Marc Thiessen apparently believed that he was now Jon Stewart.

Marc Thiessen should have gone on The Colbert Report, he would have been treated with so much more deference.

The Overwhine Window gets pushed another inch right.

Let me get this straight – “can’t get my points out” = “I must have mistaken a fucking COMEDY show for Face The Nation”, or is it just me?

jeezus, that’s starting from FAIL and working your way down.

Ah, yes, conservative powerhouse Marc Thiessen. Anticipate his joining the ranks of NRO shortly. There, with such scholars as John J. Miller heralding a Renaissance in Conservative Thunk, he’ll pen well thought out speeches for fictional presidents to deliver at fictional walls.

I want Marc Thiessen to go on a Japanese Game Show.

Preferably, this one.

He’s already on the Washington Post Op-ed page. Poor guy has no platform at all from which to respond to mean old Stewart.

what he objected to was that when Stewart talked, it knocked down all the blather, so you can understand his point, really.

He acted like a total douchevacuum though.

I love it when these guys go on Stewart. “Yeah, I know, he destroyed Jim Cramer, eviscerated Tucker Carlson, embarrassed Bill O’Reilly, and ate Jonah Goldberg’s last brain cell, but I will SO own him!”

Theissen’s rise through the ranks of the worst WaPo opinionists is historic. He may beat out William “the Great One” Kristol’s record for moral monstrousity and general fuckwittery in a single season.

Regnery strikes again!

Fuck me. I didn’t think my opinion of Thiessen could get any lower after reading his torture op-ed and subsequent defences of it. But my jaw was hanging open when I saw the Daily Show segment earlier. He manages to be even more odious than Kristol. Also, his rhetorical style is particularly twattish – run off a Gish gallop of falsehoods, slanders and offensive analogies, then when your interlocutor takes his time to pick through them, complain that he’s not giving you time to speak.

I was particularly “impressed” by his claim that “never in 234 years have we given habeas corpus rights to people held as enemy combatants”. That’s because we never held “enemy combatants” until Bush invented the fucking term so he didn’t have to give suspects habeas corpus rights you fucking hack.

I can’t get my points out on the air. … I didn’t get a chance. …

I can’t image from where a Bush-era hack-writer / apologist would have gained the impression that TV shows exist only to provide hack writers and apologists with a platform for their opinions; or why he would feel entitled to a certain quantum of free advertising time.

The whining afterwards about media bias is SOP, I suppose.

That’s because we never held “enemy combatants” until Bush invented the fucking term so he didn’t have to give suspects habeas corpus rights you fucking hack.>

Yeah I caught that too. By that logic, the concentration camps weren’t war crimes because those interned weren’t criminals. It takes a lot of fucking nerve to be that evil on television.

Smut,

Yeah, that’s kind of what struck me first. Pretty fucking sad when the purpose of the entire mass media, including the one show on the air that has a recent history of not actually swallowing bullshit by the tankerful, can be reasonably expected by turdsnorkles like this to be simply a vehicle for “getting their points out.”

Makes you want to weep.

Also,

WAAAAAHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!

Let me get this straight – “can’t get my points out” = “I must have mistaken a fucking COMEDY show for Face The Nation”, or is it just me?

Well, on the other hand, it is a fucking comedy show that’s actually prone to making some pretty good points.

I think maybe it’s more “can’t get my points out” = “I must have mistaken Jon Stewart for someone who will just nod at my brilliant insights”. Because, seriously, dude, did you ever watch the show before you went on it? Stewart’s not shy about making his opinion known.

“Yeah, I know, he destroyed Jim Cramer, eviscerated Tucker Carlson, embarrassed Bill O’Reilly, and ate Jonah Goldberg’s last brain cell, but I will SO own him!”
Well to be fair to self-important right-wing douchebags (holy fuck I’m generous) – making Cramer, Carlson, Bill O and Pantload look like stupid fucking idiots isn’t exactly a difficult task.

I’m listening to the interview now, and all I can think is MY GOD! DOES THIS SHITHEAD EVER JUST SHUT THE FUCK UP?????

self-important right-wing douchebags

You repeat yourself.

making Cramer, Carlson, Bill O and Pantload look like stupid fucking idiots isn’t exactly a difficult task.

well, sure. But who is the right wing’s first string players? Megan McArdle?

