The Problem with Jon Stewart

I think the single most hardest thing to do is to escape ones own perspective.

So…because he colors outside of the “established” lines it’s selfish? Honestly, this expectation for partisan political orthodoxy from people representing specific groups is so scary.

NY State provides COVID antiviral therapies for 'people of colour' way ahead of 'white people'.

I fully accept that there's a strong component of social justice, in that some people of colour have less access to healthcare - the problem is it's very crude and unfair policy, and there are many (perhaps just as many in aggregate) 'white people' who have had limited access to healthcare. Notably they have been poor since the dawn of time, their ancestors 'serfs' for thousands of years, and now they are directly and actively discriminated against by their governments.

A 8-question form about 'health history and health coverage' would probably provide a really good - and fair - basis for access to antivirals, that would get those with 'historical limited access' they help they need. No doubt, people of colour would be more likely as a result of those questions to get treatment, but others would as well. That would be 'actual social justice'.

Cynically, a 'more fair policy' would not allow government officials to tout their specific reforms and programs targeting minorities to placate loud voices, and to tout their 'social justice credibility'.

This is one small example, there are many.

Not only that, casual crude bigotry against whites has become fundamentally acceptable.

There were 4 major publications including Forbes (unexpected) and the Guardian (expected) that lamented 'Will Smith's Slap' was really a problem of 'White Supremacy' - effectively indicting 'Whiteness' as the cause of all of this malaise.

This is ridiculous, anti-intellectual post-modern rubbish. Total bigotry - published in 'respectable' outlets, being passed of ass legitimate - and it's almost a daily occurrence.

'Classical' systematic (and even institutional racism) against people of colour obviously exists, but there is also obviously a war going on with cheating and 'Magical Bigoted Thinking' around every corner.

It's very obvious that some 'talking heads' seeking validation, fame, clicks and relevance make poor arguments in the name of something.

Since at least parts of the Left have gone 'post modern bullshit race war', by blaming literally everything including 'Oscar Slaps' on 'White Supremacy' - it's hard for anyone to keep up and stay on top of the clicks. Jon Stewart has to up his own 'magical thinking' in order to stir the pot.

The same thing can be seen on the 'other side' as Tucker Carlson has entered a bizarre 'Twilight Zone Reality' with his recent conspiratorial and insane rants about Putin's justification for war in Ukraine.

If you were to have shown 2022 Pro-Putin Tucker Carlson, and he Guardian rant faulting 'White Supremacy' for 'Will Smiths Oscar Slap', or any of Trump's Tweets to anyone from 2010 - nobody would have believed it'd be real.

Commercialized press, need for substack subs, huge pressure for ratings, etc pushes the system 'outward' in terms of opinions and makes the system toxic.

So try to contextualize almost everything in that whirlwind.

Take Europe: they have even more extreme political dialogue (they have actual Nazis there, not fake American ones, and they have actual Communist parties in almost every country, that get votes!) - but their population is not caught up in pop-culture wars, particularly about race. Admittedly, without a history of slavery in the same way that America has, it's going to be less sensitive. But they are far less nuts about most of these issues, at least on the Continent.

It's absurd not to be at least fairly cynical about the words of talking heads of any kind in the US these days, and any institution with a public facing element.

They are all subject to it. Take your 'favourite person' - and watch them fall into the cracks as they have to put up content incessantly, have a guest or opinion on a daily basis, that gets them the attention. That is a systematic problem inflaming all others.

But the problem is that actions to 'rehabilitate society using racial/gender lense' is just an excuse to bring out and institutionalize the casual bigotry of the ostensibly offended.

Examples abound.

Probably the only way to allow for such an approach to be taken is if there were constant oversight, and required 'sunset' in the clauses such that the rules had to be automatically rescinded after a period of time.

Aka: "UCLA has a diversity problem in the Business Program, so they're going to focus on bringing XYZ groups into the fold. This program is subject to oversight by outside 3rd party governance body, to which we must provide the data on the program that they request. After 3 years, the program must be sunset, and an after action report will be written by the independent oversight board"

If I were King, I would probably support those kinds of programs, even the slightly more radical ones knowing that at least there is oversight, data, that it can get shut down, and no matter what it will 'time out' eventually.