I’m increasingly bothered by the coverage of the Jon Stewart-Tucker Carlson Crossfire exchange–which seems to be either the beatification or canonization of Stewart. I can’t tell which.

Why is Stewart getting such fawning treatment for doing what, on the civility scale, is the sort of thing you’d expect from Morton Downey Jr. or Howard Stern? Well, I’ve got a theory.

What bothers me about Stewart’s behavior isn’t that he called Tucker a dick, but that he trashed Crossfire. I’m not a regular watcher of Crossfire, so I can’t testify to the truth or falsity of Stewart’s claim that Crossfire sucks–but I do know that the producers and staff of Crossfire invited Stewart on not as an expert, but to help him sell his book. They were trying to help him pay his mortgage. As such, it seems to me that basic politeness dictates that Stewart shouldn’t have used that venue to attack the work of the people who were trying to do him a favor.

But this incident has morphed from Stewart’s attack on Crossfire to a specific feud with Tucker. And, in case you haven’t noticed, Stewart is a liberal icon and Tucker is a conservative. As such, the New York Times & Co. have rushed to take Stewart’s side and applaud his bravery and honesty.

So let me ask this: If Stewart had gone on Crossfire and conducted himself in exactly the same way, but he had called James Carville (or Begala, for that matter) a dick, do you think he would still be getting the hero’s treatment?

When you read Stephen Hayes, you often get the sense that he’s the only guy in journalism who actually reads all of the information about Iraq and al Qaeda. Which makes him a pretty invaluable resource. His take-down of the new Levin report is particularly devastating.

What I don’t understand is why Democrats feel the need to be so transparently dishonest about the relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda. If they were more honest, they would grant the connection between Saddam and Osama–which is, as an analytical matter, undeniable–and then say that they didn’t find their relationship to be serious enough to warrant action. Then we could have a grown-up debate about preemption and the nature of evidence and threats. Which I think would be pretty good for all of us.

Instead, because most Democrats have circled the wagons around a proposition which is objectively false in order to . . . well, to be truthful, I have no idea why they’ve chosen this route. Unless they think they’d come out on the wrong side of that grown-up debate on preemption.

Even The Nation will be hard-pressed to beat the cover art for this week’s Village Voice, featuring President George W. Bush as a vampire sucking the blood out of a limp Statue of Liberty. The headline reads: “Sucking Democracy Dry.”

As one colleague pondered, Can you imagine what that meeting must have been like, when the editors decided this to be a perfectly acceptable cover illustration?

In a recent interview with Dark Horizons, Team America creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone didn’t pull any punches, especially when it comes to their thoughts on Hollywood’s “Vote or Die/Choose or Lose” agenda:

Matt Stone: … we thought to encourage uninformed voters to go vote isn’t going to help the country that much. If you don’t really know what you want to do and not really sure then just don’t vote. And this whole idea of you have to vote no matter what, just get out …

Trey Parker: We always said the [election] campaign was about getting informed. I think that just vote or die I just think is ridiculous. That is just our personal opinion … if you don’t know anything and if you are just going to vote for George Bush because he is already in office or if you are going to vote for John Kerry because he is on the cover of Rolling Stone, don’t vote. And there is no shame in that. The only shame is not really knowing anything, being uninformed and going voting. Because then you are just not helping us all out. It is not funny to rant on and that is what we did. And [Sean Penn] took that and ran with it and this ridiculous, retarded logic of somehow by saying those things we meant that we wanted people to be disemboweled and mutilated overseas. If you read the logic of [Penn’s response to the Rolling Stone interview], it makes no sense, it is insane.

The Penn letter appeared two weeks ago on Drudge Report.

Read Ron Suskind’s New York Times magazine piece on Bush’s “faith-based presidency” yesterday. I’m impressed by the reporting, even as I pick up the constant scent of rhetorical overreach.

What Suskind knows is this. In his twenties and thirties, George Bush was a failure, albeit a rich one, who coasted along on the strength of his family connections. After his fortieth birthday, the president found God in what was the most significant, and perhaps only, major course correction in his pre-presidential personal life and career.

But George Bush turned his life around not after a process of trial and error, nor by turning a skeptical eye on his own lackluster resume and neglected personal relationships. He did it by revelation. George Bush “found” God.

Suskind contends that Bush never seems to have internalized any of the more rigorous methods for discovering one’s own errors and how to fix them: rational scrutiny, the give and take of potentially hostile questioning, trolling for a diversity of views to inform your own decisions. And now that he’s a president who’s as bold as he is, in certain quarters, hated, all that listening and questioning stuff has totally gone out the window. His circle of advisers is closing and often seems to be a circle of one—or rather two if you count the big One, God.

