Ezra Klein writes:
At this point, Stewart is doing more harm than good by giving people whom he thinks are liars and frauds a platform on his show.
This reminded me of Paul Krugman’s practice of referring to but not linking to posts that effectively counter his own.
A conversation with a friend clarified some of what might be going on here. Let’s say you engage in political debate because you have a desired end-state in mind, e.g., more prosperity or more freedom for the bulk of the population. One can approach this in a few different ways: you can make arguments, respond to criticisms, acknowledge your own mistakes and faults, revise your views, make new arguments, etc. This is a conversational approach in which the assumption is that thoughtful debate and discussion will lead us asymptotically towards the truth.
Another approach is to assume that you are right, and to make arguments designed to discredit those who disagree with you, even if this means deliberately misrepresenting their views or making efforts to marginalize or exclude them to the extent possible.
My sense is that Klein falls in the former camp: he has strong opinions, but he is basically interested in getting things right, though perhaps he doesn’t give enough credit to those with whom he disagrees at times. I’m not sure that Krugman is in the former camp.
As for The Daily Show, which some argue is more temperate and thoughtful than, say, Glenn Beck’s television program, does strike me as pretty much a pure exercise in identity politics: an occasion to indulge one’s own prejudices rather than to learn or to be challenged.
I’ve never understood why some people enjoy expressing contempt for others. It reminds me of a phenomenon called “forward panic,” which Randall Collins describes in his excellent book Violence: A Micro-sociological Theory. Weak targets invite brutal violence, whereas strong targets inspire fear. Imagine the lone police officer who gets trampled in the middle of a riot. When your hate objects are far away or appear to you only on television or on your computer scream, contempt is easy, natural, and, for some, extremely pleasurable.