Aside from the obvious laugh, for me this conjured up the furious debates I had with classmates over the work of Ayn Rand in English class my senior year of high school. That class began what has thus far been a lifelong rejection of the messages contained in Rand's books. It's a rejection that fellow Last Word staffer Nikki and I bonded over earlier today. Many may attempt to infer political leanings from an individual's up or down vote on the work of Ayn Rand, but I find it really says quite a bit more about one's philosophy on life rather than politics. But any further reflection on that is, in all honesty, straying a bit too far off point.
Stewart also turned his attention to the speech President Obama gave yesterday afternoon from the campus of George Washington University unveiling his long-term debt reduction plan. Stewart paid particular attention to the language the President used in reference to the plan's call for a tax hike... which was "more spending reductions in the tax code." Stewart responded:
Ohhh. I guess what you said is tax code code for raising taxes. You managed to talk about a tax hike as a spending reduction. Can we afford that and the royalty checks you're gonna have to send to George Orwell? That's the weirdest way of - just say tax hikes. That's like saying, "I'm not going on a diet. I'm going to add calories to my excluded food intake."
Orwell and Rand crammed into one segment? That was clearly written for and by literary geeks just like me.
I really wanted to include the video of the segment here in this blog post... but frankly, some of Stewart's material tested the boundaries of The Daily Show's TV-14 rating. Therefore, I'll link to The Daily Show's page so you can easily find the full segment if you like. And just for gits and shiggles, instead here's John Oliver's amazingly bizarre and hilarious interview with Rep. Dennis Kucinich from last night's show that includes an analogy involving canine mating habits and a running gag about ventriloquism. Yes, for serious.