Jon Stewart Goes Soft & Silly for Janet Napolitano

“You’ve got the coastguard, you’ve got the secret service, you’ve got FEMA, you’ve got immigration and customs enforcement, you’ve got customs and border protection, you’ve got the TSA…”

Janet Napolitano

Those are just a few of the nearly two dozen government entities that work under the umbrella of Homeland Security, as spoken from the mouth of United States Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano on The Daily Show yesterday. Homeland security is the “Big Brother” that our forefathers always worried about. Developed in 2003 under President George W. Bush (who used this new institution to bend the rules and stretch the limitations of the Constitution), many Americans have a predisposed belief that the Department of Homeland Security has the right to strip Americans of all of their civil liberties. Hell, I even believe that to an extent.

So, when Napolitano, the big cheese, the top of the heap, the woman with the final say, visits the Daily Show you would think that Jon Stewart would make her sweat a little bit on a national stage, right? Sadly, you would be wrong. Instead of delving into the serious issues that are tearing our country apart, Stewart tossed her underhand softball questions that Napolitano was able to completely crush out of the park. Stewart cracked jokes about the terror alert color coding system, the difficulty of her meeting with all of the government program leaders underneath her, and the swine flu vaccine.

Are you kidding me?

I realize that Jon Stewart isn’t responsible for giving us the hard hitting (and honest) journalism that our country deserves. I mean, his show is broadcast on Comedy Central. So, perhaps he deserves a little bit of slack. However, he has built his reputation on his willingness to ask the questions that other people won’t. Not this time. No, instead the viewer receives an introduction to a woman who, unless they’re from Arizona (where she was the Governor), probably haven’t heard of, while learning very little about the Department of Homeland Security. I still love ya, Jon, but you can do better than this.