No real confrontation, but Jon Stewart got into another fit of incredulousness while interviewing CNN's Wolf "Happening Now" Blitzer tonight. In wake of the Senate report on intelligence failure, Stewart hammered Blitzer on why the fourth estate didn't question the run-up to war more than they did (which was close to zero).
STEWART: So what does the media do differently [now]?
BLITZER: I think we learned from our mistakes and try to do it better next time.
STEWART: Specifically.
BLITZER: Specifically, we learned from our mistakes and try to do it better next time. We look back and we say, "You know what, we should have been more skeptical."
STEWART: But...Wolf...Come on! It was a...
BLITZER: We're trained to be skeptical by our very nature, that's what journalists...
STEWART: Why weren't you? Because people...
BLITZER: I think we could have been more skeptical, I think we...
STEWART: Are they afraid of the Bush administration? Is the Bush administration so ham-handed that - ham-handed, and this is coming from a Jew who knows nothing of ham - but are they so forceful that they have intimidated the press corps into NOT asking those questions?
BLITZER: No. The answer's no.
STEWART: So...is the press corps, and again I'm gonna use the word, suffering from groupthink? OR...OR...or another word, retardation?
(Audience explodes in cheers as Stewart grabs Blitzer by the shoulder and rocks him)
STEWART: Come on! Tell me the truth! I want to know! I'm really curious. I'm baffled.
BLITZER: It's groupthink. Not retardation. You know, when you're told repeatedly - and I was told going into the [Kuwait] war...everybody said the same thing. There is no doubt, there are stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons and it's only a matter of time before he has a nuclear bomb. Condoleezza Rice said on my show..."We can't wait for a smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud." You remember that?
STEWART: And as it turns out, Pakistan had already sold mushroom cloud material to every country in the area BUT Iraq! It's crazy! The whole thing's crazy!
Stewart, exasperated, just whooped, threw his hands in the air and spun around in his chair at this point before closing out the segment. Nice to see someone - ANYONE - give Wolf and the news business in general a good public spanking over this issue.
