On the car radio a couple of days ago, I caught an interesting
interview on Beeb radio with Tina Brown about media in decline and
President Obama in….well, decline. Brown now claims he should have
never been so built up in the first place.

What great vision we have in hindsight.

That same night, I caught a fairly stunning Jon Stewart Daily Show
that actually faced the reality that Obama may be “just a guy” after
all, instead of a messianic figure.

Both broadcasts will be available for a limited time, no doubt. I
recommend them to anyone with a little time and willingness to listen.
They both mark a cultural turning point.

Here’s the Tina Brown interview.

“In an interview for Hardtalk, Tina Brown, the Editor-in-Chief of
the Daily Beast, talks to Stephen Sackur about the state of American
politics. Was the hype over Obama justified?”

(News tease: No, she says, not really. After all, he was an
inexperienced, new senator from Illinois when he began running for
president. She claims she never drank the Obama Kool-aid…)

And here’s the Stewart segment that had to be hard for the guy to do.

After all the political calculations (an interesting skit there), he
had to conclude that Bo the family dog pushed Obama’s falling ratings
up an extra six points, thankfully.

Where was this sort of honesty before?