Santorum on the Daily Show
Published by Jeff, July 26th, 2005 in The mediaTNR has a generally correct piece on last night’s Daily Show with Rick Santorum. John Cole also rightly points out that Stewart’s poor interview is hardly that important, but it is a bit disappointing.
Stewart has had some good, pointed interviews. During the campaign when he had on some Republican working for Bush’s campaign and grilled him about the “most liberal Senator” talking point comes to mind. It seemed like Stewart had a very specific point in mind and hammered it home, whereas in the Santorum interview he, as the TNR piece notes, was winging it. Maybe Stewart just needs to prepare better. In any case, it’s not something I’m going to spend much time thinking about, other than to be slightly disappointed.
Santorum is an intimidating guy; not in the sense that he is scary, but in the sense that he could pull a Santorum. Stewart probably decided that it would be best to take it easy and play it nice for the sake of Karma; also because he is on Comedy Central he is allowed to do that.
He is allowed a lot of leeway due to the channel he is on and perhaps that is what makes the show as interesting as it is. I will point out that he has had a lot of intense interviews as of late - several stretching into ten minutes.
I would have liked a more pointed interview, but I’m also not going to lose any sleep over Stewart’s failure. I’m more concerned with the fact that an unprepared Stewart gets closer to real journalism than a prepared CNN anchor.