not<\/em> have control of her show on this occasion.\u00a0 She threw out an occasional question or comment and the three funny men kept the audience laughing.<\/p>\nIn a similar fashion, Jon Stewart threw out questions and comments and President Obama ran with them, explaining his point of view at length.\u00a0 Jon listened intently and demonstrated his strong knowledge of current events.\u00a0 One could tell Jon was holding back, that his usual sarcastic wit.\u00a0 He even acknowledged this at one point, and it made for a very positive experience.<\/p>\n
Which is the next unusual thing.\u00a0 Most political things–ads, debates, whatever–these days have a very negative slant.\u00a0 There are ads on the air which attack candidates which aren’t even sponsored by any opposing candidate.\u00a0 But Jon’s interview with President Obama was positive.\u00a0 They shared a few jokes and Jon asked some tough questions which the president responded to thoroughly.\u00a0 He didn’t put down Republicans or the Tea Party or anyone else; he simply declared and then supported his point of view.<\/p>\n
My rant today, then, is following that vein.\u00a0 Usually I blather on about the wrongness of something.\u00a0 Even when I am talking about the rightness of something–evolution, for example–I often do so by attacking the counter-arguments.<\/p>\n
President Obama’s message in the interview was clear.\u00a0 The country is struggling, yes, but things have improved significantly since he took office.\u00a0 Unemployment is high, but it has held fairly steady around nine or ten percent for quite some time now.\u00a0 Most of the job decline came in his first few months he was in office and so could hardly be blamed on him.\u00a0 Obama has seen jobs created under his administration.<\/p>\n
What Obama has done in his first 20 months as president, really, is to stabilize the country.\u00a0 His critics overlook this in favor of pointing out what he has not done.\u00a0 This is a perception issue, I believe.\u00a0 As he pointed out, while the country has not made positive progress in many areas, it has stopped the negative movement which was present at the time he was elected and in the first few months of his presidency.\u00a0 This is<\/em> progress, just not the superheroic stuff some folks wanted to see.<\/p>\nThe interview left me with a very positive feeling.\u00a0 Not just about President Obama, but about the country in general.\u00a0 I know that, as I mentioned above, I have complained in this blog from time to time about this bad thing or another, but generally speaking I am actually happy with my country.\u00a0 Yes, there are ways it could be better, but that doesn’t mean it’s bad or even that it’s getting worse.\u00a0 Things have, in general, gotten better since Obama took office.<\/p>\n
Anyway, it was an outstanding, positive interview.\u00a0 I highly recommend it.\u00a0 It was the second best show Jon Stewart has ever done.\u00a0 The only better show was his post-9\/11 show, and that stands out for mostly different reasons.\u00a0 I say “mostly” because it, too, presented a positive outlook.\u00a0 Jon’s message that day was that we needed to continue on, and to that end he was going to continue doing his job as a comedian and make people laugh in the face of the terrible things that happened.<\/p>\n
Shortly after Obama took office–and by “shortly” I mean within a couple months, before he had a chance to effect any real change–some people put a bumper sticker on their car asking “How’s that hope and change thing going for you?”\u00a0 My answer today is even more enthusiastic now than it was then, especially in light of the Jon Stewart interview:\u00a0 It’s going extremely well.\u00a0 Thanks for asking.<\/p>\n
Rant off.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Rant on. On Friday, after my usual bit of verse, I posted a link to Jon Stewart’s interview with President Barack Obama.\u00a0 This was unusual in a couple of respects:\u00a0 It was the first time he had interviewed a U.S. President while he was still in office.\u00a0 The interview took up the entire program.\u00a0 That […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=172"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":173,"href":"http:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172\/revisions\/173"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=172"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=172"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=172"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}