clash of the titans

If you missed last week's Daily Show with Jon Stewart and Bill O'Reilly, make sure to catch it online (or below in two parts).





O'Reilly has moments where he seems almost human, a thinking, rational being that agrees the last four years (not eight - - for him, shit only hit the fan with 9/11) were a mess. Cue Stewart attempting to assuage the fears and montra of a man who lives by the creed that America is center-right and that we are a country of traditions, and we see O'Reilly at his most recognizable -- barking blabber and disillusions about who actually lives in this country.

What really struck me was O'Reilly's insistance that Stewart needed to "get out of New York," to "walk around Greenwich Village and tell me it's not completely homogeneous," attempting to argue the point that we city-dwellers have somehow turned a blind eye toward "real America" and toward the thoughts of the people. "You would get killed in Alabama," he tells Stewart, a half-joke I'm assuming aimed toward's Stewart's liberal bias and also his Jewish background. I wouldn't argue with that. But how does that now become the real America? And more importantly, why would we WANT that to be the real America? I don't mind the partisanship in this country and frankly, it is not only idealistic but a fruitless concept to think we could all agree on anything. And why bother? Conflicting discourse makes the world go round.

What frightens me is that so much of our country seems to be clinging to a racist, conservative -- in the most extreme manner of the word -- view of religion and society and feeling as though everybody who does not live that way is living improperly, sinfully, in error. As Stewart so brilliantly points out, to think that we are a country built on ideals of conservatism is a ludicrous disillusion born out of the religious right. This country was conceived as a safe house for people fleeing the constricting nature of the church, seeking to build their own lives under their own rules. We live in a society built upon foundations of progression. To argue that intellectual, city-dwelling people are blandly homogeneous because they are in favor of progress is an insult to what this country means to all Americans.