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mygif

That was almost uncomfortable near the end. Like watching a snuff movie.

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Savage Wombat said on March 10th, 2010 at 12:41 am

THIS, oh sweet God in heaven, this.

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mygif

I was hoping Jon Steward was going to slap him or at very least conk him over the head with the coffee mug.

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mygif

I only caught it about 2/3rds of the way through and wondered what horrible manbaby had been thrust upon Jon Stewart. Afterwards I googled him up and sure enough, platinum-grade bastard. can’t wait for the extended interview to pop up!

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MarvinAndroid said on March 10th, 2010 at 2:57 am

Okay, MGK, you’re a lawerly-type man. Tell me something, because I know my I must have been hallucinating:

His entire argument CAN’T have been “They’re guilty because they were accused,” can it? I mean… it can’t, right? I just misunderstood his complex law-talk and he wasn’t really calling defense lawyers terrorist pedophile sympathizers, right? Please… I need something to believe in…

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MarvinAndroid said on March 10th, 2010 at 2:59 am

Also this just confirmed for me (along with the John Yoo interview) that Stewart is just too nice an interview sometimes. I mean even when he’s being forceful like with this one, he looked so crestfallen and apologetic at the end. He was genuinely sorry the interview wasn’t more “fair,” as if that applies to a debate in which one participant simply makes the same logically flawed argument again and again.

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Ryan Beariot said on March 10th, 2010 at 4:35 am

I didn’t know until I looked at his wikipedia page (to see if it had been tampered with for being a douche) but apparently, he was senior adviser to Jesse Helms for 6 years. So you know, fuck that guy.

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mygif

Honestly I felt bad for the guy by the end. While Jon is an incredibly intelligent and sharp interviewer, I could see him giving the highlight of his point then diverting to a different point before letting Marc have a chance to respond.

I know as an entertainer he has to make sure they hit all the highlights of Marc’s completely stupid argument but watching it from a strictly analytical perspective, Marc really got walked over and managed to take it with a fairly respectable amount of composure, all things considered.

It still doesn’t make his point in any way valid or defensible. I would just have liked Jon give Marc a little more rope and let him hang himself rather than do all the work himself.

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mygif

I had to stop the video because the guy made me want to kick in my screen.

I had to do the same with the Newt Gingrich interview as well.

Then I went to Maddow’s site to learn about Virginia’s leaders wishing they were Uganda…

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mygif

The guy he had on Monday night, Harry Markopolos, was a pretty unlikeable too, albeit for more benevolent reasons. You’d think a guy who tried to act as whistleblower for the hedge fund fraud would be an easy sell, but I think he lost everyone around when he claimed that Madoff would have had his family hunted down and killed. The sad thing was just how hard Stewart was trying to save Markopolos from himself throughout.

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mygif

Did anybody else get a weird vibe from this interview? Like Steward was planning on utterly annihilating this sad sack, but abruptly changed his mind because of how simplistic and sad Thiessen is? I really think Stewart took pity on Thiessen.

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Sean D. Martin said on March 10th, 2010 at 1:27 pm

Dan: While Jon is an incredibly intelligent and sharp interviewer, I could see him giving the highlight of his point then diverting to a different point before letting Marc have a chance to respond.

Did you see the same interview I did? Thiessen would rarely stop talking, often going from one point he wanted to make to another without giving Stewart a chance to respond. And then he’d complain that he was the one not getting a chance to speak.

Stewart got his turns, but usually only by having to interrupt Thiessen’s streams.

And at the end, with his “You mean I won’t get to make my points on the air?” crap, Stewart should have just said “OK, we’ll just end the interview right here then.” and denied Thiessen any more time.

Let me guess, “WATB” was originally created to refer to Thiessen.

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mygif

So, basically:

Thiessen: Blahblahblahblahblah!
Stewart: But if I may interject with some sanity-
Thiessen (DRAMA QUEEN SIGH): Don’t you know who I am?!

What a douchenozzle.

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LightlyFrosted said on March 10th, 2010 at 1:49 pm

Watching the extended interview online… yeah, I have to generally agree the guy is a dick. The whole ‘shouting over one another’ bits got a little annoying, to be honest, but.. from what I can tell, the thrust of his argument is that rule of law is less important than containment of perceived threats. He might not put it that way, but that does seem to be more or less the gist of it.

Likely, there’s more to it than that, although I am perhaps giving him too much credit. Certainly he didn’t seem to have any faith whatsoever that should Guantanamo prisoners be charged and tried that they would be guilty, which is curious to say the least. But when it comes down to it, the debate is not a new one; freedom versus security. What rights are you willing to sacrifice – not just for yourself, but notably for others – in order to increase your sense of, but perhaps not actual security?

In the end, I suspect the best answer you can give such people is that if you wish to feel truly secure, you must first foster an environment in which that feels like a good thing; if you give up what you stand for in order to remain standing, one might argue you’ve missed the point.

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mygif

I couldn’t watch the whole thing because I got so wound up. I did stick around through the whole “some of those lawyers — the ones we don’t know the identities of — have devoted their lives to defending terrorists” argument.

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mygif

I sort of felt like Stewart was trying to avoid a repeat of the John Yoo interview. Stewart’s indicated that he was disappointed about being unable to really illustrate how specious Yoo’s arguments actually are, and I thought he was a little more aggressive this time around on this related topic. I couldn’t believe that Thiessen actually whined on-camera about losing the argument. Great interview by Stewart, it’s always a joy to watch his rational and informed debate style.

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mygif

“I didn’t know until I looked at his wikipedia page (to see if it had been tampered with for being a douche) but apparently, he was senior adviser to Jesse Helms for 6 years. So you know, fuck that guy.”

Which most likely means he was keeping Helms supplied with Ensure and Depends.

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mygif

He literally talked for two minutes about how he wasn’t able to get any points out on the air because Jon “talked right through” him…

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mygif

CB sometimes rather than listening to something reprehensible, it’s best to just point out that yes, it’s reprehensible.

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mygif

I wish that Stewart (or anyone for that matter) would answer the statement that “We know they are dangerous” or “We know they are guilty” with “How do you know? Have you seen any evidence?”

I’m with MarvinAndroid above in agreeing that his entire argument was “They’re guilty because they were accused”.

Frankly, I’d love to see Obama just have a bunch of these morons rounded up, declare them “enemy combatants” and throw them in Gitmo and see how that goes. I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t be all “They’re guilty because they were accused” then, now would they.

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Rob Brown said on March 12th, 2010 at 12:22 am

And then he’d complain that he was the one not getting a chance to speak.

And Stewart apologized, even though one wasn’t warranted because contrary to what the jackass said he DID get a chance to make his points. Stewart gave him time to talk about how some “sainted hero of the left” (Thiessen’s words) who was an interrogator who said torture didn’t work was supposedly full of crap, to name just one example.

And the way the guy said that because of Bush’s policies there hadn’t been an attack since 2001, I just get so sick of people saying that. Bush has been out of office for over a year now, Obama has done a number of things differently than Bush concerning national security, and there hasn’t been another attack like 9/11 in all that time. Whatever the reason that there wasn’t another such attack, I think we can safely rule out “Bush was the president” as that reason by now. I don’t know whether the people who still give him credit are too stupid to realize that, or if they realize it and are just too stubborn to publicly admit it.

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mygif

Jon. Jon. Jon. Jon. Jon. Jon. Jon. Jon. Jon. Jon. Jon. Jon. Jon. Jon. Jon. Jon.

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