According to the networks on Friday, Jon Stewart's departure from the Daily Show means "America's satirical voice," the man who held the powerful "accountable," had said goodbye. A more honest reading would be that a low-rated liberal comedian left his basic cable television show. Instead, Good Morning America's Lara Spencer mourned, "He started out as a comedian and really evolved into holding politicians, media accountable for everything you say." On that score, "he's done a terrific job."
Comedy Central
By Scott Whitlock | August 6, 2015 | 11:57 AM EDT
The three liberal networks on Thursday mourned the loss of Jon Stewart's Daily Show, hyping the comedian as a "trusted," "profound" "beacon" who became a "true 21st century anchor." Never directly identifying Stewart's left-wing slant, Good Morning America's Chris Connelly offered the most effusive praise: "Along the way, for many millennials and for the media elite, Stewart came to be regarded as a beacon guiding his viewers through a sea of spin and cynicism." Speaking of a man who brought in a choir to sing a "go f***k yourself" song to Fox News, Connelly fawned that Stewart is "a true 21st century anchor."
By Tom Blumer | August 6, 2015 | 1:16 AM EDT
How absolutely serendipitous it is that alleged comedian and actual White House propagandist Jon Stewart’s last broadcast of The Daily Show is today, August 6, the 70th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, Japan.
You see, Stewart, whose influence is especially nefarious when he is revising and distorting history for his relatively young audience, committed his most outrageous such act when, in a 2009 interview with Cliff May, he agreed that U.S. President Harry S. Truman should be considered a "war criminal" for approving that horrific but necessary bombing mission.
By Jeffrey Meyer | August 4, 2015 | 2:46 PM EDT
As Jon Stewart wraps up his final week as host of the Daily Show, he used his Monday night show to attack a recent Koch brothers event that featured numerous Republican presidential candidates in attendance. Stewart opened up his broadcast by making a crude sexual joke at the expense of the GOPers in attendance who “worked the talking points and cradled the special interests in the hopes of one of them after a period of 45 minutes to an hour would induce the money shot. And really, they didn't care which Koch went off.”
By Kyle Drennen | August 3, 2015 | 11:23 AM EDT
On Monday’s NBC Today, 9 a.m. ET hour co-hosts Tamron Hall and Willie Geist mourned Jon Stewart’s final week anchoring The Daily Show. Hall proclaimed: “Oh my goodness, it is the end of an era. In a few days Jon Stewart will bid farewell to The Daily Show and all of us.” Hall was particularly worried about Stewart’s absence following Thursday’s first Republican presidential debate: “What the saddest thing about this is that the Republican first debate is Thursday night. So we don't have Jon Stewart Friday.”
Lefty Writers Bid Farewell to Jon Stewart, the ‘White Savior’ Who Battled ‘Sewage Monster[s] Formulated By Fox News’
By Tom Johnson | August 2, 2015 | 11:09 AM EDT Arthur Chu, best known as one of the all-time biggest money-winners on Jeopardy!, is also a writer who frequently contributes to Salon. In a Thursday article, Chu saluted departing Daily Show host Jon Stewart for, among other things, keeping him sane during his college days. Unfortunately, recalled Chu, back then America as a whole had lost its mind.
Meanwhile, in the August issue of Vanity Fair, James Wolcott gave props to Stewart for “all that he’s been through on our behalf, subjecting himself to a radiation bombardment of mostly right-wing idiocy."
By Jeffrey Meyer | July 30, 2015 | 11:01 AM EDT
During Wednesday night’s Daily Show, Jon Stewart and liberal historian Doris Kearns Goodwin repeatedly slammed the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United ruling which Goodwin called “the most poisonous thing that’s happening in our system.”
By Scott Whitlock | July 29, 2015 | 12:06 PM EDT
Comedian and libertarian Penn Jillette stood up for the Second Amendment, Tuesday, offering a rare non-liberal perspective on Comedy Central's Nightly Show. In typical liberal media fashion, Jillette was outnumbered three-to-one. After contributor Ricky Velez made the tired argument that the Second Amendment was about muskets, Jillette zinged, "But, unfortunately, with that exact same argument on the First Amendment, you have real trouble too."
By Jeffrey Meyer | July 28, 2015 | 11:16 AM EDT
Politico’s Darren Samuelsohn reports that throughout Obama’s presidency, liberal comedian Jon Stewart was “summoned” to the White House for “secret...visits” with the president, an example of how the administration took “unusual steps to cultivate Daily Show comic.” Samuelsohn tries to soften Stewart’s far-left politics as merely being “center-left” mixed with a “populist streak heavy on fiscal responsibility, good government and fighting for the little guy.”
By Tom Blumer | July 25, 2015 | 10:41 AM EDT
I'm virtually certain that he wouldn't dream of it, but the Associated Press's Josh Lederman seriously needs to consider correcting two extremely embarrassing paragraphs he wrote in his coverage of President Obama's appearance on Jon Stewart's Daily Show earlier this week.
At the 15:03 mark of the Comedy Central video following the jump, Obama treated Stewart as if he's a legitimate journalist, telling him that "It's not your job to focus on the three-quarters of a loaf or half a loaf that we get. Your job is to point out what we still haven't gotten." Actually, after enduring the video, it seems far more correct to say that Stewart's job was to make it look like he was challenging Obama by giving him a bit of grief several minutes earlier about the still-scandalous situation at the Veterans Administration, and then to give him a virtual open mic the rest of the way. But I digress.
Professor: Stewart, Colbert Could Have Taught Obama That Conservatives Are ‘Immune to the Force of Reason’
By Tom Johnson | July 24, 2015 | 5:45 PM EDT One year ago, a British newspaper published a list of President Obama’s ten favorite television shows (the top three, in reverse order: Breaking Bad, The Wire, and M*A*S*H). Not on the list was The Daily Show, on which Obama guested yet again this past Tuesday, but Penn State's Sophia McClennen thinks that if Obama had been more of a TDS fan, he long ago would have realized how irrational his conservative opposition was.
In a Friday article for Salon, McClennen asserted that Stewart and Stephen Colbert “had insight into U.S. politics Obama never seemed to understand. ‘The Daily Show’ and ‘The Colbert Report’ were one of the main sources of truth telling about U.S. politics and the nature of the Republican Party before and during the Obama presidency.” Those programs, wrote McClennen, illuminated “the twisted thinking, hubris, disdain for large segments of society, and closed-mindedness that forms the common, core mind-set of Fox viewers.”
By Geoffrey Dickens | July 22, 2015 | 1:06 PM EDT
Barack Obama outrageously denied there was anything scandalous about the IRS-Tea Party controversy in his Tuesday interview on The Daily Show as he lectured Jon Stewart that: “When there was that problem with the I.R.S. everybody jumped, including you...you got this back office and they’re going after the Tea Party. Well it turned out no.” Obama went on to assert “the truth of the matter is there was not some big conspiracy there.”