A Daily Show nugget of wisdom

I am addicted to the Daily Show with Jon Stewart. It is, quite possibly, the best show on the tube, period. Apart from being brilliantly satirical, in this age of media sloth and reluctance from the media for engaging in actual journalism, Jon Stewart (and his team of writers) shine through as the lonely purveyors of truth. Of course, their fondness for beaming a glaring spotlight onto the failure of the media, who is actually responsible for bringing us this truth in the first place, is an added bonus.

So, anyways, this is from Thursday's show, which I watched on saturday, since it is frequently difficult for me to keep my bodily functions running till 11:30 at night, so I just tape the show. So, Jon switches to a shot of President Smirky defending the Patriot Act (which, btw, is a post 9/11 bill designed to let the government enter your bathroom without permission, take a picture of you fornicating with the toilet paper roll and using it to imprison you in a jail cell without any toilet paper), saying in his characteristic smug, self righteous way, "The Patriot Act has worked well, and now it is going to expire. Does it make sense for something that has worked well to expire?". To which, Jon Stewart then narrated the fictitious conversation Smirky must have had the same morning with his wife during breakfast about an expired milk carton, saying "This milk has expired? Does it make sense for this milk, which has served us so well to have expired?"

In addition to being a satirical masterpiece, it is also a brilliant and inventive way of explaining that the Patriot Act, while (maybe) having had some use right after 9/11, has now outlasted it's utility value (like the expired milk carton) and thus, should not be renewed, and that Smirky's argument that anything that has served us so well till now should be renewed without questioning its utility value for the future, is just plain bogus.