Jon Stewart Is An Ass

[RPankn]

I never thought his show, or the one that comes right after it, were funny to begin with. It seemed aimed at the sensibilities of upper middle class Whites. Maybe I missed the early days and it was different, but I could never understand why people thought he was "edgy" and "underground" when after listening to it myself for 5 minutes, Stewart et al. had 'conformist' written all over themselves. The pattern with him seems to be that anytime the premise of the "war on fictional Arabs" is questioned, or someone suggests that the US is not a force for good in the world, Stewart loses his d**n mind and the tribalism comes out. A couple weeks ago he attacked Harry Belafonte for calling Bush a terrorist, which is nothing that the rest of the world hasn't said and already knows. Now yesterday, Stewart attacked Cindy Sheehan. Why he would slam Chavez is unknown to me, but I think the Simon Weisenthal Center has something to do with it. By the way, the only people Chavez had arrested were those involved in the 2002 coup -- not for speaking out against him.

CatWoman (1000+ posts) Thu Feb-02-06 11:04 PM
Original message
d**n. Now Jon Stewart is ragging on Cindi
*sigh*

K-W (1000+ posts) Thu Feb-02-06 11:04 PM
Response to Original message
2. He really slammed Chavez

CatWoman (1000+ posts) Thu Feb-02-06 11:05 PM
Response to Reply #2
6. I don't like the way he depicted her as King Kong

tatertop (1000+ posts) Thu Feb-02-06 11:35 PM
Response to Reply #8
65. No, it was not harmless at all.
He knows better. It was very very destructive.
Maybe stewart should live in a state where Chavez
is providing life giving assistance.
What a bastard.

personman (331 posts) Fri Feb-03-06 12:19 AM
Response to Reply #72
137. One thing we do not need right now...
is prominent left-wingers with left-wing audiences helping republicans sling mud at a decent left-wing leader. He is adding to the noise around someone who already has far too much misinformation being spread about him. He is helping to ensure the American public writes Chavez off as a wacko and ignores him, just as the elites want us to. Chavez is only really a danger to the elites here if Americans start to pay attention to him and realize how badly they are being screwed.

The fact you even have to ask forces me to suggest you spend more time reading about Venezuela then posting about it.

Hell, you could have learned that from any one of the hundreds of Chavez/Venezuela threads that have been posted here in the last so many months.

K-W (1000+ posts) Thu Feb-02-06 11:07 PM
Response to Reply #7
11. He hung his head because Sheehan was with Chavez.
And made some jokes about him being a friend of communist dictator castro and about how in venezuala if you speak against Chavez you go to jail.

Atman (1000+ posts) Thu Feb-02-06 11:06 PM
Response to Reply #2
10. Oh, sure he did!
His whole point was that Cindy "squandered our good will." He basically made her out to be a nutcase. It was pretty d**ning of both Chavez and Cindy.

[Moses]

I really like Jon Stewart, though I haven't seen his show in many years. We used to tape it, and we watched the tapes not so long ago and they were just as funny as they were when aired, and just as topical. (perhaps because Bush is still President). We kept fearing Jon would go mainstream or party line, but he never did.

Every once in awhile, though, his middle class NJ roots would come through-- usually in the form of a kind of xeonophobia-- but he did make fun of all foreigners and their countries-- it wasn't targeted-- but when he then was broadcast world wide I think he tried to cut that out, which was a good thing, because it was offensive, often. Fortunately, he shifted to a more good-natured teasing. That was alot better -- we often had international guests and it was embarrasing when he ridiculed other countries or foreigners in a way that was like none of them were in his audience.

He has always ridiculed "the left"-- I remember he was harsh about the puppet people in demonstrations. I worried when he passed his 40th birthday, because men often become harumphing bourgeous regressions of their fathers or grandfathers when they reach middle age, but still he remained excellent.

He also slipped on other subjects occasionally, like education, but his mother is a teacher. Nonetheless, I think that her son has been a gift to America and to democracy -- the only gift, so I would like to thank her! A kind of madonna!

We don't have cable here so I haven't seen his show (its the only thing I miss about not having TV) but he may not be sensitive the the fact that Cindy Sheehan's son has been killed by our current political class, and that he should respect that. He is a father now but a wealthy one, and probably doesn't feel as vulnerable in that regard as do Americans who are struggling.

[RPankn]

A very good summary of why Stewart and his writers should be paying attention to actual facts instead of accepting articles reprinting WH and State Dept. press releases, which the media tries passing off as journalism. And then there's the Simon Wisenthal Center's tempest in a teapot. It is Stewart's catchphrase that people tune into his show for real news, no?

JohnnyCougar (1000+ posts) Fri Feb-03-06 05:27 AM
Original message
Official DU Hugo Chavez Right-Wing Falsehood Debunking Thread
Edited on Fri Feb-03-06 05:37 AM by JohnnyCougar

Holy balls. I haven't been on here much lately, but I am shocked at the right-wing extremist propaganda floating around here about Hugo Chavez. DU is usually my safe-haven from this sort of propaganda, but to see Chavez baselessly trashed on here by so many has made me feel compelled to post this. I will try and identify the top falsehoods repeated about Chavez, and give some appropriate context to them that lay these "tyrant" and "oppressor" claims to rest. And the fact that Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch are being cited against Chavez irritates me on two levels. Firstly, these organizations put out reports on every country, and are almost wholly negative. Amnesty International's profile on France is about as long as the one about Venezuela. But I highly doubt France is considered a tyranny by anyone. Secondly, the reports ignore the context of the situation happening in Venezuela.

First of all, there are a few articles I suggest people read to get an understanding of Chavez's peaceful revolution in what once was a corrupt and oppressive state.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugo_Ch%C3%A1vez
www.thenation.com/doc/20050411/parenti
www.inthesetimes.com/issue/26/01/feature3.shtml

Secondly, if you read these articles (which I really, really recommend you read, because they are highly informative, well written and interesting) you will realize how desperate of a state Venezuela was in before Chavez took power. 80% of the country was poor, and 44% or so were officially in poverty (to the point where they couldn't afford proper diets). The former government was a band of corrupt cronies that languished of the profits of oil sales, and said basically "f**k the poor."

Chavez was the leader of a failed coup attempt in 1992 against the then scumbag of a president. But the coup failed, and Chavez took full responsibility, admitted his failure, and served his time in jail. The president whom he attempted to overthrow was impeached a year later.

Chavez gained a lot of supporters attempting that coup, and his base continued to believe in him. In 1998, Hugo ran for President and won. The poverty-stricken, starving, illiterate "brown skinned" Venezuelans supported Chavez in a landslide victory. Since then, Hugo has been trying to clean up a government that had run for decades on massive corruption. The middle and upper class in Venezuela hated him because he was "brown" and because of his fight against the kleptocracy they had grown rich with. The Venezuelan court was highly corrupt. The parliament was worse. The plutocracy used car bombs, coups and violent protests to try and undermine Chavez's democratically elected government. The right-wing television stations would run anti-Chavez propaganda uninterrupted for days at a time, using racist cartoons and outright lies to brainwash the middle class and the upper class into thinking Chavez was a tyrant. Right-wing publications in the US picked up on this propaganda and of course reprinted it here. Obviously, it still circulates.

Chavez has taken control of the Citgo oil company and used parts of its profits to start schools and free healthcare clinics for Venezuela's massive poor. This totally angered the right wing. But since Chavez has become president, Venezuela's poor are much healthier, millions of people can now read, and he is attempting to diversify Venezuela's economy. The people there love him. He is the first leader that actually cared about him in forever.

Here are some of the most prominent right-wing attacks on Hugo Chavez debunked.

Chavez is attempting to censor political speech and take control of the Venezuelan media.

After the corrupt right-wing media in Venezuela inspired a coup, kidnapping and later a ridiculous attempt to recall Chavez, as well as violent protests, Chavez made an anti-slander law to curb the false propaganda the private media was spreading. While no one, to my knowledge has been arrested for violating this law, it has worked to curb some of the anti-Chavez propaganda and racist remarks made in the private Venezuelan media. When asked in October if Chavez would actually arrest anybody with this law, he responded: "I am not going to accuse anyone because they insult me, I don’t care if they call me names, I don’t care what they say about me. Generally I do as Don Qixote said, if the dogs are barking it’s because we are working." Furthermore, there are many opposition media outlets in Venezuela, and only one state-owned outlet. Chavez could shut the opposition channels down, but he doesn't. He just limits the racist, riot-causing propaganda they usually encourage. [This is the law, too, in the US and has been since the time Holmes sat on the Supreme Court. Except broadcasting racism isn't illegal in the US. Otherwise, there'd be a few journalists and "think tank experts" in jail for what's said about Arabs and Muslims.]

