Zombie attacks -- Mattera goes after Stewart, Colbert

In his new falsehood-laden book, Obama Zombies, Jason Mattera titles one of his chapters “The Dynamic Duo: Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert” with the subtitle “Why Mediated Morons Matter.” Mattera writes of Stewart:

And there you have the left's secret weapon, folks: a forty-something self-loathing New Yorker is liberalism's greatest spokesman today. Young people are drawn to Jon Stewart's nightly dose of zany facial expressions, liberal drivel, and F-bomb-laced commentary. Believe it or not, his program is where many young people get their daily news of what's going on in the real world. Sad? Yes. Surprising? Hardly. As we have seen throughout this book, Zombies don't think, they feel.

But it's all just comedy right? We shouldn't take Jon “little man” Stewart seriously. I mean, he doesn't even take himself seriously. That's certainly the skirt he hides behind when his partisanship is called into question. This is hardly surprising giving that Stewart's television program takes cues from the partisan, leftist smear group Media Matters. But Stewart is often mean and downright nasty. Sarah Palin is not just politically flawed, in his estimation. Nope. According to Stewart, former governor Palin is comparable to the devastation in Germany that led to Hitler's rise to power. “Have you noticed how [Palin's] rallies have begun to take on the characteristics of the last days of the Weimar Republic?” he said to a crowd at the stuff Waldorf-Astoria. " 'Who is Barack Obama?' Hey, lady, we just met you five fucking weeks ago." [p.171]

Yet, Mattera has no problem going on Fox News, where Nazi and socialist smears abound.

There's a whole chapter, so there are plenty of attacks, but among them, Mattera calls Stewart a “partisan hack” and says that "[w]hen he starts off his show with a monologue, it's used as his leftist bully pulpit." [p.176]

(As opposed to Mattera's nonpartisan style of interviewing - where Mattera confronts someone and insists on making a partisan and often false attack.)

Mattera also accuses Stewart of “hiding behind 'comedy' ”: “When Stewart is confronted with an alternative opinion and his credentials come into question, he reverts back to 'Oh, I'm just a comedian. Hardy-har-har.' ” [p.177]

And later:

And thus the veil is lifted. The partisan hackery belongs to Stewart. But even as he writes himself off as not having influence or being beneath political influence, it's really a ploy to gain even more adulation and influence with the media elites and adoring leftist audiences who will cheer and applaud like circus animals, laughing slavishly at whatever comes out of Stewart's self-loathing mouth. [p.178]

As for Colbert, Mattera thinks “he's more funny than Stewart. But the two are cut from the same leftist cloth.” [p.187] He explains:

Like Stewart, Colbert offers an apologia for liberalism. He attempts to bat down conservative arguments. Colbert is giving us a line that we hear from liberal outlets such as the Daily Kos and MoveOn.org. [p.190]

Don't think Colbert is going to like that. He may not even host him on his show. Or maybe Mattera just realized attacking Stewart and Colbert was a sure-fire way to get booked on those shows.

He does some armchair psychoanalyzing of Colbert:

Taking on the image of an egomaniacal character comes easily to Colbert. His dark personal life, with the tragic deaths of his father and two brothers when he was a child, left him emotionally scarred, toying with his identity, even the identity of his last name. It was always pronounced Colbert, not Colbear. As a kid, he immersed himself in a fantasy world of role-playing games, science fiction novels, and Dungeons & Dragons. Colbert was a wandering actor, a wannabe poet, and a standup comic. He's devoted his life to playing someone else. It's an exercise in self-hatred. Hopefully Colbert finds his voice, not somebody else's. [p.192-93]

Mattera concludes the chapter thusly:

There you have it -- two men angry at life, masking their anger and sorrows in comedy; they are unpaid volunteers for liberalism, and cronies for Barack Obama. [p.193]

At the very least, I'm guessing they're paid pretty well. (And Mattera better pray they grant him an interview if he actually wants to sell any books.)