America/Conor O'Clery: In these days when charges of bias are levelled by both sides at the mainstream American media, many political junkies are sitting up late to get their daily take on the news from a nightly television show that boasts of fake journalism.
Jon Stewart's The Daily Show is broadcast on the Comedy Central channel at 11 p.m. It lampoons the day's news events, with regular reports on the war in Iraq, which it calls "Mess O'Potamia", and spoof interviews by his fake reporters with real politicians. Guests who have subjected themselves to his somewhat goofy questions - to get exposure to the show's mainly young audience - have ranged from Bill Clinton to Bob Dole. John Edwards announced his candidacy for president on The Daily Show.
When John Kerry appeared recently, Stewart asked him earnestly: "Is it true that every time I use ketchup your wife gets a nickel?"
George Bush has yet to come on. He gets a rough ride from the left-leaning host. Last week for example Stewart picked on a line from the president's stump speech that it was not wise to tax the rich, because they "hire lawyers and accountants for a reason, to stick you with the tab."
"Let me get this straight," said Stewart: "Don't tax the rich because they'll get out if it? So your policy is, tax the hard-working people, because they're dumb-asses and they'll never figure it out?"
The 30-minute show has become a cultural phenomenon, and with its big campus audiences is having a real political impact on the election.
The Emmy-winning show has become so popular that Stewart has been featured on the cover of the US edition of Newsweek and Rolling Stone and has seen his spoof America, The Book: A Citizen's Guide to Democracy Inaction, shot to the top of the current best-seller lists.
Stewart is in fact so influential that his protestations that he is "just a comedian" are not taken seriously.
Indeed, he takes himself very seriously as a commentator on political commentary, especially the kind that is spewed out on cable news argument shows.
Recently he was invited onto CNN's daily Crossfire, a half-hour afternoon show in which a couple of pundits from right and left shout each other down on the issues of the day like hawkers at a bazaar.
To their surprise he scolded the presenters for debasing political discourse.
The exchange with the hosts, former Clinton adviser Paul Begala "on the left" and the bow-tied young conservative Tucker Carlson "on the right" degenerated into raw animosity.
Stewart started by telling the two hosts their show was bad, it was hurting America, they were not honest, and that as partisan hacks they were part of the problem. Carlson fired back by accusing Stewart of sucking up to Kerry, whom the comedian is supporting for president.
Word spread of this compelling TV event, in which Stewart ended up calling Carlson a "big dick", leading over half a million people who missed it downloading it from the CNN website in the following days. Here is a sample of the dialogue:
CARLSON: You had John Kerry on your show and you sniff his throne and you're accusing us of partisan hackery?
STEWART: Absolutely.
CARLSON: You've got to be kidding me. He comes on and you . . .
STEWART: You're on CNN. The show that leads into me is puppets making crank phone calls.
CARLSON: Well . . . go ahead and be his butt boy. Come on. It's embarrassing.
STEWART: I was absolutely his butt boy. I was so far - you would not believe what he ate two weeks ago . . . you have a responsibility to the public discourse, and you fail miserably.
CARLSON: You need to get a job at a journalism school, I think.
STEWART: You need to go to one.
CARLSON: Wait. I thought you were going to be funny. Come on. Be funny.
STEWART: No. No. I'm not going to be your monkey.
The role of the mainstream media - in particular the New York Times - has become an issue in the last days of campaigning in the presidential election. On Monday the Times led with a story about the disappearance sometime after the US-led invasion of Iraq of 380 tons of explosives.
It hit the campaign with, well, explosive force. Sen John Kerry immediately began accusing the president of incompetence in rushing to war without sufficient troops to safeguard weapons depots, and allowing explosives to fall into enemy hands.
US soldiers who first arrived in March 2003 at the Qaqaa complex, where the explosives were sealed in a bunker, were unaware they were supposed to be there, though the UN had advised the US of its existence, and it was some weeks before the US army got back to have a look. In the meantime, looters stripped everything from the site.
President Bush at first said nothing, but after three days of attacks from Kerry accused his opponent of making "wild charges" and said that explosives could have been removed before the invasion.
Anyone who jumped to conclusions without getting the facts should not be commander-in-chief, said Bush, prompting a Democratic party aide to comment that the president had gone to war after jumping to conclusions about WMD without knowing the facts.
Republicans are furious at the timing of the story, which the Times shared with CBS and which CBS wanted to hold until Sunday when it would have had an "October surprise" effect on public opinion without giving the President time to reply.
Stories of looting of explosives were reported after the invasion, but what was new here was that Iraq's interim government had warned US and United Nations officials earlier this month about the missing 380 tons. When NBC reported on Monday that an army unit accompanied by a NBC reporter that visited the site in April never found any explosives, the Bush-Cheney campaign claimed this as proof that the weapons had been removed prior to the invasion.
The Washington Times backed this up with an account of Russians moving the explosives to Syria, and conservative commentators unanimously dismissed it as a dirty trick. New York Times editor Bill Keller said campaigns attack the messenger when they do not like the message.
A recent bipartisan act of Congress restricted individual donations to political candidates to $2,000. This it was thought would curtail the influence of big money on elections. However, more cash that ever is flowing from the pockets of the rich into political activism. Around 60 wealthy donors, compared to about 25 in the last presidential election, have contributed more than $1 million each.
The biggest donors are by no means Republican. Financier George Soros has given some $24 million to groups that dislike what the Bush administration is doing as much as he does.
He is almost matched on the opposite side by pro-Bush donor Ohio businessman Peter Lewis.
Soros has a theory that the global expansion of the United States is like a stock market bubble, and that it will eventually burst.
At a rally in New Mexico, President George Bush ridiculed Kerry for saying that he wanted to reduce the terrorist threat to a nuisance. "I couldn't disagree more," the president said.
"Our goal is not to reduce terror to some acceptable level of nuisance."
The phrase echoes that used by Reginald Maudling, British Home Secretary, about Northern Ireland, when he famously remarked on December 15th, 1971: "I don't think one can speak of defeating the IRA . .. but it is the design of the security forces to reduce their level of violence to something like an accepted level."