I know I'm jumping back in the conversation a bit, but I'd say it's a journalist's job to ferret out the truth - something that's unfortunately both lacking and waning in the US. For the system to work as designed there should be an antagonistic relationship between the four branches of government (colloquially and importantly including the press), where each pulls against the other to make the whole system stronger. Once one (or, as it has been, three) bow to the executive - willingly or forced - corruption floods in.

The conversation - enlightning as it is - brought me back to the famous interview between Jeremy Paxman and Michael Howard (https://videosift.com/video/Classic-Repeated-Question-Avoidance-By-A-Politician) where Paxman repeats the same question 12 times in 90 seconds to try to get a straight answer. This is respect for the office and disrespect for the man who shames it.

Russell doubled down on his interview with Paxman:

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/nov/05/russell-brand-democratic-system-newsnight

Paxman is a great political interviewer in general, but his inability to take a non-voter seriously, wildly dismissing some superb points of view, as if somehow vote abstinence means that people can't have a clear concept of what's going on is fucking dumb.

I am so bored of the ancient rhetoric on democracy and voting. It doesn't even mean anything when whoever you vote for is not beholden to their manifesto in any way shape or form. They can and do change their position at any point once in power and what can we do about it? Vote against their decisions? Force them to practice what they preached? Nope! We have to suck it up. Democracy my arse.

As a comedic piece that was pretty good, some nice turns of phrase and a few genuine laugh out loud absurd moments.

But as a polemic it was just awful. Rambling, disjointed and mostly incoherent. If Brand is the modern day version of a revolutionary speaker, then it's no wonder we are in the situation we find ourselves in.

And to everyone criticising Paxman, clearly you are not used to watching a good political interviewer. He won't stand for nonsense or hand waving, he wants answers.

This is how paxman is with everyone he interviews whether he is on their side or not.

seems this paxman dude made it to senior year government and decided "yep..no need for me to learn any more in regards to this subject.i know it all now".

either that or he is one of them political class apologists.

either way he is kind of a self-important twat.

I think the concept mentioned in the four horsemen video that just got release explained it quite well - humans have an ability to adapt to almost anything, so while it helps us progress, it also lets us endure the worst sorts of things that go on in the world with relative indifference.

Really good vid though, Brand really hit the nail on the head with his comments, and that Paxman guy is an absolute douche, essentially rolling his eyes at the end as if to say, yes the environment is being destroyed, yes, the wealth inequity is enormous, but having to listen to someone actually say it, oh how trite!!11@

At the risk of trying to be smarter than big Noam am I the only one not surprised that Obama can't control a multi-trillion dollar war machine that's been doing it's own thing since '45? The only president to ever really try was JFK..

Btw that's Jeremy Paxman interviewing, probably for BBC newsnight.

paxman comes across as a tit in this.

pxmans voice tonality and presentation stile is just cheesy now, also not realy apropreat fir such a quite relaxed interview.

>> ^acidSpine:

I dont think Israel really gives a shit about what the rest of the people on Earth think as long as big daddy has it's back. Slowly but surely Israels' goals will be achieved and any atrocities committed along the way will fade into the cosmic background noise of injustice felt by all the unpeople of the world


They're going to start grasping at straws soon though. There's tons of pressure from within now more than there ever has been. They can't keep this up forever thankfully, sadly they also have nuclear weapons so there's another lovely thing.

>> ^Stormsinger:

I wish we could just farm out our news to the Brits and Comedy Central? Seems like it would drastically improve the quality of the reporting.


what's sad is the vast majority of British news is still utter shit.

>> ^messenger:
No. You should be glad Stewart is in comedy. He only has license to do this kind of show because he's a comedian. It's not an unfortunate coincidence. Do you really think there's nobody ? Of course, there are plenty TV personalities who are as intelligent, knowledgeable, and skillful at journalism as him, but they work for news organizations, and they'd lose their careers for doing an interview like that.
I'd trust someone who bills themselves as a comedian before I trusted someone who billed themselves as a reporter. We all should.
>> ^NetRunner:
Personally, I think this is one more moment where Jon Stewart proves that he's a better journalist than the so-called pros.
....
It's a shame he's so locked into the mode of comedy, I'd love to give him his own 24 hour news network to run, I think he'd destroy the others.


In fairness, a reporter who comes close to that Jeremy Paxman, he earned his nickname for a reason.

More Paxman vids on the sift please!

Is Chris Matthews like the American version of Paxman?

Such fear over Muslims! Its those radical Christians which scare me more

>> ^ant:
l>> ^rottenseed:
internet killed the television star

What will kill the Internet?


Legislation