The Daily Show: The Test of Fire

By: Leah Petrovich
lp183908@ohio.edu

Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee made an appearance on Monday's episode of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. First and foremost, Stewart congratulated Huckabee on his most recent book, "Dear Chandler, Dear Scarlet". However, Stewart had many other topics to discuss with his guest.

Minority Vote

Stewart began his interview with Huckabee by showing him a recent news interview of himself where Huckabee says, "Republicans have done a pathetic job reaching out to colored people, and it's something we need to work on."

Huckabee supports his statement by saying that republicans need to communicate what conservatism can do for all people. Stewart is not shy about his own liberal views, and says it was quite clear that the republicans only started reaching out to minorities around October, and even then the party looked at minority voters as a lost cause because their numbers wouldn't compare to the democrats' minority support.

Also, of course Stewart needs to bash the media. This was the first time I was hearing of the matter, but on election day, FOX News ran this certain story 21 times Stewart claimed. 

Apparently a Black Panther member stood outside a voting precinct, and as Stewart puts it, was an attempt to act as the boogeyman for white race.

The Test of Fire
Moving on from racial indecencies but not far from discrimination, Stewart next brings up Huckabee's known conservative beliefs. Check out this commercial that Mike Huckabee narrates.

First of all, wow. I agree with Stewart here that it does portray the message that if you vote democrat you are going to hell. The fire, and throwing the words "marriage" and "life" into it seem pretty harsh. It was quite clear that from this point on the interview with Mike Huckabee would just become a debate since he and Stewart have such different views.

Huckabee defends his commercial by explaining it is a message directly from the Christian bible. He says he wanted to portray that your vote can't be separated from faith. In an earnest rebuttal, Stewart throws out the origins of polygamy, a "what would Jesus vote for" perspective, and also the contents of the United States Constitution.

Ulterior Motive?
It seems to me as if Stewart used Mike Huckabee as an ulterior motive to bring attention to his own views. Over these past weeks that I have blogged about Stewart and his show I have realized that he has no problem defending his own views and leaving it all out there on the set. Stewart tests Huckabee's views quite a bit in the episode and says that "there is a very heavy media arm that is creating a narrative" that supports the belief that voting democratic shows a lack of virtue.

Let's Talk
I was surprised by how the "debate" between Stewart and Huckabee ended. Stewart calls for an "open converstaion". He says it shouldn't be one conversation on one channel and a whole other conversation on the next. This was one of Stewart's ideas that Huckabee agreed with.