I wasn’t planning to post a link to this, but I’ve watched it twice now and is so good it deserves more attention.

Jon Stewart was on the new Bill Moyers show on PBS. Here is the full 30-minute interview.

Some choice quotes:

JON STEWART: … And I used to think, “They’re doing this based on a certain arrogance.” And now, I realize that it’s because they believe there is one accountability moment for a President, and that is the four year election. And once you get that election, you’re done.

BILL MOYERS: They’re right, are they not?

JON STEWART: They’re completely not right. The election moment is merely the American public saying, “We’d rather you be President than that guy.” That’s it. The next four years, though, you still have to abide by the oversight process that is there to prevent this kind of bizarre sort of cult-like atmosphere that falls along. I mean, I accept that kind of veil of secrecy around Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes, but I don’t accept that around our government.

…

JON STEWART: That’s right. There is a there is an enormous contradiction, and it is readily apparent, if you just walk through simple sort of logic, and simple rational points. But the thing that they don’t realize is that everyone wants them to come from beyond that contradiction so that we can all fix it. Nobody is saying, “We don’t have a problem.” Nobody is saying that, “9/11 didn’t happen.” What they’re saying is, “We’re not a fragile country, trust us to have this conversation, so that we can do this in the right way, in a more effective way.”

…

BILL MOYERS: How do you explain that the Washington press corps, by and large, particularly the Sunday shows join the game with them? I mean, you watch those shows

JON STEWART: They don’t all, I mean…

BILL MOYERS: No, not all of them do, but there’s a kind of wink-wink questioning going on there. You know, I’ll ask the devil’s advocate…

JON STEWART: Well, it’s because it’s the Harlem Globetrotters playing the Washington Generals. It’s they’re the only teams playing, and they know they’ve got to play each other every week, and they all have sort of assumed their role. And, I mean, at this point, the government is just you know, blowing the doors off the media. And not everywhere, and I think, this is where you know, a lot of those blog reporters and all of those things are bringing a lot of urgency and a lot of momentum to stories that wouldn’t normally carry any momentum.

Also, here’s a transcript from a 2003 interview by Moyers with Stewart back when Moyers was on the PBS show Now.