its bizarre maga claims to be victims of not being able doing whatever they want, but now they love Russia. imagine if maga stormed the Kremlin beating LEO and using chemicals on them while screaming to kill gov officials.
Stewart is a Democrat and a liberal. The fact that he has a left-leaning political bias doesn't make him a "shill" IMO anymore than I think every commentator, entertainer, analyst, etc., who leans right is a "shill." I think of "shill" as being closer to propagandist: someone making arguments whether they believe them or not. From the litigation with Fox News, we learned that Carlson lies to his viewers because he cares about the stock value and wants to give the viewers what they expect to hear even if he knows it's BS. Stewart has been willing to make jokes at the expense of the left and more recently Biden, and I don't get the sense he's spouting stuff he doesn't even believe.
Reminds me of George Bush Sr amazed at the UPC scanner at a grocer store. Anyone else been to the Publix across the intercoastal from Singer Island near Palm Beach? Yep... grocery cart escalator. Pretty normal in lots of places.
If you push a narrative without questioning it you are a shill in my book. If you refuse to deviate from the narrative until it is expedient to do so, you are a shill in my book. Probably comes from the fact that the media is for profit, and as you mentioned, aimed at making a profit. To say that Tucker is the only one doing that is disingenuous. He is simply the one who got caught with his hand in the cookie jar. Tucker, Shapiro, Owens, Kelly - they all shill for the same narrative. Stewart, Maddow, and the rest of mainstream media - they shill for a different narrative. If you pay attention to both, you can probably arrive at the truth somewhere between the two narratives. Because I'll submit to you, as gatekeepers of information, the media has done a shitty job of telling the truth.
Is Jon Stewart a liberal? Sure, seems pretty obvious. Is Tucker Carlson a conservative? No, he's a propaganda mercenary willing to sell his opinions to the highest bidder, even when that bidder is Vladmir Putin. To equate the two is preposterous and absurd. And Jon Stewart shoots straighter than most. His first Daily Show segment back, he spent equal if not more time skewering Joe Biden's mental capacity than he did Trump's. And Stewart started his segment linked in the OP by showing liberal media quotes lambasting him for his criticisms of Biden last week, and then followed up by calling out those liberal sources of being shills spewing left propaganda. Maybe stop trying to equivocate between a traitorous scumbag disguised as a legitimate journalist with a legitimate journalist disguised as a comedian, solely because you don't like that legitimate journalist's political opinions.
I'm sure it's somewhat an issue of degree. We're all bias, of course, and the profit motive does make it even worse. Personally, I find Tucker to be on the extreme end of the shill spectrum, particularly in recent years. Ben Shapiro is definitely a conservative, but I don't consider him a shill. I think his views are sincere and that he actually cares about trying to be intellectually honest most of the time. He pushes back somewhat on his own side. He's been critical of Trump at times. He's been willing to admit when he's said something stupid over the years. He's willing to discuss and debate things with smart people like Sam Harris and others. I don't put Tucker and Shapiro in the same class personally.
Look at the middle-aged male Swifties, on this board, who rush in to parry every criticism of Taylor Swift with, “Ha-Ha! In the time it took you, to type your little missive, Taylor Swift just gained 50 more followers so suck it!” Tucker is the Taylor Swift of journalism. And he probably has a better singing voice.
This is a really interesting and important area of thought. The fundamental issue here seems to me to be a knowledge problem. How can we tell which people are pushing narratives without thinking vs those that are pushing them with thinking? My personal view is similar to those who have already responded to you that Stewart doesn’t really seem to be a shill to me, as much as someone which a personal perspective. When I see him in serious interviews, he comes across as thoughtful to me. Now, of course you might say that this is because of my own personal shill biases. Fair enough. Then again, you might only be seeing me that way because of your own personal shill biases. Who ends up being the ultimate authority on this? I think this issue is more clear when we look at how someone handles people rather than how they handle ideas. Indeed, Stewart has what seems to me to be a liberal outlook, but he certainly does not blindly defend Democratic politicians. Last week, it appears that Stewart caught a lot of liberal grief for acting basically as you advocate, for a middle approach criticizing both Biden and Trump (where he was particularly pointed in his criticism of Biden’s faculties). Many of his viewers in fact complained about his “bothsidesim”. Here’s one example: Jon Stewart's 'Daily Show' return sparks backlash from viewers Im not sure this means that Stewart is a “free thinker”, but this is something I just can’t imagine Tucker doing on his show. Anyway, I don’t care about defending Stewart in particular, but I am interested in what exactly do we need to see to defend anyone against the label of being a shill? I have honestly spent the last 10 years or so trying to purge my thinking of tribal biases, and yet on here I still get routinely accused of being a mindless follower. And these critics might be right! Perhaps all I’ve done over the past decade is convinced myself that I’ve loosened some of my mental shackles while all the while becoming more entrenched in my worldview. How can I ever really know?
Tucker is obviously a smart guy who's very good on camera. This was Tom Nichols' recent take FWIW. Seems overly-simplistic but probably some truth here, too. If you want to understand guys like Carlson and D'Souza, it's this: They thought they'd be the next generation of pundits, taking the place of Will and Krauthammer. Failure has turned them bitter and made them willing to ally with anyone who'd break the status quo in their favor.
I think most folks recognize the huge gulf between the Russian people and the repressive regime they suffer under. So, it's one thing for an American to travel to Russia and report back on its people and their culture, but quite another to go and fawn over Putin and allow him an audience to try and convince us he's an okay guy.
Tucker orgasmed over coins being deposited into a cart to prevent theft? Shit, don’t let him anywhere near an Aldi then. Who am I kidding? Like Tucker would ever actually shop at Aldi. That would require him to step away from his Swanson inheritance to actually notice, lol.
B***shit on the alleged divide between Putin and the Russian people. Yes, there are Russians who despise him. But Trump and Biden both can only dream of garnering the level of support that Putin enjoys.
I actually buy the overall thought process. I suspect a lot of Trumpism is people thinking that the world doesn't respect them like it should. Guys like Tucker are in an interesting position. The "elites," a class that they always strived to be identified as a member, largely reject their thoughts on complex matters of foreign policy, epidemiology, economics, etc. He has now been fired by every media company because he can't make them money. He isn't winning awards. The elites aren't telling him how great he is. Instead, he is followed by people that he would never associate with in real life. So he has to both pretend to be their champion while a big part of him just wants the guy with a degree from Harvard, a law degree from Yale, and a partnership at the right wall street law firm to tell him that he is great. He isn't buying homes in dying towns in rural Mississippi to be with the people who actually like him. He still is around the people who think he is a huckster idiot.
Maybe these Russian citizens should have listened to tucker. “Russia's war on Ukraine triggered a massive brain drain, and the toll it will take on the economy is coming into clearer focus.” Russia's brain drain is ravaging the economy - these figures show how
