He still doesn't get it

Digby reprinted Bill Maher's excellent rejoinder to Jon Stewart's Rally To Make False Equivalences, and it's spot on.

Judging from Stewart's opening bit tonight, however, he still doesn't get it.

Here's the thing, Jon (I can call you Jon, right? Actually, you're never going to read this, so who cares, right?): First you pretended like you were getting beat up in a boxing ring because Keith Olbermann, Rachael Maddow and Bill Maher all called you on your false equivalency, which I gotta say, was a stroke of genius; it really made all three of them look totally ridiculous because I distinctly remember each one of them ending their pieces with the same line: "Ergo, false equivalency. Booyah, Stewart, you beeeeeeeeyatch!!!"

Then, you made it look like you weren't saying at the rally (and before) that the Left and the Right were equally insane, which is totally fair, because to formulate an equivalency, you'd have to say something like: "On the one side, they believe X, which is crazy, and on the other side, they believe Y, which is also crazy. Someone stop the craziness, *it's just too crazy*!!!!1eleven!!!" And we know you wouldn't play that old rhetorical chestnut!

(Puts hand up to ear:) Wait a minute I'm hearing that's not quite right. Bill Maher, you wanted to say something:

"When Jon announced his rally, he said that the national conversation is dominated by people on the right who believe Obama's a socialist, and people on the left who believe 9/11 was an inside job. But I can't name any Democratic leaders who think 9/11 was an inside job. But Republican leaders who think Obama's a socialist? All of them! McCain, Boehner, Cantor, Palin, all of them! It's now official Republican dogma, like tax cuts pay for themselves, and gay men just haven't met the right woman.

"As another example of both sides using overheated rhetoric, Jon cited the right equating Obama with Hitler, and the left calling Bush a war criminal. Except thinking Obama is like Hitler is utterly unfounded, but thinking Bush is a war criminal? That's the opinion of General Anthony Taguba, who headed the Army's investigation into Abu Ghraib."

And don't get me wrong, Jon (I can still call you Jon, right?): I understand that you can't have a modifier for every statement. Something like "One side believes X, which is 90% crazy, while the other side believes Y, which is 75% crazy. That, my friends, is still at least 48% too much crazy," is really unwieldly. There's certainly a threshold of "close enough" that's acceptable in a speech. Much how, in a 30 second campaign ad, pointing out that your opponent believes in total submission by wives to their husbands by using a short clip that says "She should submit to me. That's in the Bible", when the larger clip says "Don't pick the ones that say 'She should submit to me'...*she can pray that*", is actually pretty close to the mark (see Sara Posner's piece here for a longer analysis). And since you didn't do pieces on your show that claimed that Alan Grayson was unhinged for pointing out Daniel Webster's extreme fundamentalist tendencies, I'm sure we're in agreement.

Except without qualifiers, we're led to believe the comparison is "close enough", when it's really not even close.

You understand what I'm trying to tell you, right Jon? Can I still call you Jon? No? How about Joe, is that OK, Joe?

Or should I just say Mr. Lieberman?