedy debates. It was… at that point, politicians didn't know how to handle the media. So Nixon could say, "I look fine. I don't need make-up. These lights won't make me sweat. I'm sure I'll come off as calm and collected and eloquent."
And then, as he was sweating and looked, you know, maniacal, he ended up losing. Well, at this point… so at that point television was ahead of the game. Politicians have caught up. They understand that 24-hour news networks? They don't have time for journalism. They only have time for reporting. They only have time to be handed things and go, this is what I've just been handed by the administration. And they read it.
So now that the administration knows that, and they're very disciplined, they can manipulate what goes on the air and what sets the agenda. And that's what they do.
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Stewart on The People vs. The Beltway:
MOYERS: People say, "Jon Stewart speaks for the middle man. He speaks for guys between the left and the right." And yet, I sometimes think you're letting the American people off too easily. They watch all of this cable stuff.
STEWART: No. But this is…
MOYERS: And they vote for these politicians.
STEWART: No. They vote… less than 50 percent of the country. The country is, look, the general dialogue is being swayed by the people who are ideologically driven.
The five percent on each side that are so ideological driven that they will dictate the terms of the discussion. The other 90 percent of the country have lawns to mow, and kids to pick up from schools, and money to make, and things to do. Their lives are, they have entrusted… we live in a representative democracy.
And so, we elect representatives to go do our bidding, so that we can get the leaves out of the gutter, and do the things around the house that need to be done. What the representatives have done over 200 years is set up a periphery — I think they call it the Beltway — that is obtuse enough that we can't penetrate it anymore, unless we spend all of our time. This is the way that it's been set up purposefully by both sides. In the financial industry, as well. They don't want average people to easily penetrate the workings because then we call them on it.
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