Chavez is packing the Venezuelan courts with cronies

This is true. But that's fine with me. The former judges were highly corrupt, and some were organizers of the coup. The Venezuelan courts were known for their widespread corruption before Chavez. These courts let off people that kidnapped Chavez at gunpoint during the coup attempt.

Chavez is hurting the economy

According to a press release in mid-2005, Venezuela has the fastest-growing economy in Latin America, with growth rates in the first two quarters of 7.5% and 11.1%, respectively. It had a 17.8% growth rate in 2004. The non-oil sectors grew at a faster pace than the oil sector, rising 8.7% and 12.1% in the first two quarters of 2005. Venezuela's economy is growing at the second-fastest rate in the world, topped only by China. Furthermore, Chavez's programs are wiping out illiteracy and providing healthcare to the poor for the first time ever. He has also been the first President to really enforce Venezuela's tax laws. The rich were getting away with cheating on their taxes time and time again. He has considerably raised the minimum wage. So basically, Hugo is allowing private enterprise to flourish (despite requiring them to follow tax laws) and still using money to support the poor. What he has already done has been nothing but a victory for human rights in Venezuela. Millions upon millions of people now have hope and health that would have never had it otherwise. But despite this, false right-wing anti-Chavez propaganda continues to circulate around the echo chamber...even on DU.

What Chavez has done is inspire a popular revolution with little to no violence at all, completely overthrowing a horrendously corrupt government in Venezuela and liberating masses of nearly starving poor. Instead of leading by force like he did in 1992, this time the revolution worked.

But I can say one more thing for sure: If I were next to Hugo Chavez, I would hug him, too!

If you know of more false propaganda being spread about Chavez, please debunk it below! I probably missed some things.


punpirate (1000+ posts) Fri Feb-03-06 06:05 AM
Response to Reply #2
10. Part of that complaint stems from an earlier indictment...
... of Siemte, which has billed itself as a non-partisan election monitoring group. Before the 2004 recall election, they were found to have used US NED money to garner signatures to validate the recall referendum. That's against Venezuelan law, to use foreign money for election purposes (just as it is here in the US). Siemte is, in fact, not non-partisan and is composed of political opponents of Chavez. According to an interview with the group's leader, Augustino Plaz, the charges were "Chavez' way of giving us a hard time." Did he think any of Siemte's group would be convicted? "No," he said, "we have very good lawyers."

Many ought to keep things in perspective. Chavez drew no attention to speak of until his passage of the Hydrocarbon Act in late 1999. For decades, depending upon who was in power in Venezuela, the royalty to the country for Orinoco heavy crude was between 1% and 6%. Upon passage of the Hydrocarbon Act, that royalty to Venezuela was raised to 16.67% (by contrast, royalties in this country to mineral rights owners, the states and the federal government exceed that amount). Oil companies with exploration and extraction agreements with the state oil company, PDVSA, suddenly were paying more and profiting a bit less, and they didn't like that at all. Thus the ongoing description of him as a dictator, despite the fact that he's been elected twice, in 1998, and again in 2000, after the Constitutional convention, and reaffirmed in 2004.

This is not to say that he's not on the verge of making some mistakes. He's been quoted as saying he wants the Constitution amended, to allow him to run for office after his maximum two terms expire in 2012. The attempted coup has caused him to go after political opponents in a way that's exploitable for political purposes by the US and US allies in the region (fewer and fewer though those may be). If he tries to make his term in office a cult of personality, instead of the institution of sound policies, he will open himself to charges that, for now, are not justified, but may be in the future.

Cheers.

[RPankn]

This is what Stewart and his staff consider "crazy."

Ray_Duray (13 posts) Fri Feb-03-06 05:55 AM
Response to Original message
6. VIVA LA REVOLUTION BOLIVARIAN! VIVA CHAVEZ!
Curious minds will find this film about the attempted coup in 2002 to be quite inspiring:

"Chavez: The Revolution Will Not Be Televised"
www.chavezthefilm.com/html/home.htm

Bittorrent: www.mininova.org/tor/42290

VIVA CHE!


