Jon Stewart vs. Bill O’Reilly: The Rumble 2012 – full video [or not]

My apologies, but after having changed the damn video about five times because YouTube keeps taking it down, I’ve given up. Just search YouTube for whatever copies are currently online; there’s usually a few before they get pulled and subsequently replaced.

I didn’t think much about The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart and Fox News’s Bill O’Reilly’s sorta-hyped “Rumble in the Air Conditioned Auditorium” debate prior to watching it, assuming it would be mostly disingenuous fluff given O’Reilly’s inclusion, but it turned out to be surprisingly entertaining. Here’s the full 1½-hour video, at least until YouTube takes it down (no transcript, sorry):

[video removed]

Personally, I think it got off to a strong start and gradually weakened as it wore on. Stewart was in top form, cutting right through O’Reilly’s disinformation with the steely wit we’re used to from his show (sans the customary bleeping). As for O’Reilly, he didn’t seem dishonest to me; I think Stewart’s right when he says O’Reilly is honest about his principles and beliefs. He’s just very much, evidently and incontrovertibly, wrong.

(Though, to be fair, I did sort of shrivel up when Stewart advocated for a one-year minimum draft for everyone, young and old, to perform some sort of public service like serve in the military. The government shouldn’t be in the business of forcing anyone to spend any amount of time doing something they don’t believe in unless they’ve incurred a debt to society, such as serving time for committing a crime. Drafting is wrong, end of story.)

Let me know in the comments if/when the video gets yanked so that I can replace it.

(via @ebertchicago (tweet deleted))