If you caught last night’s Daily Show (and if you haven’t, you should), there was a really fun interview with Bill O’Reilly after the also-really-fun send-up of Bush’s campaign-speech-disguised-as-a-policy-address. (Okay. I’m done with the hyphenation thing. Promise. At least for now.)

Jon Stewart is really at his best when he can play up his wise-ass (oops) nature. His recent interviews with Clinton and Kerry were pretty weak; I guess he actually likes and respects those guys (or at least is genuinely awed by them, or something) to the point where his inner class clown goes into hiding.

But when Stewart faces off with someone whose behavior pushes his buttons, he comes alive as an interviewer. And it’s not just that the comedy ratchets way up. You also get these glimpses of what I (perhaps naively) believe to be the real Jon Stewart, moments in which the comedy stops and there’s some actual genuine human emotion on display, if only for a second. I’m thinking of things like the “sad little man” comment to Republican congressman Henry Bonilla. It’s powerful stuff; in some ways the best thing about a very, very good show.

That’s all prologue. What I really meant to talk about here was last night’s interview with Bill O’Reilly. It was really, really good, in part because there was that tension that brings out Stewart’s best. But O’Reilly was actually really good, too. The most interesting part for me was O’Reilly’s assertion, and Stewart’s end-of-interview (ach!) at-least-somewhat-serious-sounding (ach!) admission that he believed said assertion, that he (O’Reilly) was, in fact, an undecided voter going into the presidential election. And that he (O’Reilly) had a lot of respect for Kerry, and wanted very much to have him appear on his show.

Which is fun and all. I mean, I know that O’Reilly has a huge incentive to try to get Kerry on his show, and certainly isn’t above playing nice for a bit in order to try to bring it about. But then we’ve got this brief item from Salon today (not really worth the one-day (!) pass, but what the heck): Kerry: I like Bill O’Reilly.

“I like Bill O’Reilly,” the Democratic presidential candidate told TV Guide. “I think he does a terrific job. I think he’s got a very good show.”

Kerry said he’d “love to” appear on “The O’Reilly Factor” and would ask his schedulers about it.

Anyway. Enough rambling. Enough hyphens. Watch The Daily Show. Onward.

This entry was posted by jbc on Friday, October 8th, 2004 at 8:59 am and is filed under the_usa. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.