Like the whole of mainstream media, CNN stinks and they know it. They are aware of how their shows distort the political reality and divide the American public at a time when we desperately need unity. But they still can’t help themselves. Let’s just turn them all off.

“It’s not meant to ridicule activism,” Jon Stewart tells NPR, speaking of his planned rally on the National Mall. But you can see where someone might have gotten that impression.

Before the deep freeze starts here in the East-
A brief summary of another bummer of a summer…

I am one of the growing legion who plan on attending the Rally to Restore Sanity on October 30th, and my hopes are high. Why? Because I am going insane and I would like very much thank you to have my sanity restored.

And because the world we live in, the unfolding 21st century with America behind the wheel is currently in a slow motion suicide; a tragedy fit for Shakespeare, or at the very least-a new Showtime series. And in Shakespeare, it is often the court jesters who exhibit the most wisdom. On Showtime it dope dealing single Mom’s. As appealing as Mary Louise Parker is on weeds, I doubt future generations will be gleaning life lessons from the “Tao of Nancy Botwin.”

So, I’m hoping, Mr.Stewart, that you are onto something as wise – and as funny, as a Shakespearean fool.

I Have a Scheme – Stewart on Beckstock*

President Barack Obama stepped into the middle of a swirl of prejudicial vitriol and unashamed hatred surrounding the building of an Islamic cultural center several blocks away from Ground Zero.

Jon Stewart and his crew at The Daily Show are among the best myth-busters ever. Last night’s broadcast was a double feature: busting the blatant myth-making by Obama in his Oval Office address; then going all the way back to Nixon to bust the myth of America’s imminent move to energy independence.

Equating masculinity with physical prowess and aggression is a defining characteristic of modern American culture. A recent Daily Show episode provides an education in how an exaggerated, stereotypical view of masculinity pervades the culture, from religion to our government’s foreign policy.

Harold Pinter’s 2005 Nobel lecture (in Literature) strips bare the body of lies, put forth explicitly in the name of “the American people,” that masquerades as our shared narrative (and was featured in my diary, Reading the label on the cushion that is suffocating our intellects). Jon Stewart, in the Wednesday, May 5, 2010 segment “American Apparently”, suggests we do away with that myth-making phrase.

In the way that only he can, watch Jon Stewart lambast Arizona’s “Show Us Your Papers” law as a product of “the meth lab of Democracy.”