O'Reilly vs Stewart 2012

I heard about this on the Daily Show a day or two ago and think this will be super entertaining. For those of you not in the loop, John Stewart will be having a 90 minute debate with Big Bear Bill O'Reilly tonight at 8pm (EST I think).

Here's some more info on the event: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/17/bill-oreilly-jon-stewart-debate_n_1892201.html

I look forward to watching it.

O'Reilly/Stewart debates have never disappointed. It's interesting to see O'Reilly step his game up when Jon sits down at the table. He gets much more cagey, less prone to going on loudmouth rampages; he picks his shots more carefully. Stewart sorta goes the other way, moving much faster and throwing out light barbs to try to force an opening.

I'm just disappointed that you have to pay to watch this.

It's $5 and they're donating to charity.

I see it's about 1/2 donated to charity, and it doesn't describe which ones... Kind of a put off, but then I assume this kind of paid venue is necessary since it isn't getting aired by their respective media outlets.

I guess it's on now.

they're not taking it very seriously and the stream is messed up.

That was infinitely better than the actual Presidential debate.

Here's the debate.

Pretty good. Stewart apparently mixing up the debt and the deficit was a little wtf. I think he did a good job of laying out why the Bush presidency still has such an impact and why it's relevant to the current political discourse. O'Reilly was fairly successful in preventing Stewart from tying him to the GOP.

I laughed a lot, but I like their actual brass tacks discussions more--there was a lot of good stuff here, but there was a lot that was just played for laughs.

I agree, Stewart definitely missed that barn on that and O'Reilly was right to call him on it, unfortunately I think the point suffered a bit in that volley, and I suspect some people might come away from it less informed then they ought to be (ahem, really, Stewart?)

O'Reilly made several mistakes as well, such as his muddied understanding of events in North Africa, which seemingly tied the Muslim Brotherhood (in Egypt) to the Embassy attack in Benghazi (Libya) - again, potentially a confusing part of the debate if you happen to be ill-informed (like the average Fox viewer). Despite those hiccups, I found it to be a very interesting and spirited debate, more entertaining then I actually thought it would be.

I also found it tremendously satisfying to hear Stewart call O'Reilly on his mountain of bullshit, because that's what it often was. Despite his antics, Stewart had several solid moments that focused dead-on the issues, while O'Reilly largely came off as being the pompous and grumpy conservative we know him for.