January 10, 2005


The Times, via Dave Winer, celebrates Jon Stewart's Crossfire smackdown last Fall and the recent (resultant?) canning of Tucker Carlson, who was on the receiving end, with Paul Begala. (Who are those two, anyway? Why did they ever need to be on the television to begin with?) The editorial begins:

As it turns out, an important moment in the annals of modern culture may have occurred when Jon Stewart of Comedy Central went on CNN's "Crossfire" last October and decided to be serious. He told Paul Begala, on the left, and Tucker Carlson, on the right, that their show, which specializes in encouraging midlevel political types to yell slogans at each other, was "partisan hackery" that was lowering the level of political discourse. ... Maybe this could be the start of something big.

Please, please let this be the start of something big. And perhaps someone at the Times might cleanse that paper's own editorial page for regurgitation of canned talking points, repetition of party-issued phrases, and other partisan hackery. Hey, even if they started pointing out such problems with other papers' editorial pages that would be fine with me.
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