Originally published at: LeVar Burton's awesome promo for his "The Problem with Jon Stewart" segment | Boing Boing
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I thought it was already established that The Problem with Jon Stewart was rampant "both sides"erism
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It was his problem right after he retired from TDS in 2015. I think he’s begun pulling back from that in recent years.
ETA: Got a real laugh from Burton’s reaction to “Southern ‘right to work’ states”.
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Thank goodness! I have not been paying much attention because of that!
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He’s not all the way there. He defended Chappelle’s SNL monologue supporting Kanye and he’s borderline JAQing off about whether or not Biden knew about and enabled his failson’s deals in Ukraine. But something “mysterious” happened between 2015 and now that tempered Stewart’s privilege-driven Bothsidesism.
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I don’t have time for that bullshit - there are lots of smart people who don’t pull that kind of thing that I can support instead 
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I will give Stewart some credit for actually listening to his critics and not just being immediately dismissive, but he does have a few blind spots. His recent interview with former Secretaries of State Clinton and Rice is pretty indicative of the problem with the Problem With Jon Stewart.
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LeVar is an amazing guy!
And I seem to be out of the loop - what’s the issue with Jon Stewart exactly? Have not watched his new show or followed anything he’s done since Daily Show.
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Without getting too far down the rabbit hole, he has a tendency to “both sides” things.
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The most high-profile example being this event:
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I spit my drink out over the Elvis bit. Bravo!
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I see what you mean - but this event came across as to me more satire and comedy vs the whole ‘both sides’ thing.
I really don’t have a horse in this race as I find Stewart more self-righteous than funny - and given what Regressives are up to these days I welcome any countermeasures in any form. Including Jon Stewart and even Bill Maher (gulp).
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Did he try to walk back his claims regarding the Chinese government being directly responsible for COVID? Seems a lot of people had legitimate beef about that.
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I guess this is part of it. When I am not paying attention the stuff that broke through that I did hear was stuff like this or defending Dave Chappelle. Which made me uninterested in catching up on what he is up to
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“Globallization my ass!”
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FWIW, I didn’t take it as defending Chapelle per se, but rather asking the question of how we engage people who offer differing opinions that are outside of the mainstream. Of course, he is blindered to two critical points:
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There is no cancel culture. None of these people have actually suffered consequences that weren’t clearly spelled out in the contracts that they signed (and Chapelle hasn’t suffered any consequences if I’m not mistaken).
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The dialog on the internet/social media is people engaging with the discussion, but the people to whom they are speaking either ignore them or engage in bad-faith derailments. To wit: Everyone knows that Joe Rogan provides a safe space for all manner of anti-social and anti-democratic ideas, so they can all go on his show to crow about how badly they’ve suffered while providing no evidence of such (aside from mean tweets) or actually engaging with the discussion at heart. Chapelle can derail his offensive and dangerous TERF bigotry into an argument that Black people have suffered worse than trans people, so they should just suck it up and live with their rights encumbered. It is ridiculous on its face, but because they never have to actually engage with anyone, they never have to address the core issue.
This is where Stewart fails, IMO. It’s almost as if his own privilege bubble has kept him from recognizing fundamental realities and he feels the need to guide it back to a point of “reason” when, in reality that’s exactly what these peoples’ critics are trying to get them to engage with. But they don’t have to because they’re rich, have a dozen megaphones at their disposal and a population that laps up misdirection so they don’t have to have uncomfortable feels about their own complicity.
That may sound nit-picky, but I think it’s worth noting because it is, in itself a form of derailment. But I don’t get the sense that Stewart thinks that these are valid arguments, just that these people are owed discourse that they won’t even engage with.
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BUT BACK TO LEVAR BURTON — anybody know if that book is real? I’ve searched for it and nothing comes up.
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How has no one mentioned the FENCING? (Such as it is.)
(Where did he get that cool gymnasium sabre?)
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