The interview between Jon Stewart and Rachel Maddow highlighted both of their current problems. Stewart, who rose to fame by taking it to people like Tucker Carlson and Paul Begala, has suddenly begun pussyfooting around the blame game and, in this case, seemed like he was more concerned about not stepping on Maddow's toes than actually getting a point across. He was apparently under the weather and it seemed like it as he stumbled over his words, struggled to make his points, and fell over himself to make sure Maddow knew that she wasn't who he was necessarily talking about when he made his comments. In the end, he made one general point (we should be focusing on the political corruption and not the politics of pettiness) and one smaller point about what the cable channels focus on (Juan Williams being a top story on cable and a small story in newspapers.) These were solid points but Stewart seemed either too sick to make them or too unwilling to upset Maddow to make it.

Meanwhile, Maddow showed EXACTLY why she was who he was talking about. She never seemed to ever listen and think about what Stewart was saying, instead she would just immediately launch into a defense of herself or her station. At one point, she claimed that MSNBC's decision to put on more outright liberals was more about courage than competition with Fox. She stated that her attacks about George W. Bush and WMDs were always about "This isn't good for the country" when that is hardly the point that I ever got from her. The most annoying example, and one she seems focused on, is George W. Bush's new book and how he mentioned that Saddam Hussein was "pursuing" weapons of mass destruction. Maddow finds this to be a shocking 180 since we all know that Saddam didn't have any WMDs. Look at this report about it. It's basically 7 minutes of Maddow saying that Bush was wrong about WMD's. It's 7 minutes rambling on about one old point and then the most frustrating part happens - she falls into the trap.

Maddow claims that it's obvious that Saddam wasn't "pursuing" WMD's. And with that one comment, the Right has all they need. Because there have been reports about Saddam weighing deals for nukes, it's pretty much a known fact that one of his dreams was to have a nuclear Iraq. Jon Stewart pointed out in his interview with Maddow, this is just a game of semantics and that not tangibly having something doesn't mean that someone is not pursuing said thing. A point that was basically lost on Maddow as she just scrambled to repeat her same point over and over.

What Rachel doesn't seem to get is that now Fox will have a great clip of her to show. They'll get to ask questions like, "Does Rachel really think that Hussein wasn't trying to get WMDs? How can she state so firmly that a nuclear Iraq wasn't one of his goals." By spending seven minutes blathering on about how George W. Bush seems to be backtracking, Maddow accomplished nothing and instead went from being in an argument she already won to an argument she'll probably lose.
And to go back to her earlier defense, her entire issue with this isn't that George W. Bush is making the world a worse place, it's just that George W. Bush is lying again and let's all waste our time complaining about a man who isn't President anymore trying to making himself look better. I'm sorry but with everything going on in the world, to think that a Presidential memoir and book tour is newsworthy seems misguided, if not just petty.

It's just another example of the liberals falling for the Right's wordplay. The Left gets to say that they were right about Iraq not having weapons of mass destruction and that the administration misused information to lead our country down this path but now Maddow is falling for the semantics, picking up on the word "pursue" and the discussion shifts to, "Oh, you don't think Saddam ever wanted to get his hands on nukes or WMDs?!" or "You don't think the world is better off without Saddam Hussein in power?" These are much better arguments for the Republicans and ones that I really doubt that most Liberals want to be on the other end of.

In the end (and obviously, this is a generalization), the bottom line is that the Right doesn't fight fair and the Left doesn't fight well. Fox warps the truth to fit their agenda; MSNBC takes the facts that back up their agenda and sell them in a most unappealing way. We've seen it with taxes, health care, you name it. And I agree with Jon Stewart's main point that if MSNBC or another news agency focused on uncovering corruption or god forbid break any other type of actual news, they'd be doing better in the ratings. Jumping into the Left/Right nonsense clearly isn't getting MSNBC any closer in the ratings game so they should try another approach.

My pitch would be a show called "Yesterday's News". You take a story from a day before or sometime earlier in the week and start off the show by looking at how people covered it. Then you have a discussion on what was missed, what was glossed over and misreported. That's the first segment or two. Then you spend the rest of the show really looking at the issue, discussing both sides and trying to uncover the truth or, in some cases, come up with the best possible solutions or, at least, an approach to how to find said solution. I think it could draw people in with the He Said/She Said but then transition into honest to goodness hard news coverage. I think it could be a very interesting show and a real success.