Bernie Goldberg is a master of hyperbole. Jon Stewart is a master of deflection. For those of you who missed the action, the Goldberg-Stewart Wars have heated up again over the last couple of days, with long-range missiles volleyed back and forth between The O’Reilly Factor studio at Fox and Stewart’s camp over at Comedy Central.
The latest skirmish began Monday night when Goldberg described Stewart’s softball interview of the Times’ Frank Rich as a “lap dance,” adding that Stewart “practically had your tongue down his [Rich’s] throat.”
Goldberg not only knows hyperbole, he wields it as if he invented it. Just look at the title of his most recent book–A Slobbering Love Affair: The True (and Pathetic) Story of the Torrid Romance Between Barack Obama and the Mainstream Media.
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But Stewart, a smart and funny man with impeccable comic timing, is equally skilled in the art of diversionary tactics. He launched a counterattack on Tuesday. His flippant rejoinder to the Rich French kiss salvo was–referring to past interviews with conservatives on his show–that he and Bill Kristol cavorted in “the Champagne Room,” and he and John McCain were “f—ing like bunnies.”
Still, the very fact that Stewart spent time answering the charge shows how much it rattled him. Master of distraction that he is, Stewart parried the Goldberg thrust deftly. But notice he never answered it. Because he can’t deny–he did have his metaphorical tongue down Frank Rich’s throat. Never mind that the interview in question was three years old, a point Stewart raises apparently to paint Goldberg as out of touch, but in reality to distract his audience from the basic substance of Goldberg’s legitimate criticism.
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Goldberg didn’t stop with the Frank Rich comment. His coup de grace was comparing Stewart to “a safe Jay Leno but you get to say the f-bomb.” To his credit, Stewart didn’t deny that Goldberg had just scored a direct hit. In his one satisfyingly wholly honest moment, Stewart admits “Okay, that one stung. I’m not gonna lie… I took that one right in the testicles. ”
But again, how does the Master of Deflection counter? He doesn’t. He sidesteps, taking an easy but cheap shot at Leno’s clean style of comedy.
War brings out the worst in warriors, even in talented ones like Stewart and Goldberg. The latter, up to this point taking the high road, then sank to an unfair cheap shot at Stewart’s audience, calling them “incredibly unsophisticated.” This was undeserved, and Stewart’s satirical response–featuring a monocle-wearing, Catullus-quoting, high-society prig–was funny, despite the fact that even in Latin Stewart couldn’t resist returning to the “blue” safety of the cable comic’s comfort zone.
When you strip away Stewart’s clever parries and f-bomb gospel choir, however, Goldberg’s basic complaint–that Stewart pushes his liberal agenda at the expense of the truth–goes unrebutted. Stewart himself correctly avers:
Comedians do social commentary through comedy…I’m just doing what idiots like me have been doing for thousands of years.
He’s right. They have been doing it for thousands of years. Stewart’s monocle man quotes Catullus. Not long after that fiery love poet died, another Roman bard gained celebrity writing satire, the only literary genre the Romans didn’t steal from the Greeks. In his very first satire, Juvenal wrote “difficile est saturam non scribere“–“it’s hard not to write satire.” His fellow Romans were so foible-prone, so inclined to make utter fools of themselves, Juvenal knew he’d never run out of material. But the satirist–perhaps more than any other writer–has to adhere to his stock-in-trade: honesty.
When Stewart complains to Goldberg, “You can’t criticize me for not being fair and balanced. That’s your slogan,” he’s just dead wrong. “Fair and balanced,” i.e., “truthful,” has been the slogan of the satirist since Juvenal’s day and long before.
Stewart lands a good ironic blow on Goldberg with this line. “We don’t all have your guts, Bernie. It takes a tough man to walk into O’Reilly’s lion’s den and criticize liberal elites.” Yet paradoxically with that same jab, he implicitly acknowledges it takes an equally “tough” man to sit before a studio audience of like-minded liberals and criticize conservatives like Goldberg. Talk about a heavy lift.
More than any other comic, Stewart at his best reminds me of Groucho Marx. His gospel choir routine is the “Freedonia’s Going To War” song redux, except Groucho could have made it funny without the f-bombs. Just because you have the nuke, doesn’t mean you have to use it.
But it’s not the f-bomb that really bothers Bernie Goldberg. It’s the t-bomb. The truth bomb. A real social commentator–whether he’s a high-profile comedian or just a lowly journalist–isn’t afraid to drop it on anybody, even Frank Rich, when called for.
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