I see Jon Stewart and Rachel Maddow as critical thinkers because it takes a great deal of intelligence and knowledge about news, current events and issues to present them in a funny way; much more so than to just distribute the information as a normal news anchor does. Fisher describes one definition of critical thinking as “thinking about one’s thinking”, which is one of the major ways Jon Stewart presents issues as comedic, but examining people’s thought processes and explaining how they don’t make sense or are illogical. Jon Stewart analyzes and examines politicians’ words and actions and then presents them in a way that reveals their illogical assumptions or underlying values, which is another skill related to critical thinking according to Fisher.
On the other hand, the examples given by Frank Rich in “The Rage is not about Health Care” are not examples of critical thinking. As Rich states “that a tsunami of anger is gathering today is illogical,” which immediately shows that this style of thinking violates the logical nature of critical thinking described by Fisher. A more hilarious proof is that Jon Stewart has made fun of these examples on his show, using critical thinking. Also, Rich states that the rage is not connected to the issue, and in fact we’d see the same reaction to any Obama initiative. The rage is connected with a dislike of the people involved. This violates Fisher’s conditions for critical thinking in many ways, but most specifically with a lack of analytical skills and reflexive, thoughtless action.
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