Jon Stewart should have stayed up to watch the Colbert Report

Last night's extended Daily Show interview with Nancy Pelosi offered promise, but fell flat. A great deal of the failure fell on Pelosi, who maintained in a somewhat bizarre state slight sincerity and hard core question dodging. One question, though, revealed an unusual failure on Jon's part.

Nancy Pelosi's quasi-sincerity had Jon flummoxed.

"How is it," Jon Stewart asked Nancy Pelosi, "that Paul Volcker writes a three page memo, and that turns into 300 page legislation that Paul Volcker then doesn't support?"

Nancy Pelosi fortified herself against any sort helpful answer, and stuck to platitudes--although true--about the undue influence of lobbyists and Republican extremism.

If Jon Stewart really wanted to know how it is that good legislation so easily gets corrupted, he should have just stayed up and watched the Colbert Report. That very night, the subject of Colbert's "Word" segment was a an anti-bullying law in Michigan. The original legislation stated that public schools would adopt policies against bullying by students. Fair enough.

But before this bill became law, social conservatives carved out an exemption. "This section," states the law, "does not prohibit a statement of a sincerely held religious belief or moral conviction."

Boom. This allows for harassment of any kind against any person. Steven made light of a few obvious flaws to this legislation, as Jews, Muslims and Christians are now free to harass each other, and the laws of Leviticus are quite ludicrous (Steven didn't mention it, but Leviticus prohibits eating pork, but does not prohibit a man marrying his daughter).

The absurdity of placing harassment in the eyes of the person making the statement is worthless. A Southern Baptist could tell a Catholic that he/she is hellbound because God does not appoint a living emissary in Jesus' absence. If said Catholic were to stay, "please stop saying such hateful things about me," said harasser could keep on shouting. After all, he is only stating his deeply held religious belief!

How did this happen? Through the legislative process. Through participation in representative democracy. Through parliamentary procedure. The failure of our democratic system is not limited to our nation's capitol, but merely an extension of our failures nationwide.

Jon kept prodding Nancy, and Nancy wouldn't let her guard down, finally pulling out a stock cheap applause line to exit the interview.

Of course, as we learned from some of the elections this Tuesday, our democracy isn't a complete failure. But that's a story for another day . . .