Tony Blair on The Daily Show
So how did he do? Even with Jon Stewart’s reputation it was never going to be the exercise in humiliation that those of us who think Blair should be in the Hague wanted to see. Watching him squirm a little just isn’t enough justice.
What did we learn? With Blair at his most guarded, not a lot. Mainly that he has continued to be one of the most insincere men ever given breath. Insincerity is under his skin like a tick. Blair’s fake I-don’t-find-you-amusing-but-must-play-along laugh is still one of the most unconvincing I’ve ever heard.
Posted on September 19th, 2008 at 10:03am under Blair
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• 13 Comments |
Disappointing, I was hoping for a bloodbath.
Well, Stewart was playing to an American audience as well – Blair is mystifyingly popular over there.
Not all that mystifying: he does whatever the US wants, why would he be anything but popular?
ejh’s latest blog post… When did you last see your mother?
Cah, my morning eyes looked at your front page and saw Tony Blair: Clubbable.
I’ve got to stop drinking.
BenSix’s latest blog post… The Fly Between Their Ears…
I think Jon Stewart handled it pretty well, actually, sticking to his guns -
http://www.englandforobama.com/tony-blair-on-the-daily-show-i-dont-want-to-get-into-your-politics
Andrea’s latest blog post… Tony Blair on The Daily Show: ‘I don’t want to get into your politics’
I was surprised at how bad Blair was. If I try to be objective – he’s better without a jacket (I don’t know why), he can tell jokes (god, he was stiff), and he used to be more appealing. But that was dreadful. He didn’t seem to see the Falklands thing coming at him (OK, he had an answer, but why not deploy it much earlier? it was obvious). I think Stewart did him more harm than good. He seemed to walk away all right, but there were blows to Bush (he ducks TV interviews) and Blair came across as dull, square, and more than a little lost without a script. The Daily Show is the viral video in the States: for the youth over there who actually think about Blair and have a mental image of him (as opposed to ‘that British guy who supports us’) this will be Blair. A superannuated, desiccated zombie on Valium.
He could get over it – Nixon got over looking awful when he debated JFK in 1960: he came back in 1968 – but I wouldn’t bet that he will. As is frequently noted in the US, the Obama campaign want to link McCain to Bush; McCain claims he is a ‘maverick’ and doesn’t mention the word ‘Republican’. Bush’s stock is tanking, and Blair’s will go with it.
Backword Dave’s latest blog post… Blair Invites Head Of International Paedophile Ring To UK
Blair is far from stupid, he exploited the shows format when questions were potentially embarrassing. If Blair gave a boring answer that didnt leave himself open to jokes, Stewart was forced to change the topic. For example, if Blair kept admitting he liked Bush then his popularity with the host and the audience would have plumetted.
Blair might be far from stupid, but some of his answers were. Well, either that or they are downright lies. All through the interview he peddled the line that Hamas, Hezbollah, the Sunni resistance, the Shia militia, the Taliban, the Afghani warlords and the Iranian state were all one and the same problem. Now that’s simply wrong, and he should have been called on it. And to extent someone like Blair has the power to make it ‘true’, such a world is an apocalyptic vision of us v them, of West v East. It is a worldview that legitimates the jihadi who sees the mass murder to Grozny, or the mass graves of the Balkans, or the ongoing Israeli oppression of Palestinians, or the Israeli invasion of Lebanon (take your pick which), or the American suppport for murderous, oppressive dictators, whether in Pakistan, in Egypt, or in the former Soviet republics, as all one and the same. It is all a product of the Christian West. That kind of thinking is wrong, but, in reality, it is certainly no more wrong than the world view espoused by Blair.
And as for ‘democracies don’t go to war against each other’, well, that is part the product of the short span of history in which democracies have been the norm, the recategorisation of ‘democracies’ that need to be invaded, and the limiting scope of ‘war’. What is US support for coups against democratic governments through Latin America, the arming of the guerrillas of wannabe right-wing dictators in a civil war, the mining of harbours? Oh, not war, because that would break our numbskull vision of the wonderful world of democracy. Just as our mass murder is not mass murder, and SAS men caught in disguise with devices designed to look like the bombs of insurgents are not terrorists.
Blair better hope that he is an idiot. If he isn’t, then he’s an utter…
Sorry, I watched that Daily Show last night and I am thankful that I have an expensive TV. Else I’d have spent last night in casualty with lacerations and electrical burns on my lower leg, having failed to control the urge to kick my TV in.
Lovely to see the responses here.
So heartening that the great Tony Blair can still upset my feeble-minded fellow countrymen so easily.
Wait until you have a really evil guy running things. That’ll learn ya!
Blair did brilliantly on the Daily Show, as he normally does – anywhere and everywhere!
Braaaainns….want braaaaiinnnnns…
And didn’t he look handsome.
I just love Madame Tussauds chic.
Ben
BenSix’s latest blog post… A Recommended Cocktail…
I took a look at the Blair fan’s blog, and I shoudn’t have found it surprising given that I have just seen that Blair believes that all the problems of the world are of the same thing, that one of his holdout supporters would be a raging Islamophobe.