Comic Jon Stewart gets a big FAIL from politifact.com

Comic Jon Stewart gets a big FAIL from politifact.com

Jon Stewart, ridiculing Fox News' coverage of the "War on Christmas," repeated a claim by The History Channel that Congress met most Christmas Days from 1789 to 1856.

It's not true. In fact, just about the opposite is true. The Senate never actually held a session during that period. They did gather in their chamber one time, but immediately adjourned without conducting any business. The House did hold exactly one Christmas Day session (1802).

Oops! Stewart's staff actually did research the claim, but they relied on an erroneous documentary on The History Channel. So there's no fault from Stewart, right? He can pass all the blame to The History Channel, as he tried to do on Monday's show?

Not so fast.

PolitiFact awarded Stewart and his writers a special "pants on fire," not a simple "false," and the difference between those two classifications rests on something which is entirely The Daily Show's fault. Jon didn't seem to understand the difference between the two classifications (or was being disingenuous). A "false" tag is awarded if the a claim is merely factually inaccurate, but the rating rises to "pants on fire" if the claim is not merely false, but also ridiculous (their word, not mine). If you were to claim that Roger Maris hit 61 home runs in 1962, you would get a "false" because the statement is inaccurate, but believable. He did, in fact, hit that many home runs the previous year. But if you were to claim that Maris hit a billion home runs in 1962, you would get a "pants on fire," because the claim is not only inaccurate, but downright silly.

There's where The Daily Show gets an equal share of the blame. Stewart's fault lies in repeating a claim which is obviously silly if subjected to even a tiny bit of consideration.

It is believable that Congress may occasionally have met on Christmas for one reason or another, so if The Daily Show had merely repeated the claim that Congress was in session on December 25th, 1789, and had stopped there, Jon would have been awarded a simple "false," and the History Channel would have been entirely at fault.

But it is simply not credible to claim that Congress routinely met on Christmas for the next 60+ years, if for no other reason than that there is a one in seven chance that Christmas will fall on a Sunday!

Stewart weaseled out of the situation by blaming The History Channel, but took no blame for not realizing how illogical the claim was in the first place. He should have added, "I can't believe I was dumb enough to repeat that. What was I thinking?" (And he could have made that funny.)