Lake Neuron

It was a particularly busy week for “The A Daily Show with Jon Stewart”:

Hat tip: Newscoma again.

A “Daily Show with Jon Stewart” classic, from their new web site. Colbert and Carell at their funniest.

In case you didn’t read any of the coverage this week, “The Daily Show” has launched its new web site which includes a searchable library of clips that will soon include nearly every second of the show since Jon Stewart took over as host in 1999. (I’ve read that they may eventually add the Kilborn clips as well.) It’s really, really cool.

Of all the nights to fall asleep on the couch in front of the TV. I saw Stephen Colbert’s appearance on “The Daily Show,” but missed the big announcement on Colbert’s own show a few minutes later. (Clip contains a bleeped and punctuation-obscured Bad Word.)

Here, in case you missed it, is a very funny guest column Colbert had written for Maureen Dowd a few days earlier, hinting at his possible decision.

Jon Stewart’s production company is working on a standup / sketch comedy series for occasional Daily Show contributor Demitri Martin. This is wonderful news; Martin is hysterical.

Title	Content
Movie:	Demetri Martin. Person.
Director:	Jay Karas
Release Date:	14 January 2007 (USA) / Other Countries
Genre:	Comedy / Music
User Rating:	112 votes, average 8.5 out of 10
Cast:	...
Others:	Additional Details Close Move Title Content MPAA: County: USA Language: English Color: Color Aspect Ratio: Sound: Company: Panamort Television Certification: IMDBTag: Powered by IMDBTag & imdb.com Sound Mix, Aspect Ratio ...
Photos:	N/A
	Powered by IMDBTag

Here’s the Evo Morales interview I blogged about last night:

Well, Jon Stewart’s interview of Evo Morales was interesting. It was, certainly, a softball interview; Stewart spoke about some of Morales’ campaign promises but didn’t mention his fierce opposition to U.S.-led coca eradication programs. That opposition, tied to the fact that some of Bolivia’s indigenous people have their own traditional uses for the coca leaf, played an important part in Morales’ rise to power according to what I’ve read and what I heard while I was in the country.

I’m not saying that Bolivia doesn’t have the right to make such decisions for itself; it does. But if you’re interviewing Morales for an American audience, and don’t ask him about coca, you’re softballing him. The conversation also made it seem like Morales’ connection to Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez was just a matter of occasional dialogue. I was in Bolivia as a missionary, so I didn’t talk much politics, but when the topic did come up I definitely got the impression that Morales was closely aligned with Chavez, with some real-world consequences in terms of various Venezuelan aid and assistance flowing into Bolivia.

Even so, it was interesting to actually see Morales answer questions in a setting like this. I kind of wish that they had edited the translator out of the interview, or dubbed the translations over Morales’ responses, as you sometimes see done; I think it would have flown a little more smoothly.