DeMint Does Daily

You have to see Jon Stewart interview our own Jim DeMint on The Daily Show.  I was so excited at the thought that Jon Stewart was going to make DeMint eat every one of his convoluted thoughts.


Things started well.  DeMint showed up in his rumpled, too-large, Sunday go-to-meeting suit, and I noted that he was the one with the blue tie, Stewart with the red.  Also, Mr. Stewart's chair appeared to be slightly highly than Senator DeMint, so that he appeared to tower over him physically as well as intellectually.


But the part that aired on television was a disappointment.  To see the real interview you need to get past part 1, where Stewart is being attentive and way too agreeable.  I actually worried that Stewart had met his match in DeMint, that even this brilliant interviewer couldn't figure out how to cut through the nonsense.


But parts 2 and 3, on the internets, is where Stewart gets his stride.   By the time he has confronted the senator with DeMint's enflamed rhetoric, the accusations that anyone who is liberal does not love his country, or is not patriotic, and before he gets to the damage being done by the right's unwillingness to compromise, he actually has DeMint stammering.  It is a beautiful thing to see.


Even better though, is that Stewart restates for us what it is that makes America great.  He channels Elizabeth Warren when he says "...no one makes it here by themselves".  Because we are all in this together, and when the powerful corporations are not held in check with regulation, and are not made to contribute an adequate amount of their profits to allow the rest of the country to grow, we all fail.  Eventually.


On the other hand, looking again at the video, Jim ends the interview as smug as ever, and I don't believe he ever had an idea that he had been bested.  It will surely take more than reason to bring down.


But I'm glad Jon Stewart was able to shine a little light on the idiocy that is Jim DeMint