Jon Stewart, Stop Hurting America!
Jon Stewart, Stop Hurting America!
Such a lather people are in, because Rick Perry was cheered at the Republican debate last week for executing 234 death row prisoners in Texas. Actually, Perry didn’t even have a chance to repond to the question, posed by Brian Williams, before the audience started applauding. The transcript goes like this:
Williams: Governor Perry, a question about Texas. Your state has executed 234 death row inmates, more than any other governor in modern times. Have you…
(APPLAUSE)
[also one person whistling]
Have you struggled to sleep at night with the idea that any one of those might have been innocent?
Well, of course not, Brian. What a question. Rick Perry doesn’t “do” internal conflict! That’s the whole point. Which, it had better be faced, some people see as a weakness and others, as a comforting strength.
“No, sir, I’ve never struggled with that at all,” Perry replied evenly.
From the instant the applause began, the whole Internet blew up with howls of “creepy,” “vile” and “horrible”; Ta-Nehisi Coates would write, “Apparently people were shocked by the applause here. The only thing that shocked me was that they didn’t form a rumba line.” Quite a number of conservatives got their knickers in a twist, too, expressing “revulsion” for the “ghouls” who were vicious and cruel enough to applaud Perry’s record of executions.
But to assume that rank-and-file Republicans are cheering for executions simply because they are out for blood is irrational and wrong. They are far more likely to have cheered because, as we have long known, like a majority of Americans, they support the death penalty for violent crimes, and Perry has conclusively demonstrated that he shares their conviction. It’s not news, surely, that Republicans love the idea of Law and Order, nor that they think Democrats are “soft on crime.” Perry was, and is, merely doing the cowboy thing that every Republican presidential hopeful has done since forever. Please note: no Democratic presidential candidate can afford to be against the death penalty, either. They never, ever go on the record against it.
And don’t think that support for the death penalty (or “ultimate justice,” as Perry styled it in the debate) is limited to U.S. Republicans and/or conservatives. On a percentage basis, even more Japanese citizens favor capital punishment than we do, and only in the last ten years has support declined below half in the UK and in Western Europe generally. Worldwide, though there is a slow trend toward abolition, support is still surprisingly high.
But Jon Stewart, along with pretty much every observer on the left, rushed to interpret the applause as audible proof that Republicans are basically a slavering pack of bloodthirsty, inhuman monsters.
[spoken over pan across the debate audience, who look like a standard-issue TV audience] This is not your torch-and-pitchfork angry villager. These are people with firm opinions on which is the best brand of riding mower. The audience at this debate were the people that give out raisins on Halloween. They own The Blind Side on DVD. And yet, and yet, and yet… (lowers voice menacingly) they thirst for blood.
First of all, what? They aren’t angry villagers but they give out raisins? This demographic description is less coherent than even the red ’n’ blue hallucinations of David Brooks. I have no idea what Stewart is on about here, though I guess we can take it as read that his remarks constitute a stab in the general direction of, “these Republicans are regular, caring people, only bloodthirsty, and riding around on lawnmowers of the highest quality.”
I am especially disappointed in Jon Stewart’s failure to ask, “Can there be any even marginally rational reason why these people might be applauding for executions?” No! Instead Stewart chose the Dark Side, the quick and easy path to political yuks, saying ponderously, “Media: you’re thinking about this with the wrong part of your brain… the brain part. […] Guess what? The Reagan Library: it ain’t a readin’ library.” And then he was all yapping about the limbic system, concluding by grabbing his balls, kind of, under the desk, to indicate Perry’s visceral appeal to Republicans.
Are we really reduced to joking that the Republicans are dumb? Oh THAT’S novel. They can’t spell, are you serious, Jon Stewart? That joke is not just exhausted, its assumptions are beyond false. Or at least, let’s be clear: there are as many dumb progressives as there are Republicans, sure as shootin’. You’d think if Republicans were so dumb it would be child’s play for the brainy Democrats to bamboozle them into passing some useful legislation, but this turns out to be well-nigh impossible. Plus, it is a stone fact that one of the best novels of the last century was written by a Wall Street Journal regular. Do I find that confusing? Yes, kind of but whatever, it’s true.
Another regrettable moment in the Republican debate came with Williams’ follow-up question to Rick Perry:
WILLIAMS: What do you make of…
(APPLAUSE) [still applauding for Perry’s earlier display of mucho macho]
What do you make of that dynamic that just happened here, the mention of the execution of 234 people drew applause?
PERRY: I think Americans understand justice. I think Americans are clearly, in the vast majority of — of cases, supportive of capital punishment. When you have committed heinous crimes against our citizens — and it’s a state-by-state issue, but in the state of Texas, our citizens have made that decision, and they made it clear, and they don’t want you [long pause here] to commit those crimes against our citizens. And if you do, you will face the ultimate justice.
