Stewart: How the Heck Is Wisconsin Like Egypt?

In Egypt, you could get shot; here, you could get pulled into a drum circle
By Evann Gastaldo,  Newser Staff
Posted Feb 22, 2011 6:30 AM CST

Jon Stewart is not happy with Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s plan to strip unions of their collective bargaining rights (that would be like “telling Craigslist no adult services,” he reasoned. “It really defeats the purpose.”) But nor is he happy with the media’s attempts to compare the Wisconsin protests to those going on in the Middle East. “This is the same as people in the Middle East overthrowing years of dictatorship? Or is that just the last story you saw on the news?” he wondered on last night’s Daily Show.

“The Egyptian protesters risk being shot, the Wisconsin protesters risk being caught in a drum circle,” he continued. So what is the appropriate comparison, then? To find the answer, he noted the completely opposite responses to Wisconsin coming out of Fox News (the protesters are spewing “vitriol and violent rhetoric.”) vs. MSNBC (the protesters are “real American people who want a future.”) Of course, if you think back to another group of Americans taking to the streets—the Tea Partiers—the reaction is flipped: Fox called them “God-fearing, freedom-loving patriots;” MSNBC called them “wackos.” The only logical conclusion? The Wisconsin protest, Stewart declared, “is the bizarro Tea Party.” (More Jon Stewart stories.)

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