Bill Moyers interviews Jon Stewart

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I found this over on Ryan Gantz’s site. Bill Moyers sat down for an interview with Daily Show host Jon Stewart, who is quickly becoming the news-bearer for my generation. Unfortunately, we live in an era where 24-hour news channels are more interested in sensationalism and ratings than they are in reporting real, actual news.

Stewart repeatedly points out here that he is not, in fact, a journalist, but merely a comedian. Fans of the show, including Moyers, will likely disagree with Stewart’s assessment of his relevance, but there is no denying that a growing number of people are getting their news and viewpoints from Comedy Central. The interview covers a number of topics, but Stewart is at his best here, as on his show, at distilling the problems of U.S. foreign policy.

From the interview:

But war that hasn’t affected us here, in the way that you would imagine a five-year war would affect a country. I think that’s why they’re so really — here’s the disconnect. It’s sort of this odd and I’ve always had this problem with the rationality of it. That the President says, “We are in the fight for a way of life. This is the greatest battle of our generation, and of the generations to come. And, so what I’m going to do is you know, Iraq has to be won, or our way of life ends, and our children and our children’s children all suffer. So, what I’m gonna do is send 10,000 more troops to Baghdad.”

So, there’s a disconnect there between — you’re telling me this is fight of our generation, and you’re going to increase troops by 10 percent? And that’s gonna do it? I’m sure what he would like to do is send 400,000 more troops there, but he can’t, because he doesn’t have them. And the way to get that would be to institute a draft. And the minute you do that, suddenly the country’s not so damn busy anymore. And then they really fight back, and then the whole thing falls apart. So, they have a really delicate balance to walk between keeping us relatively fearful, but not so fearful that we stop what we’re doing and really examine how it is that they’ve been waging this.

I highly recommend you watch the full interview on PBS’ site.