You know you’re in trouble when someone like Jon Stewart take you down, big time. That just happened when Stewart aired an eight and a half minute segment that devastated the Obama presidency.
Stewart, on his Daily Show, contrasted campaign statements and promises made by Candidate Obama with the actual policies and programs of President Obama. Especially in the area of constitutional rights (renditions; Gitmo) the contrasts were devastating to Obama.
Stewart closed with the notion that Obama made all of those nice promises (which in turn generated lots of votes for him) because he was powerless at the time and now that he has power, he’s worse than Bush in many ways.
An absolutely devastating program. When humorists have you by the short hairs, you’re in trouble.
The entire clip can be seen over at this link to Glenn Greenwald’s column. http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/
Greenwald himself made these perceptive comments about the Stewart show:
“…the criticisms here [Stewart’s] are not grounded in complaints that Obama has failed to act quickly enough to usher in progressive policies — let’s repeat that: the vast bulk of criticisms of Obama are not grounded in complaints that he has failed to act quickly enough to usher in progressive policies — but are instead based on horrendous policies which Obama himself has affirmatively and explicitly adopted as his own, many of which directly contradict what he vowed to do as President (speaking of which: see this NYT Editorial today lambasting what it describes as the Obama administration’s disgraceful and inexcusable conduct in the Maher Arar case)”
Criticism like this from Stewart will soon begin seeping into more and more mainstream analysis. Given this and all of those gut-retching pictures of animals besmirched in oil, this administration is starting to unravel.
