Warren /Stewart

The Comedy Central encounter between Elizabeth Warren and Jon Stewart is getting an impressive amount of blog buzz. From what I hear, her fans are settling on the view that she disappointed in the first half (shy and diffident) and recovered later (her old self).

I'd agree that she seemed (almost unheard of for Elizabeth) a bit like a deer in the headlights at the beginning, and also that she hit her stride in the home stretch. But in terms of audience appeal, I'd rank it the other way around. Elizabeth in full flower can sound cocky and contentious--I think it was her good fortune that she ran out of time before she got into high gear. But in her opening colloquy with her host, she came across as the mistress of the pregnant silence. Mrs. Buce (who had never seen her in action before) thought her Jack-Benny-like pauses were so funny as to have been scripted. I doubt that they were scripted; I'm pretty sure they were accidental, but I would agree that they worked just fine.

And an aside to Jon Stewart: Jon, Baby, the job of a comedy host is not to go all Cocker Spaniel on your guest. A few more outbursts of gush and you'll be as dull as Rush Limbaugh was back with he was sleeping in the Lincoln Bedroom.