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See Jon Stewart DESTROY Strawman!
If you’re on Facebook, you’ve seen the teasers:
Daily Show’s Jon Stewart destroys Fox News for its Ferguson coverage
Jon Stewart DESTROYS Texas GOP Over Gay Conversion Therapy
Jon Stewart destroys Fox News’ ‘spite-driven anger machine’ and hunger for conspiracies
If you’re unfortunate enough to follow the average “destroyed” link, you’ll see “Daily Show” producers play an out-of-context clip, followed by Jon Stewart’s silent mugging for the camera and hoots of audience approval. Target DESTROYED.
Left-leaning sites like Upworthy, Huffington Post and Raw Story have run these headlines several times a week for months now. A quick Google search tells the tale:
- “Jon Stewart destroys”: 451,000 hits
- “Jon Stewart slays”: 46,300 hits
- “Jon Stewart trashes”: 372,000 hits
- “Jon Stewart wipes the floor”: 804,000 hits
And that doesn’t count the common misspellings of John or Stuart. Often, “The Daily Show” host is replaced with Stephen Colbert (60,900 destroys) or John Oliver (217,000 destroys), but the pattern is predictable.
Needing to up the ante from the all-too-common “destroyed,” progressive sites are intensifying the descriptions. Stewart now regularly “flays,” “eviscerates,” and even “disembowels” the bêtes noires of the Acela corridor.
By November I expect even tougher headlines: “SEE Jon Stewart DRAW AND QUARTER Fox News and put Bill O’Reilly’s HEAD on a PIKE as a BLOODCURDLING warning to others!”
This headline format has long been clichéd, but if it didn’t draw eyeballs it would have been dropped years back. This says less about the click-starved writers and more about their readership. To maintain their personal sense of superiority, progressives need to sit in the seat of the scoffer. They used to spend their time mocking those who dared question President Obama as self-evident fools and racists.
Now that Obama’s failure is obvious, they’ve had to move on to other targets. Defending his disastrous record would make his fans look like the unsophisticated rubes, and they can’t have that. Instead, they focus on a stumbling Fox News host, an errant red-state legislator, or any citizen whose comments can be edited to inject the left with their daily dose of smug.
Published in General
Yes, but does he destroy them with “one weird trick”?
How many media outlets that rely on clicks for their continued financial survival would stay in business for more than a week if they posted “See Jon Stewart make an (arguably) entertaining point about Fox News’ Ferguson coverage that many people consider reasonable” on Facebook?
Next you’ll be complaining that Disneyland isn’t actually the “happiest place on Earth”.
;-)
“And that doesn’t count the common misspellings of John or Stuart.” Your the won to talk about mispellings. You can’t even spell Faux News right.
I have only recently become aware of John Oliver. He’s worse that Stewart and Colbert put together. Completely smug, no charm, and full of the most dishonest arguments anyone ever broadcast. In one recent bit I lost count of the number of times he moved the goalposts in order to win his argument. No wonder he’s beloved by the left.
I don’t see that as as misspelling…
Agreed, I’ve tired of these headlines – and while most of them are from left leaning sites, I see a lot of “Horrible Obama is horrible” headlines from sites on the right as well, that just make me cringe. Typically these are fringe sites, but the impact is just the same.
The world revolves around clickbait these days.
At any rate, I have developed a solution to these headlines – I tested it at Ricochet.com <link> and you won’t believe what happened next! </link>
This sounds like a NASA outreach program.
I think that’s an exaggeration.
For-profit Internet journalism revolves around clickbait, but for-profit Internet journalism is not “the World”.
Also, in defense of clickbait, I note that the Daily Caller posts a mix of clickbait and “legitimate” items. The clickbait is a way to lure you to the site, in the hopes that you’ll stay long enough to read the legitimate items, and/or, the clickbait subsidizes the legitimate journalism, sorta like how the networks’ entertainment divisions used to subsidize the news departments.
Reminds me of a summer job I had in college, working at a small-town radio station. One of the on-air guys, when announcing the local high school sports scores, would never say that “Team A beat Team B.” He had to come up with as many synonyms as possible for “beat.”
There was something almost hypnotic about the way he called up these synonyms. “Destroyed,” “Obliterated,” “Vanquished . . .” it was amazing.
So, of course, I tried it when I had to read the sports scores. I failed miserably and finally just said “beat” for every one.
It’s not just the faux news comedians who use this technique. This is how a dope like Todd Akin gets promoted to Permanent Official Spokesman for Every Republican on All Social Issues.
That’s the difference between an “broadcast journalist” and a “newsreader”.
…hmmm let’s see
1.) an anti-war youth appeal in a country that has no draft.
2.) a civil rights race obsession in a county that has had quota-based affirmative action for 40 years.
3.) an irreverent attitude in a country that accepts serial marriage, gay marriage, perverse & pornographic music-movies-internet, a country that has turned casual Friday into casual everyday.
4.) sophomoric comedy in a country with a university system that openly disdains a work ethic or any ethic for that matter.
5.) endless repetition of comedy forms created in the 70s while claiming freshness and creativity.
6.) vicious moronic hate of every value Western Civilization has ever championed hiding behind the facade of comedy for the young.
I must admit I’ve never watched more than a few minutes of this dead head of comedy. I didn’t need to.
Regards,
Jim
Manhattan Left Spokesperson Jon Stewart.
Here are five minutes worth of my Google searches for comparison:
Jon Stewart fails: 869,000
Jon Stewart idiot: 540,000
Jon Stewart lies: 1,370,000
Jon Stewart imbecile: 43,100,000
Jon Stewart wrong again: 1,860,000
Jon Stewart distorts: 6,300,000
Jon Stewart slanders: 3,620, 000
Please feel free to add to the list.
John Oliver CoC Non-Compliant Word: at least two, thanks to me.
GENIUS!!!!
He’s popular because the Left thinks getting something straight from the horse’s mouth means watching a clown with a horse-face mug for the camera.
I do find myself wondering how smart it is for a news organization to tell you, constantly, that you “won’t believe” their upcoming news story. Because if you don’t believe it, the whole thing is kind of pointless, isn’t it?
Stop all this violence now!
Jon Stewart did a sketch on the destroy rhetoric. (seriously)
Kevin Williamson from the NRO did a fantastic article on this very subject:
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/372901/destroyer-cometh-kevin-d-williamson
Some quotable parts:
So worth the read…
I only know John Oliver original from “Community” where he was hilarious.
Also, as an Oregonian I loved his ridicule of “Cover Oregon.”
As a careerist in this genre, it is inconceivable to me that Rachel Maddow hasn’t thought to herself how much better she would be in the Oval Office than even Mr. Perfect Crease himself.