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Now Hillary Clinton’s loss is being blamed on Jon Stewart
Hillary Clinton’s defenders will never stop making excuses for why she lost in 2016: It was Matt Lauer! It was James Comey! It was men being sexist! It was women being sexist! It was voter suppression! It was Citizens United! It was fake news! It was WikiLeaks! It was Facebook! It was the Russians!
Today, a new excuse: It was Jon Stewart!
In the middle of last week, Huma Abedin must have bustled over to Hillary’s place with a lovingly bound copy of the latest in cutting-edge academic research, a report that says Jon Stewart’s retirement is ACKSHULLY the reason Donald Trump won. We’ll all be able to hear more about this in Frau Pantsuit’s next memoir, “7,573 Other Reasons I Lost That Totally Were Not My Fault, You Ungrateful Pissants.”
The latest in cutting-edge political science/flat-earth theory is that after Stewart quit hosting a comedy show for liberals, the advantage swung to Trump because Democrats forgot there was an election or something.
Proving that the nation’s professoriate is even more obtuse than you would have suspected, Ethan Porter of George Washington University and Thomas J. Wood of Ohio State University note that when Stewart departed “The Daily Show,” ratings sank. “The transition at ‘The Daily Show’ spurred a 1.1% increase in Trump’s county-level vote share,” they claim in their paper, “Did Jon Stewart Elect Donald Trump? Evidence From Television Ratings Data” published in the journal Electoral Studies.
Hang on, “spurred”? Maybe go with “coincided with”? Correlation does not prove causation. If I happen to place my foot on a crumbly bit of sidewalk on the same day your mother suffers an unfortunate fracture in the vertebral column, it does not actually prove that stepping on a crack broke your mama’s back. Show me the mechanism by which my walking habits in New York caused spinal distress to Louise in Boca Raton, otherwise I’m not impressed.
Detecting polling movement of 1.1% may sound like a modest, defensible claim, but it is a massive number for a presidential election in which Trump won Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin by less than 1%. Reduce Trump’s share of the vote by one point and the “For Rent” sign goes back up on the Lincoln Bedroom, Sean Hannity starts having mysterious IRS problems and Cosmopolitan begins running regular cover stories on why cankles are sexy.
But how big of an influence could Stewart have been, considering the average audience for his top-10 most-watched episodes of “The Daily Show” was less than 3 million people — not even 1% of the population and not all of them of voting age?
Anyway, under Stewart’s successor, Trevor Noah, the new “Daily Show” only sank about 30% in the ratings (before it ticked up after that).
So losing Stewart cost “The Daily Show” not even 1 million viewers per night in a country with 300 million citizens.
I’m kinda skeptical that Stewart’s Obama-worshipping audience suddenly lost interest in turning up to vote because they could no longer watch Stewart make mock-horrified faces at out-of-context sound bites. Anyway, it’s not like there was no place for liberals to turn to for late-night comedy; after Stewart retired, Jimmy Kimmel and Seth Meyers and “SNL” carried on with his tactics, Stephen Colbert’s audience grew and Stewart fans stampeded over to watch John Oliver on HBO on Sunday nights. Stewart may be gone, but Stewart-ism is bigger than ever.
I suppose next week we’ll be hearing that Hillary lost because so many of her voters went to the movies on election night to catch “Boo! A Madea Halloween.”
How long will it take academia and the pundit class to learn that dropped objects fall to earth, water is wet and Hillary Clinton’s biggest problem was Hillary Clinton? She’s a horrible politician, as corrupt as a medieval warlord and as cuddly as a leprotic armadillo.
As Dennis Miller puts it in his special “Fake News, Real Jokes,” “They could have passed out a big sheet of paper that had two boxes on it, one that said ‘Hillary’ and one that said ‘not Hillary,’ and I was gonna put my X in the ‘not-Hillary’ box, OK?”
https://nypost.com/2019/05/04/now-hillary-clintons-loss-is-being-blamed-on-jon-stewart/?utm_campaign=iosapp&utm_source=twitter_app
No deaths as plane carrying US military crashes into river
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — A chartered jet carrying 143 people from the U.S. military base in Cuba tried to land in a thunderstorm in north Florida and ended up in the river next to Naval Air Station Jacksonville. Authorities said everyone on board emerged without critical injuries, climbing onto the wings to be rescued.
The Boeing 737 arriving from Naval Station Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, with 136 passengers and seven crew members came to a stop in shallow water in the St. Johns River. Everyone on board was alive and accounted for, the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office said, with 21 adults transported to local hospitals in good condition.
Marine units from the sheriff’s department and Jacksonville Fire Rescue along with first responders from the naval air station helped passengers and crew to safety.
Capt. Michael Connor, the commanding officer of NAS Jacksonville, said during a news conference that those on board were a mix of civilian and military personnel, and that while some were staying in the area, others planned to fly on to other parts of the country.
“I think it is a miracle,” Connor said. “We could be talking about a different story this evening.”
Several pets were on the plane as well, and their status wasn’t immediately clear. A navy statement early Saturday offering “hearts and prayers” to their owners said safety issues prevented rescuers from immediately retrieving the animals.
It wasn’t immediately clear what went wrong. Boeing said in a tweet Friday night that it was investigating: “We are aware of an incident in Jacksonville, Fla., and are gathering information.” The Federal Aviation Administration was referring media inquiries to NAS Jacksonville. Air station officials said investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board have been dispatched to determine what happened.
A photo posted by deputies shows a Miami Air International logo on the plane. The company didn’t immediately respond to messages from The Associated Press.
It wasn’t known how long it would take to remove the plane from the river, but Connor said the landing gear appeared to be resting on the river bed, making it unlikely for the aircraft to float away. He said crews began working to contain any jet fuel leaks almost immediately after securing the passengers’ safety.
Liz Torres told the Florida Times-Union that she heard what sounded like a gunshot Friday night from her home in Orange Park, about 5 miles (8 kilometers) south of NAS Jacksonville. She then drove down to a Target parking lot where police and firefighters were staging to find out more.
“I’ve never seen anything like this,” she said.
The Jacksonville Fire and Rescue Department posted on Twitter that approximately 90 personnel responded to the scene, adding that the department’s special operations team had trained with marine units for a similar incident earlier Friday. Navy security and emergency response personnel also were on the scene, the Navy release said.
https://www.oakridger.com/news/20190504/no-deaths-as-plane-carrying-us-military-crashes-into-river
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