Shame On You Jon Stewart

I am normally a huge fan of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and of Jon Stewart in general. But his "debate" with Mike Huckabee on June 18, 2009 about abortion made me really disappointed with him.

He had Huckabee on to discuss the "pro-life issue." Not only was the debate framed in an attack on anti-choicers by calling it the "pro-life issue," Stewart did not do a good job at framing the pro-choice side of the debate. Stewart does admit at the end of the interview that abortion is one of the issues that he struggles with the most and doesn't really know how to address it. My complaint is that he should have done his research on pro-choice arguments before the "debate" and took more of a stand. Jon Stewart is normally really good at debating serious issues while keeping it light and funny. I was hopeful at the beginning when he jokingly brought out a bottle of alcohol, but it went down hill from there.

Stewart does attempt to raise some of the key issues in pro-choice arguments, such as a woman's right to her body, but it was just not done well. He didn't question Huckabee on the belief that life starts at conception. Huckabee even said that this was "biologically and scientifically" proven...um, maybe it's a human fetus, but life, I don't think so.

Stewart also did bring up the need to abolish abstinence-only education in order for people to be fully informed of the consequences of sex in order to reduce the need for abortions, but Huckabee managed to kind of skirt around that issue.

I hate to say it, but Huckabee did such a better job in this debate. He knew what he wanted to say, he stood his ground, and he argued against Stewart's points. Jon Stewart, on the other hand, was very vague and didn't really seem to have that much of an opinion.

Not to mention the fact that these are two white guys sitting around discussing abortion. Does it matter what a woman has to say about the issue? According to them, men can handle discussing it. Women don't have to concern themselves with it. One thing that made me chuckle a little was when Huckabee said, "I've counseled scores and scores of women," about abortion...therefore he must know what he's talking about.

How do you think Jon Stewart did in this "debate"?

I had some trouble embedding the video, so here's the link to the video. There are three parts, make sure to watch all of them.