Last night on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, correspondent John Oliver examined the issue of torture.
It is incredibly shameful that the use of torture by the U.S. is a matter of contention at all in this country, much less between opposing political viewpoints. (Sign me up with Denzel on this one.)
Conservatives like to play with words and so “torture” becomes “enhanced interrogation techniques,” a term that originated in Nazi Germany, to hide the embarrassing reality and its illegality. The Daily Show’s Oliver parodied this strange defense while arguing the conservative torture-enabler line, “If we do do those things, they must not be torture.”
It is another chapter in the absurdity of what has become of the post-9/11 national security policy: defend our values by completely abandoning them at home and abroad.
The Daily Show host Jon Stewart takes MSNBC political analyst Chris Matthews to task for his “philosophy of life.” In his new book, Matthews argues that people can take the lessons from political campaigns to live their lives.
Stewart (jokingly?) replied, “It strikes me as fundamentally wrong. It strikes me as a self-hurt book.”
MATTHEWS: I’m listening to you…
STEWART: No, you’re not…
MATTHEWS: Of course I am, you’re trashing my book.
STEWART: I’m not trashing your book, I’m trashing your philosophy of life.
STEWART: There is nothing in this book that says, “Be good. Be competent.”
MATTHEWS: That’s not — that’s called The Bible. Its been written. [...]
STEWART: This book has been written, too. It’s called, The Prince.
Larry Willmore, the “Senior Black Correspondent” for The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, went to dine at Sylvia’s restaurant in Harlem following Bill O’Reilly’s racist remarks regarding blacks.