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| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| Exclusive - Anna Baltzer & Mustafa Barghouti Extended Interview Pt. 1 | ||||
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If the Middle East were already demilitarizing, detribalizing, peaceful, secular, and tolerant an entire war reporting news corps would be out of business.
Nonetheless, the fact that a cooperative, growing, and peaceful channel exists with a foundation in common law values may be taken as heartening as Islam becomes a shattered mirror reconstituting itself through violent conflict in some parts and heavily funded think-tanking in others.
If the question of what does "Muslim" mean has become problemmatic, the same for Jews has not been answered with any greater certainty. About 80 percent of Jews worldwide, fewer than 14 million in total, have popped up secular although in Israel the orthodox Haredim would seem to be boffing like bunnies and altering the overall political mix.
When such secular-humanist feel-good pieces play before the American and other open society publics, much discomfitting information may be set aside, an indicator as much of the ways in which we think--our good vibes have partly to do with the absence, temporary or permanent, of the entertainment of bad ones--as well as papering over. Jon Stewar parries with a hint of the animosity sustained across the Arab Muslim and Israeli Jewish divide, but he doesn't thrust toward the Qassam rocket barrage inducing this past year's war in Gaza ("Cast Lead"), continuing rocket fire from Gaza, and continuing "extrajudicial killing" in Gaza related to the Hamas vs. Fatah civil war within the Palestinian community.
Every now and then, we want the vision of sugar plums dancing in our heads--it is so much better than what the street turns up and what goes on when the spotlights are off.
[Updated: 091103-0924 EST/jso]
Reference
1. Stewart, Jon. "October 28, 2009: Exclusive - Anna Baltzar & Mustafa Barghouti - Extended Interview Pt. 1." The Daily Show, October 28, 2009: http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/wed-october-28-2009/exclusive---anna-baltzer---mustafa-barghouti-extended-interview-pt--1
2. Stotsky, Steven. "Daily Show Duo Spread Lies About Israel." CAMERA, November 2, 2009: http://www.camera.org/index.asp?x_context=7&x_issue=39&x_article=1757
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