Jon Stewart on Fox News’ election night panic
For viewers with a taste for schadenfreude, Fox News was the only place to be on election night. From Karl Rove’s refusal to believe the network’s own projection that Mitt Romney had lost Ohio, to Bill O’Reilly’s assertion that the “white establishment is now the minority,” to Sarah Palin’s enormous new Joan Collins hairdo, there was a panicked and slightly unhinged quality to the evening’s proceedings.
Not surprisingly, Jon Stewart had a field day with the material on Wednesday’s “Daily Show.” He was especially delighted by the fact that it was left to co-anchor Megyn Kelly to force Rove to face the music, via a long walk through the bowels of the Fox News offices and a meeting with their in-house nerds.
“I believe this piece of footage will, unlike us, live forever,” he said of the confrontation. Stewart also suggested that the question Kelly asked Rove – “Is this just math that you do as a Republican to make yourself feel better?” – would make a better slogan for Fox News than their current one, “Fair and Balanced.”
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While Stewart was entertained by the Rove-Kelly-nerd showdown, he was more plainly disgusted by his frenemy O’Reilly, who seemed terrified to discover that the face of the American electorate is changing rapidly.
“The white establishment is now the minority,” O’Reilly lamented on Tuesday. “It’s not a traditional America anymore. There are 50% of the voting public who want stuff. They want things. Who is going to give them things? President Obama.”
Stewart expressed his bemusement over O’Reilly’s comments: “What an incredible story to tell yourselves: We would have won if it weren’t for the moral failings of the non-real America.”
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