Friday, December 12, 2008

Don't Mix Crime and Politics

Check out the Daily Show's lengthy riff (12/10/08) on crime and politics in the context of the Rod Blagojevich implosion in Illinois. Jon Stewart compares the imprisonment rate of Illinois governors to murderers (point out that the odds of staying free are higher for the latter). He also compared Blagojevich to a boogey man figure from medieval German fairy tales, making the latent reference to the highly politicized field of sex offenders, a theme Stewart then made explicit by shifting into a satirical special news segment for children, ill-tabbed "Jon Stewart touches kids."

Nicely underscoring the irony that governors as criminals (and presidents one might add since four of the last eight of so presidents have been at least linked to crimes that could result in prison, two of them actually facing impeachment charges), is just the other side of an executive branch that has made fear of crime a major foundation for its style of rule, Stewart shows a snippet of Patrick Fitzgerald opining that people get into trouble mixing politics and crime. Stewart points out that the same could be said of crime and mothers day.

No comments: