Political Irony

2 Comments

1. Richard wrote:

   Pure genius. Stewart and his writers are amazing.

   Wednesday, August 1, 2012 at 8:02 am | Permalink
2. Thought Dancer wrote:

   Hilarious, of course. Stewart is excellent at his job.

   But I wouldn’t have been simplistic. It’s good when people change their minds over the course of long thought and careful examination of the evidence. It’s intelligent, maybe even wise, to think one’s positions through in the light of new evidence and change them when the logic and evidence supports that change. Given our political clime, it can certainly be courageous to change one’s mind. I respect Weill for doing so.

   But from the evidence shown in this clip, Weill didn’t do so from a deep reconsideration of the evidence and his logic. He did so because “things change in 10 years”. 10 years, when one was working with a history that was the better part of a century? He was basically saying “oops, last ten years have been bad, so let’s go back”. Not “oops, the many decades of historical evidence from the Glass-Steagall act were correct, we should go back”. In other words, his reaction was a knee-jerk, not a true, deep consideration.

   I wish Stewart had laid off the easy attack on someone changing his mind and hammered him for changing his mind because of the current pain, instead of from seeing the historical evidence that explains the current pain.

   Wednesday, August 1, 2012 at 2:43 pm | Permalink