> Are you fucking serious? You are mad at Stewart for doing
> what you like
> him doing if the target was George Bush? Stewart is such a brilliant
> comedian because he skewers authority figures of all kinds,
> across the
> political spectrum.
Yes, I am mad at Stewart for doing what I like him doing if the target was George Bush. Stewart's audience is American, and his political activity (which his show is, despite any protests to the contrary) therefore can only affect American public opinion (and hence the leeway the American government has to act). It doesn't matter if attacks on Chavez are legitimate or not. All propaganda Stewart directs against Chavez can have one effect and one effect only: making it easier for the US government to influence Venezuelan domestic affairs. If Stewart has any interest in having any effect on protecting the people of the world from harm from the US government (the only harm he can have any effect of protecting people from), then all of his efforts should be directed to lampooning and undermining American power. Castigating any other power (especially power adverse to American power) only empowers the US State vis-a-vis the rest of the world.
Yes, Stewart has a global audience, but that audience is marginal (and bourgeois) as compared to the American audience. Certainly, the Venezuelan working class is not going to be inspired to smash the State because Stewart made fun of Chavez. Probably less than a fraction of a percent of that class would have even seen it. The only possible real world effect of Stewart doing this is to enhance US State power at the expense of the Venezuelan people. And why on earth would you support that?
> Jesus Christ, I didn't realize the American left could reach
> this level
> of patheticism. Now we've heard from somebody who thinks that Stewart
> should toe some lefty line about comedy.
>
> Comrade Stewart! You've inappropriately made fun of the
> Comrade Leader!
> Off to the gulag work camps with you!
It's not comedy. It's funny, yes, but it's first and foremost politics, and has as its aim the shaping of American public opinion. (And even if it is first and foremost comedy, I don't understand why you believe criticism of comedy based on its real world political effects is off limits, a very strange position for an anarchist to take.) I haven't asked Stewart to toe any line. I have merely pointed out that his actions have empowered the US government (however slightly) to further oppress the Venezuelan people, something you appear not to have understood, or, if you have, not to have any objection to.