From here it’s easy to see how Suskind constructs his brief against Bush and Bush’s (religiously based) confidence in his own judgment.

But I personally think there is an interesting debate to be had between how we (as Americans, intellectuals, whatever) idealize the decision-making process and what we know about it being necessary to hold your cards close in order to perform well. Suskind appears unable to imagine effective leadership that doesn’t show its cards, expose itself to tough questioning, and do basically everything the college handbook tells you to do as a member of intellectual community. His ideal administration would probably be the first year of the Clinton administration, an ongoing seminar in executive leadership that was too paralyzed by debate to get anything done.

That said, Suskind has come up with some fantastic quotes, none more amazing or less self-conscious than the aide who talked with Suskind after his unflattering profile of Karen Hughes appeared in Esquire.

“The aide said that guys like me were ‘in what we call the reality-based community,’ which he defined as people who ‘believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.’ I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ‘That’s not the way the world really works anymore,’ he continued. ‘We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”

As deeply hubristic as this kind of talk is—far more hubristic, btw, than any talk I would have imagined was taking place—one should also pay attention to Suskind’s little aside about empiricism and the Enlightenment. Think about it. Ron Suskind, who accuses George Bush of believing he is God’s own messenger on Earth, appears to believe that it’s up to him to represent rationalism and the Enlightenment in response. Ron Suskind’s view of his own little journalistic self is in fact a mirror-image caricature of the one he’s constructed of Bush.

Taking Jonathan V. Last’s advice, I recently went to a screening of Team America: World Police. He is certainly right about the movie parodying the overblown Hollywood action genre. Last also correctly points out that all sides are victimized by Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s sick, twisted, but darkly funny minds. The uber-patriotic theme, “America, F— Yeah!” will be ringing in your head for days. That said, it was clear on Saturday night at the Georgetown Loews that many in the audience were hoping for another Bush-bashing filmfest. The president wasn’t mentioned once. Instead, they were treated to horrific caricatures of Hollywood’s outspoken liberal elite: A Michael Moore puppet, hot dog in hand; Alec Baldwin speaking of America’s new ally–a man of peace–Kim Jong Il. Not to mention Janeane Garafalo. Tim Robbins. Susan Sarandon. Sean Penn. And they all get clobbered.

Devout disciples of Parker and Stone also came out in droves and applauded the audacity and low-brow humor of the movie (which is obscenity-ridden and quite graphic–even for puppets). But the rest of the Georgetown crowd groaned through much of it, waiting for some humiliation of the president and Republicans that never came. When Baldwin goes on his self-important tirade, there were hisses. I heard one man’s voice actually say, “This is wrong.”

Maybe it’s because conservatives have long put up with their favorite actors and musicians and their opposing political viewpoints that we take most jokes in stride. But these liberals in the audience could barely contain their disgust. As the lights went on and half the crowd applauded, the other half just sat there, some with looks of disgust, refusing to accept this unjust rendering of Hollywood’s “political conscience.”

Who knew they could be so thin-skinned?

Having just received the District of Columbia Voter Guide, I thought it important to share with you a viable alternative for voting-in the traditional parties: That’s right, my perennial favorite: The Socialist Workers Party. To save you time at the voting booth, here is the party’s candidate statement, for your reading pleasure and for your careful consideration:

It’s not who you’re against, but what you’re for!

Workers’ right to organize unions. Formation of an independent labor party based on the unions. The right of power-poor semi-colonial countries to acquire and develop the energy necessary for electrification. US hands off Cuba. Immediate withdrawal of US and other imperialist troops from Iraq, and other counties [sic] throughout the world. A massive public works program to meet social needs and put millions to work. Extend affirmative action. A woman’s right to choose abortion. Federally funded lifetime healthcare. The root of the problems working people face is the capitalist system.

And if you disagree with the above, it’s off to the Gulag you go!

Osama bin Laden, in all likelihood, is dead, comments Roger L. Simon. “Virtually the only person who believes Osama bin Laden is still alive today is John Kerry.” And this is a most cynical belief on Kerry’s part, held without sincerity and only because it allows him to say Bush’s mistakes have enabled the man behind 9/11 to escape.

Interestingly, all of Simon’s correspondents seem to agree that the leader of al Qaeda is “probably pushing up daisies.”

Having given no prior thought to the likelihood that bin Laden is now deceased, I’m surprised by how uncontroversial this notion seems to Simon and his peeps. Simon