Obligatory Daily Show Video

Everyone and their brother has been linking to this video the last couple of days.



Which is, of course, brilliant. It reminds me a lot of this blast-from-the-past video from the vice presidential debate between John Edwards and Dick Cheney in 2004. (Skip to about three and a half minutes in for the money quote, but the whole thing is really well-done.)



The Daily Show is as good as it is because it actually provides context for news stories, particularly political ones, letting some fresh oxygen into that often suffocating media environment. Around the time of the second video I posted, it was noted around the then-nascent blogosphere that TDS seemed to be the only news organization anywhere that actually had access to a tape library -- I wish I could say that we're doing better four years further down the road, but it's just not the case.

Of course, now we have Youtube and an army of "citizen journalists" who can call up those same videos, which helps, but it sure would be nice to see the big boys and girls of the national news media trying to provide the kind of context and information that should be their bread and butter.