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 . . .

Tom Brokaw calls American soldiers unskilled for the economy, crowd aplauses

I wish that headline were a typo. Sadly, it isn't.

On Wednesday, November 2, a mere week and half before Veteran's Day, the former NBC news anchor insulted America's military members on national television and received applause.

Check out the whole video at http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/wed-november-2-2011/tom-brokaw

To be fair, Tom Brokaw wasn't trying to insult the men and women of America's military. He just made a statement of benevolent ignorance. To his credit, he was trying to say that the country should do more to support its veterans, which explains the applause. But such a statement certainly deserved more scrutiny.

"They've been fighting the bad guys for 10 years," the old man said sternly. "And they don't have the training for this kind of economy."

Excuse me? I think I can name a few professions in which recent veterans do have the training for in this kind of economy: Police Officers, firefighters, paramedics, construction workers, private security workers, Parts inspectors for military equipment, warehouse stock workers, airline pilots, helicopter pilots, computer scientists (yes Tom, today's military uses computers. Check your facts), health care administrators, human resources staff workers, teachers, personal trainers, business consults, tour guides, truck drivers, any civilian job within the Department of Homeland Security. And I'm sure any recently returning vet could be a better news anchor than the arrogant, ignorant, although well meaning, Tom Brokaw. It goes without saying that any recently returning veteran could be a better news anchor than your typical Fox News host, who is arrogant, ignorant and malevolent.

And those are just the good jobs. So what if veterans don't want to sell worthless "complex financial instruments" on Wall Street?  Maybe they love their country to much to send the economy down the toilet. At least that's how Scott Olsen and Kayvan Sabehgi seem to feel about it.

It's wrong to suggest that skilled employees like soldiers, sailors, pilots, marines, etc need more job training to enter the civilian workforce. It's wrong to suggest that any person who is willing and able for work is unqualified. Stewart seemed a little taken aback by Brokaw's shocking statement, and tried to save Brokaw from his own ignorance by suggesting a specific example of what work our servicemen and women are already qualified for.

"You have this group of incredibly talented and determined individuals who clearly know how to rebuild countries--we could use rebuilding." Steward said, and he wasn't joking. "It seems like a really nice match."

But the old man wouldn't budge. Brokaw's body language indicated he was remarkably dismissive of Stewart's suggestion, and his verbal response seemed at odds with his condescending attitude towards Stewart that prevailed throughout the interview. "The fact is that they are well trained" Brokaw said. "They know about discipline, they know about risk assessment, they know about management of resources, And they know about going into hostile situations and making a quick sizing up about what's at risk there."

Yeah, those are all called job skills.

If you are a vet, don't let Brokaw's nonsense get you down. Thank you for your service. If you haven't done so already, check out Jobs for Vets. And any job searcher can benefit from reading What Color is your Parachute. Don't waste your time reading Brokaw's latest book. We already have public service academies. They're called universities. For others, it's called military service.