Jon Stewart

There are some conservatives who claim they love the military and respect our veterans while cutting their benefits, sending them off to die in needless wars without proper equipment, and literally insulting them on their jobs. Primary among these hypocrites are the idiots at Fox News — who scream about how Obama’s coffee salute demeans the military while then, within a few minutes, making sexist and demeaning comments about the military.

Jon Stewart describes it better than I ever could (start around 4:00 in). Sorry, WordPress won’t let me embed the video: http://thedailyshow.cc.com/videos/b7hxzd/the-way-we-war

Veterans aren’t standing for it either. In an open letter to Fox News, they write:

Thus the skill of women as fighter pilots is well established. And before you jump to the standby excuse that you were “just making a joke” or “having a laugh,” let the men amongst our number preemptively respond: You are not funny. You are not clever. And you are not excused. Perhaps the phrase “boys will be boys”—inevitably uttered wherever misogyny is present—is relevant. Men would never insult and demean a fellow servicemember; boys think saying the word ‘boobs’ is funny.

I know, right? Isn’t that a ridiculous headline?

Not because Stewart is a lightweight; far from it. He does ask important questions and doesn’t let his interviewees off the hook.

The ridiculous part of it is that it should be someone else. It should be a real journalist, not a comedian who talks about politics.

But the White House says that Jon Stewart was the toughest interview Obama faced in the 2012 election, and that’s not right. And Jon Stewart would be the first person to tell you that.

Some of the problem is that the ones who would ask the tough questions don’t get to. There are some great journalists out there, but the news stations keep them away from the politicians for fear of losing their access or something. They should get Matt Tiabbi in there and stir things up.

And some just ask dumb questions. Obama isn’t scared of Bill O’Reilly no matter how much O’Reilly thinks he is. Obama did a huge interview with him recently where he laughed off O’Reilly’s conspiracy-minded questions about Benghazi and Obamacare. That was easy.

And it should never be easy.