So, Jon Stewart actually prepares for the interviews he does and even puts on the innertubes a 3 part interview that allowed Theissen to make a bigger ass of himself than just the 11 minutes on the main part of the show. Why, heh, heh, Jon was clearly out of his depth and should, ah, obliviously stick to comedy because he could never handle an interview the same way, oh, I suppose, a news host like Matthews or Blitzer or Russert, (wait, is he dead?) Well, the point is: why can’t news show hosts do interviews this…well, I have to leave it there.
The only guy who comes close is the noted conservative thinker, Stephen Colbert. At least there’s balance

I can’t get my points out on the air. …

Stage fright makes the skin over his temples thicken, apparently.

Me: 1
Stewart: 0

Guess he still can’t win when it counts.

Yeah, Yoo’s pretty slick. I guess torture must be OK.

I’d call the Yoo interview a draw.

But he’s still a greasy shtibag with all the appeal of the springtime yard thaw that reveals the winter’s worth of dog crap that has to be picked up.

An interviewer can’t “beat” a soulless moral vacuum like Yoo. It can’t be done. You would have to shame or embarrass him and it’s obvious that Yoo can’t feel either one of those things. I’d say Theissen is the same way. Don’t blame Stewart for the fact that men who’d make Hannibal Lecter blanch rose to such positions of prominence.

Shorter Thiessen: WAAAH! I didn’t get to babble talking points nonstop!

well, Bilo, you have to admit that Thiessen would be used to babbling his bilious blathering without bother on most mainstream news programs. So you can see why he was whiny about being treated in a way he wasn’t used to…

Oh, so his point was not that he didn’t get enough time to talk about his point?

What was his point then?

“Why is a speechwriter who’s never served in the military or intelligence community acting as an expert on interrogation and national security?”

That’s a great/easy question

I had never heard of Marc Thiessen before today but: holy crap what a scumbag. He also whines endlessly. Even Mrs. Chowder wanted to “slap his fat face.”

Usually she only slaps me around.

Esteev has the winning link. I understand Thiessen also makes a lousy human being, so why would I listen to the grunting emanating from his pie-hole? Beautifulshitty plumage, thoughAlso.

Um, slightly OT, very creepy:

Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.) said he often goes to the Senate gym to do a rubber-band exercise for his arms — the 66-year-old said he has bad rotator cuffs — but that he most loves sitting in the sauna with his colleagues.

“It’s always fun,” he said.

“It’s the only place where you get to see a member in a different light,” said Rep. Patrick J. Kennedy (D-R.I.). “Not physically in what Massa was talking about, another member nude, but in a sense that their [inhibitions] are gone in addition to their clothes. There’s a sense of the basic fellow person serving in this business to another fellow person serving in this business.”

Added Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.): “It’s protocol never to talk about what you talk about there.”

DADT? And not even a little bit ghey.

That’s a great/easy question

fuxxored

stinkin’ dyslexia

I understand Thiessen also makes a lousy human being

Not if you add garlic and oregano, and turn on a spit over an open flame.

I admire Jon’s ability to stomach total fucking scumbags, even though I can rarely stand to actually watch the interview. If anything, he’s typically far too kind. He makes all the usual polite noises, which may trick stupider people into thinking he’s another “neutral” host, or possibly Jay Leno.

I’m sorry if this makes me an elitist liberal but, Thiessen is just a dork without a conscience. He actually said that when we torture it’s OK(despite the fact that torture doesn’t elicit real intel; only stuff that makes the torture stop) but it is illegal if “they” do it. I recently saw Frost/Nixon and I think Mark found the premise of his book in that film.

If anything, he’s typically far too kind.

Stewart is a suck up, to be sure, but from time to time, he will really challenge a guy if he’s a real douche.

Colbert challenges them all the time (when he lets them get a word in) but he puts them in the position that if they attack him, they have to attack their own positions.

One might say that Marc Thiessen was put in a position where he was not allowed to defend himself against charges leveled against him by someone who was in absolute authority to control the proceedings.

I love how the conservative douchebags are so offended when their style of interview isn’t followed. What, call him out on the outright lies? Who does Stewart think he is????

It’s just lie, lie, lie, whine about how you’re not being allowed to “make your point”. I think he made his point very well.*

*If his point was “I am a giant douchebag”.

He actually said that when we torture it’s OK(despite the fact that torture doesn’t elicit real intel; only stuff that makes the torture stop) but it is illegal if “they” do it.

