Several nights ago Bill Kristol appeared on Jon Stewart's TV program, describing a recent Baghdad trip and assuring us that Bush's Iraq war escalation is working. Atrios touted this as real journalism--maybe that was ironic? Kristol edits the neocon Weekly Standard and espouses views as bloody minded and hawkish as you'll find. But he came out smiling, Stewart greeted him warmly and they joked around as Kristol repeated over and over that things were going well in Iraq and if we'd just give General Petraeus more time everything would be ducky.
A supposedly hard hitting question from Stewart was "why are you so angry at people who opposed the war?" Kristol never stopped smiling and said "I'm not angry at them" and jokingly assured Stewart that Bush doesn't think that Stewart is a coward.
They had some back and forth schtick, the audience laughed, and applauded when he entered and exited. Stewart clearly values having Kristol on his program and wants to maintain cordial relations with him.
What we needed to see was the smile wiped off Kristol's face by the reading of statistics about the increase in civilian dead in Baghdad post-escalation, the growing chaos in Basra and points north, and some recitation of actual words from Kristol's magazine tarring war opponents as blind to terror or what have you. Stewart's show is a comedy show but he was woefully unprepared and there is nothing funny about Bill Kristol.