Jon Stewart's worst interview ever - 1

It's not often that I find myself on the same side as Bill O'Reilly. In fact there are times when I feel even watching FOXNews is like letting bad energy into my home. On the other hand, I enjoy watching The Daily Show. Jon Stewart is one of those rare talk show hosts that is funny and intelligent, without trying hard to appear so. Well, in life there are always exceptions, and that's what happened here - where on the same subject, I found myself somewhat agreeing with O'Reilly and totally put off by Jon Stewart's pathetic performance as an interviewer. The guest in question? It's Vicente Fox, former president of Mexico. Now, that was sometime by the end of last year. Why the hell am I writing about it now? I'll tell you the reason later. Of course, I did want to write about it at that time - but like many things in life, it just got put off.

Here was this man, promoting his book, appearing on lots of TV talk shows, and doing his standard shtick on a North American Union (he tends to pronounce it as 'jew-nion', lol) a-la the European Union. Of course he wants Americans to be open-minded about Mexican immigrants, legal or otherwise. And he has an advise for the American people to not let their policies be guided by fear. The Daily Show audience seem to be a generous crowd - there was even an applause for this line. Oh, and there was the standard story of how his grandfather got on a horse and went from Cincinnati to Mexico in search of his American dream. Jon Stewart let all of this go without challenging him on any of these points.

The reason I consider this to be his worst interview was because he threw in a gratuitous question on Evo Morales, the president of Bolivia (who had appeared on The Daily Show earlier) and also asked for his comment on Hugo Chavez of Venezuela. Vicente Fox dismissed both Morales and Chavez as populists, and that it was sad that they would rather hand out fish to their people instead of teaching them to fish! Jon Stewart, dumb as a rock (not really sure if rocks are dumb, either - I read an interesting theory that rocks contain information), let this one go as well - without challenging Fox by reminding him that, except in most of the Latin American countries, most people can't 'fish' because access to the 'fishing area' is not open to most of them. I'm talking about the relative land holdings of the whites and the native people in those countries, including Mexico. Vicente Fox's apparent contempt for the indigenous people was clear when Jon Stewart asked him about Evo Morales' language and wondered if he spoke Spanish. Fox says, 'No, he speaks his own dialect. He's indigenous'. WTF? Why would Jon Stewart ask Vicente Fox about Evo Morales? Before I continue, here is the interview I'm talking about: (I'm going to have to split this blog entry into different pages, as I couldn't get the YouTube videos appear in the middle of the text. Be sure to click the link at the bottom to move to the next part(s).