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Not since Mark Twain

Jon Stewart destroyed Christopher Hitchens on Friday's Daily Show.  Hitchens tried to take the line that people against the war in Iraq were capitulationist, blame America-firsters.  Here's part of the transcript:

Stewart: The people who say we shouldn't fight in Iraq aren't saying it's our fault. That is the conflation that is the most disturbing to me.
Hitch: Don't you hear people saying that we made them nasty. . .
Stewart: I hear people saying a lot of stupid [bleep]. . . But there is reasonable dissent in this country about the way this war has been conducted, that has nothing to do with people believing that we should cut and run from the terrorists, or that we should show weakness in the face of terrorism, or that we believe that we have in some way brought this upon ourselves.  They believe that this war is being conducted without transparency, without credibility, and without competence...
Hitch: I'm sorry, sunshine.  I just watched you ridicule the president for saying he wouldn't give a timetable...
Stewart: No, you misunderstood why. . . .What I ridiculed the president [about] was [that] he refuses to answer questions from adults as though we were adults and falls back upon platitudes and phrases and talking points; that does a disservice to the goals that he himself shares with the very people he himself needs to convince.

Hitchens knows he has been beat and can hardly wait to escape at the close (watch the video here). 

Posted by Alex Tabarrok on August 27, 2005 at 11:34 PM in Television | Permalink

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» Observer effects from blogs for industry
Over at Marginal Revolution, Alex Tabarrok seems to think that "Jon Stewart destroyed Christopher Hitchens" on the Daily Show. Although I like to watch the Daily Show, I missed the show in question, and the video link skips large sections of video whe... [Read More]

Tracked on Aug 28, 2005 1:51:02 AM

» Christopher Hitchens from The Filter^
I've never really known what to make of Christopher Hitchens. A smart, interesting man, who in many ways is the political opposite of myself: he started off as a Totskyist, and 9-11 turned him into a pseudo-Neo Con; whereas I [Read More]

Tracked on Aug 28, 2005 12:13:40 PM

» Destroyed? Please. from Hatful of Hollow
"Jon Stewart destroyed Christopher Hitchens on Friday's Daily Show" says Alex Tabarrok at Marginal Revolution. Not to be offensive, but what's he smoking? If anything, it was the other way around, as Stewart fails to answer some of Hitchens' central... [Read More]

Tracked on Aug 28, 2005 3:03:31 PM

» Jon Stewart's beatdown of Christopher Hitchens from Brendan Nyhan
Via Marginal Revolution, here a partial transcript (and video link) to John Stewart's destruction of Christopher Hitchens during a debate about the Iraq war on the Daily Show last week. Stewart only challenges his guests infrequently (apparently for fe... [Read More]

Tracked on Aug 30, 2005 7:59:00 AM