Comments on: DAILY SHOW: The Atlantic discusses the Betsy McCaughey interview

By: Caitlin

Caitlin — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 19:56:28 +0000

YES! Very apt observation ;)

By: wren

wren — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 04:22:07 +0000

That’s nice. I like that.

By: Zoe

Zoe — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 04:10:48 +0000

As I read on another site:
Colbert has his bump, Stewart has his axe.

By: MaryLovesColbert

MaryLovesColbert — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 02:36:20 +0000

Haha! I’d never seen that interview with the Spice Girls – she really didn’t know what was going on! :P

By: TruthPower

TruthPower — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 02:07:56 +0000

Yes I agree. She was not prepared for the interview at all. She made herself appear very unprofessional as well. That interview was horrible.

By: forsakinghalfloves

forsakinghalfloves — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 01:39:33 +0000

I hated her finger pointing/waving and her voice. She was so theatrical. She walked out there with a huge binder with no bookmarks or tabs or tape flags or Post-its to find the sections in the bill she claims she has problems with. She was unprepared and desperate and uninformed and stubborn. I agree, she was condescending. Jezebel calls it the Palin model for political discourse.

By: Tiger

Tiger — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 00:39:21 +0000

oh gosh, that interview was so weird. I understand what she is trying to do, but it’s totally ludicrous. I did not like when she kept patting at Jon and saying how silly he was, it was terribly obnoxious. I was glad he didn’t really even engage her as much as usual, and he seemed so unhappy to be near her. (who wouldn’t be.) I think the point made in the quote DB chose is so obvious to regular viewers of TDS or TCR you don’t even have to stop and think how to approach the interview, you knew it was going to be a weirdo-person one.

btw, one of the other comments in the online response section mentioned the Spice Girls interview and Posh Spice having a problem with Jon. I just watched that one, and it’s crazy how much she isn’t connecting to anything Jon is doing. I don’t think it’s all that similar to this most recent interview, though, because Victoria Beckham just seemed inexplicably confused.

By: unanimousvote

unanimousvote — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 00:03:10 +0000

There is a great deal of forum discussion about this here http://forum.thedailyshow.com/tds/ including a thread about Rachel Madow covering The Daily Show ‘giving Betsy attention.’

thanks
U

By: Arianne

Arianne — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 21:37:48 +0000

The only thing I got out of that interview is that the audience that night was awesome (By not acknowledging her when she was attempting to be clever) and that she isn’t clever.
Jon PWN’D her. Big time.

By: mrtigger001

mrtigger001 — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 03:30:22 +0000

hey DB, if you want to post the full interview, the full interview goes like this:

1. Interview (Regular) Part 1
2. Interview (Extended) Part 1
3. Interview (Extended) Part 2

The producers must have uploaded it in a hurry because the labelling is obviously a little abnormal, so it’s not really your fault.

I did feel Betsy was trying to pander & condescend like crazy, which was INCREDIBLY awkward considering that the TDS audience has basically been groomed to be skeptical to that sort of thing. In terms of whether she “disarmed” Jon, it was not so much a disarming as it was basically just not engaging. If you try to engage with Jon on a logical level, 95% of the time you’ll lose or stalemate. The only way you don’t lose is to not engage on a logical level, which is what Betsy did.

What she did is actually not unprecedented; Bill O’Reilly on his last interview on TDS (the “panda bear” one) didn’t engage in a logical conversation and chose to go the name-calling route (“greenwich village opinion”). It’s because he chose not to engage that the discourse went nowhere that night, and that’s what happened tonight.