You mean they actually found someone who goes out and says that now? Because I know that for years the official line was that what we did “wasn’t torture” or the somewhat less common line that “ok, it may be bad, but it’s nowhere near as bad as what THEY do, so it’s ok.”

I know they believed the above contradiction for years, but it takes a special type of hubris to actually come out and articulate it.

An interviewer can’t “beat” a soulless moral vacuum like Yoo. It can’t be done.

Furthermore, once you abjure self-consistency, logic, and coherence, you REALLY can’t lose. There’s no way to land a finishing blow on someone who’s not following the rules of sane debate.

I think this is going to be a bigger problem going forward as more and more conservatives realize that it’s the way to win (or at least not lose). Jonah Goldberg does this sort of thing automatically, but the rest of them do it too. Stewart said somewhere that interviewing Yoo was like interviewing sand, presumably because he couldn’t pin him down on anything. Try to win a debate that goes like this:

NEOCON: Liberals are fascists.
INTERVIEWER: There are a lot of differences between the two, you know.
NEOCON: I never said there weren’t.
INTERVIEWER: If there are DIFFERENCES, then they’re not the SAME.
NEOCON: That’s right.
INTERVIEWER: So what’s your point?
NEOCON: They’re similar.
INTERVIEWER: But…but the similarities, if similarities there are, are on minor points not central to fascism.
NEOCON: So?
INTERVIEWER: So they’re not similar in any meaningful way.
NEOCON: Well, first, that’s using the liberal definition of fascism.
INTERVIEWER: …The what? What makes it the liberal definition?
NEOCON: The fact that it makes conservatives look like fascists.
INTERVIEWER: But it’s based on real historical truths, the writings of Hitler and Mussolini and…
NEOCON: I never said it wasn’t.
INTERVIEWER: But if it’s based on actual historical truths….
NEOCON: Selective truths.
INTERVIEWER: Aren’t your truths just as selective?
NEOCON (giving the blissful Bill Kristol shit-eating grin): Maybe in your opinion.

Jonah (and most of the rest of these guys, for that matter) learned one and only one thing in college, which is that if you bluster your way through a debate and you never admit that you’re wrong, you’ll still be standing at the end. Better yet, some people–the sort of people who judge a debate based on its tone rather than its content–will think you won, or at least did a good job.

Stewart is a suck up, to be sure, but from time to time,

Uh, he’s a comedian. The only reason he’s a “suck up” is because the rest of the MSM doesn’t do half the job he does at exposing the nonsense that exists in US politics and we rely on Stewart to fill the void.

I get that he has to suck up a little to get people onto his miserable basic cable show, sponsored by Pringles or what have you. I have no problem with that.

Pre-first commercial break, MT’s whining came off as the height of entitlement and intensely hypocritical.

However, after watching the extended interview (not aired on television), I was less impressed by Jon’s rebuttals. While I don’t agree with Thiessen’s worldview, he did bring a multitude of facts (selective as they may be), and Jon didn’t have an answer for most of them. Most glaring was allowing Marc to trot out the Zubaydah-as-high-ranking-intelligence nonsense, when the man was actually a mentally unstable bottom-feeder who led the FBI on a whirlwind tour of flyover minimalls.

Thiessen’s downfall came in the last few minutes, when he actively refused to answer Stewart’s questions, esp. regarding the former’s insistence that torture–>valid confession–>safety.

He actually said that when we torture it’s OK(despite the fact that torture doesn’t elicit real intel; only stuff that makes the torture stop) but it is illegal if “they” do it.

You mean they actually found someone who goes out and says that now?

This was another point that drove me crazy – Thiessen insists that our soldiers are lawful combatants, whereas our opponents are unlawful, so ‘legal’ torture is acceptable. But if they’re unlawful combatants, WHO WAS PHONE…err, who exactly are we engaged in a war with that justifies extraordinary deference to the CiC?

Like I said, this was the least engaged I’ve ever seen Stewart act with a conservative of any consequence. I really thought he was gonna crucify MT for complaining about Liz ‘Al Qaeda Seven’ Cheney being ‘unjustly maligned,’ but he just kinda dropped it.

The first rule of Senate steam room is you don’t talk about Senate steam room!

I am always here and I will be back.

Oh, the irony of Thiessen complaining of being mistreated while at the same time defending torture.

(An irony Stewart deftly illuminated, by claiming his interview style consisted of “techniques I learned”).