MoJoWorkin (498 posts) Fri Feb-03-06 06:01 AM
Response to Original message
9. Suggested reading---Battle For Venezuela by Michael McCaughan
A very good political history of Venezuela and the whole struggle. It is illuminating to say the least, as it shows the involvement of the U. S. in the attempted coup and how our foreign policy is aimed at controlling the oil at the cost of democracy and the people's best interests in the region. It also shows how the Venezuelan and U. S. Media lied at every turn to try to overthrow the duly elected President. It seems that a fishing buddy of Bush 1 owns most everything in Venezuela--including the MSM there, and he was actively involved with the U. S. in the attempted coup of Chavez. McCaughan names some of those involved.


Judi Lynn (1000+ posts) Fri Feb-03-06 04:03 PM
Response to Reply #9
86. More about Cuban-Venezuelan Bush fishing pal, Gustavo Cisneros
The Bush Family's Murky Dealings in Venezuela
abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=1577267


Selatius (1000+ posts) Fri Feb-03-06 06:13 AM
Response to Original message
12. Hugo Chavez is stealing land from owners for his own purposes!
Edited on Fri Feb-03-06 06:14 AM by Selatius

That's another claim I've seen often. This article seems to indicate something else. Here is a snippet:



The government has made it clear that anyone who can prove their legal title to the land they claim will not have it confiscated. In the case of lands that have been confiscated so far, none of the so-called owners have been able to prove their legal title to the land. In many cases, these were large tracts of state-owned land that were occupied by and then passed down along the family line but never legally acquired.

In cases where land ownership can be proven, the government has repeatedly stated its willingness to negotiate with the landholder to discuss how they can work together to increase production.

The government is handing over land titles to peasant cooperatives to work the land. It has ruled that the land cannot be sold. As well, the government is attempting to provide training and equipment to the cooperatives.

Despite the media frenzy, the recent actions have not gone beyond what is generally accepted as the right to private property. However, the opposition has tried to whip up its ever decreasing support among sections of the middle class with the fear that they could lose their houses, cars and other personal possessions.


www.worldpress.org/Americas/2161.cfm

In fact, just read the whole d**n article.


punpirate (1000+ posts) Fri Feb-03-06 06:34 AM
Response to Reply #12
16. Chavez has been doing land reform in much the same way...
... as has been proposed in other countries (notably by Arbenz in Guatemala until he was ousted by the US in 1954), by taking title of small blocks of unused land and paying the owners the assessed value.

Chavez has reason to do this. The largest blocks of land, the estadas as they are called there, are owned primarily by British conglomerates and are principally used for the production of coffee and fruit, most of which is exported back to the UK and the EU. That in itself is neo-colonial--both the profits and the product leave the country.

As a result, Venezuela must import 85% of its food. By putting unused land in the hands of peasants, he hopes to both reduce poverty and malnutrition, and to increase the amount of food produced in the country.


farmbo (1000+ posts) Fri Feb-03-06 09:25 AM
Response to Original message
25. And...Oh Yeah...In case anyone's forgot: Bush tried to overthrow Chavez!
It is particularly shameful when our tax dollars (and Public Servants) are engaged in attempting to Overthrow, by violent means, a democratically-elected foreign leader such as Hugo Chavez.

But it happened.

Our Forth Estate was in severe lapdog mode in April 2002 when Bush's ham-fisted Venezuelan coup attempt failed, so there was nary any discussion of this mini Bay-of-Pigs in the American Media.

But serious journalists the world over put the mess right at Bush's feet:


observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,688071,00.html

For you Old Schoolers out there... Bush relied on Elliot Abrams-- a convicted Regan Admin hack-- to help set off this stinker.

[Moses]

The Iran Contra crowd became visible in Washington as soon as Bush took power. Not just in his government, but in all those unseen, ancillary posts that influence policy and the media. They immediately went after Chavez as a "military dictator" [like they were breaking from their past of setting those up! hah!], and the SAME people that had put Pinochet in power, had funded right wing milititias with ties to the military in Latin and South American countries, converged on Chavez, from their posts in Banking, Wall Street, the Bush Admin, and numerous front orgs. At the time, Bush was touting his new relationship with South and Latin America, and was attempting to organize his "democratic" friends there against Chavez through the various US-dominated Latin and South American orgs. But the Latin and South Americans were only tentatively participating. While they recognized that Chavez was military, and had similarities with dictators, and wouldn't play ball with them, they recognized a greater danger: that the US was interfering in a bona fide government in South America, and they basically asked the US to butt out.