That is, Perry’s response included the words “they [Texas citizens] don’t want you,” meaning they don’t want you, a hypothetical murderin’ varmint, to get away with any bloody deeds in our state. But when he spoke these words he was looking right at Brian Williams and at everything he and the so-called “liberal media” stand for. He was basically saying, “I may not be able to argue things out too well with a Media Person like you, Brian Williams, but I know how I feel about right and wrong.” The right has been winning elections on this message since the time of Adlai Stevenson. All the eloquence and reasonableness in the world can sometimes yield to the power of a real gallopin’, gun-totin’, g-droppin’ Republican hombre.
Why single Jon Stewart out from the legions of commenters on the left who took the same line? Because I expect better than that from a leader of progressive opinion who has in the past come out very strongly against exactly this kind of irresponsible partisan hackery. More particularly, I expect more from a progressive leader (and Stewart is one, whether he likes it or not) who has got that kind of clout with the youngs.
Who can forget Stewart’s legendary 2004 appearance on “Crossfire” in which he went so righteously nuts over this very issue?
BEGALA: Let me get this straight. If the indictment is — if the indictment is — and I have seen you say this — that CROSSFIRE reduces everything, as I said in the intro, to left, right, black, white.
STEWART: Yes.
BEGALA: Well, it’s because, see, we’re a debate show. […]
STEWART: No, no, no, no, that would be great. To do a debate would be great. But that’s like saying pro wrestling is a show about athletic competition.
And here is what Jon Stewart said less than a year ago at the conclusion of the Rally to Restore Fear and/or Sanity.
[T]he image of Americans that is reflected back to us by our political and media process is false. It is us through a funhouse mirror, and not the good kind that makes you slim and taller — but the kind where you have a giant forehead and an ass like a pumpkin and one eyeball.
So, why would we work together? Why would you reach across the aisle to a pumpkin assed forehead eyeball monster? If the picture of us were true, our inability to solve problems would actually be quite sane and reasonable. Why would you work with Marxists actively subverting our Constitution or racists and homophobes who see no one’s humanity but their own?
Excellent question, Mr. Stewart.
I could not be less of a fan of James Taranto, but his WSJ editorial last week was spot-on, for once. “[W]hatever one thinks of the death penalty or the audience’s behavior last night, the harshness, self-righteousness and simple-mindedness of these responses belie the left’s self-image as intellectually sophisticated and tolerant of other viewpoints.”
The right in general fears and hates doubt, and sees careful consideration of all sides as pure pantywaisted weakness; the left sees the uncertainty required for careful deliberation as a mark of intellectual strength and wisdom. When Perry defended his record at the debate, I suspect the applause was really for his demonstration of absolute, doubt-free conviction, which is something the right respects and admires.
Clearly, we needn’t — we can’t — respect the views of fellow-citizens who literally want just to kill people. We can however sit at the table respectfully with those whose basic hope and expectation from government is safety and the tough-minded, trustworthy exercise of power. The left by contrast expects freedom, equality, compassion and a far greater say in things. These differences are substantial but they do not require us to demonize our ideological opponents or turn them into people who can’t be reasoned with, who are sub-human, whose views are not worth considering. Nobody on the left really believes that whatever serial killer should just be wandering around loose, just as nobody on the right really believes that it is great to go around killing innocent people.
Leonard Cohen explained all about this so beautifully in Warsaw in 1985.
I don’t know which side anybody’s on any more and I don’t really care. There is a moment when we have to transcend the side we’re on and understand that we are creatures of a higher order. That doesn’t mean that I don’t wish you courage in your struggle. There is on both sides of this struggle men of good will. That is important to remember. On both sides of the struggle; some struggling for freedom, some struggling for safety.
There is a way to arrive at common ground, provided we can maintain just basic respect for the integrity of the other side. But we’re never going to get to that so long as opinion leaders like Stewart continue to take every cheap shot that comes their way. If progressives are the tolerant ones, by gum, then let them start toleratin’.
Perry may be a secessionist whack job, but he is right in tune with the Strong Man persona that many, many Americans want from their elected officials. If he is a couple of tacos short of a combination plate or if he isn’t, either way, that doesn’t matter a bit. He is supposed to have done so badly in school and whatnot but sometimes I think the Republicans spread those “he’s so dumb” stories around on purpose, so that people will be pleasantly surprised when their candidates turn out to be not so dumb as all that. I thought it was quite cunning, actually, the way Perry delivered his Texas Pride shtick to Brian Williams the other day.
When Adlai Stevenson, (egghead, lawyer, rich guy and then-governor of Illinois) was running for president in the nineteen-fifties, a supporter once shrieked at him, “Mr. Stevenson, every intelligent person in America is for you!” Whether or not that was so, Stevenson really was super smart and I bet would have made a terrific president, not that Eisenhower was such a bad one. But Stevenson was an “elitist” intellectual through and through. “Madam, that is not enough!” he shouted back. “We need a majority!” Haha hilarious and yeah, he totally lost.
Maria Bustillos is the author of Dorkismo and Act Like A Gentleman, Think Like A Woman.