Jon Stewart’s Incoherence

By Nate Hochman

Monday, April 04, 2022

 

Jon Stewart’s three-on-one debate with conservative commentator Andrew Sullivan last week has received a lot of attention, largely because of the fallout from the segment, which focused on the question of “systemic racism” in modern America. Sullivan, understandably upset about the debate’s utterly unfair setup, penned an ex post facto Substack column excoriating Stewart’s arguments. Stewart subsequently responded with a snide Twitter thread arguing that Sullivan “wasn’t ambushed,” and that “any damage incurred was self-inflicted.”

 

National Review’s Isaac Schorr and Brittany Bernstein ably detailed the series of events in this morning’s news column. To see how condescending, bad-faith, and utterly intellectually vapid Stewart and his guests are throughout the segment, I’d recommend watching the entire thing yourself.

 

I’d just add one quick point: Beyond the fundamental unfairness of scheduling Sullivan to debate a contentious topic against one ideologically hostile host, two ideologically hostile guests, and an ideologically hostile live audience, Stewart’s argument itself was completely incoherent. He simply asserted that America was white supremacist and that systemic racism was a “terrible, terrible illness” that pervaded the country. In lieu of any argument for why, he substituted condescending eye rolls, smirks, and insults. (As did his guests.)

 

When challenged to explain why today’s America is systemically racist, Stewart hand-waved about abstract “systems.” When pressed for details — “I’d like you to explain exactly what they are,” Sullivan asked — Stewart pointed to instances of historic discrimination: Jim Crow, redlining, and racial exclusion in New Deal programs.

 

A nuanced point about the lingering effects of past discrimination, and about contemporary America’s moral obligation to remedy them, is a worthwhile discussion to have. But that’s entirely different from saying the systems that exist today are racist. Stewart couldn’t point to one that was. Armed with a home-court advantage and the smug self-assurance that can come only from being a progressive commentator in an ideologically uniform elite media, he didn’t feel like he had to. Joseph Goebbels was infamously quoted as saying that “if you repeat a lie often enough, it becomes accepted as truth.” That’s clearly the case with the fundamental lie that America is a racist country, which is now accepted in our elite institutions as an indisputable fact. But the utter flimsiness of the argument becomes apparent as soon as its proponents are challenged to defend it.

 

At one point during the program, Stewart remarked to Sullivan: “Andrew, you’re not living on the same f***ing planet we are.” That, at least, is true. But the planet that Sullivan lives on is a lot saner than the one inhabited by Stewart and his co-hosts.