Real men know how to apologize for their mistakes, especially when made on national television.
Apparently we can't put Jon Stewart in this category, for after acknowledging that the fact-checking organization PolitiFact found his statement to Chris Wallace concerning "misinformed" Fox viewers false, he proceeded to childishly spend three minutes listing all the times PF determined FNC's comments were likewise (video follows with transcript and commentary):
JON STEWART: Hey, welcome back. So as we've been discussing this week, I visited “Fox News Sunday” to chat with Chris Wallace about "South Park," President Obama, and I may have during the interview mentioned that Fox News viewers are quote "the most consistently misinformed media viewers. The most consistently misinformed? Fox. Fox viewers consistently – every poll.”
As it turns out, I was misinformed. Which should not have been surprising, because I do watch a lot of Fox News. Dammit! I did it again. Wait.
[Applause]
So, don't applaud my ignorance. PolitiFact, the non-partisan fact-checking guy or guys or girls, thoroughly researched my statement, and they found that while in two of the news surveys, Fox News viewers scored the lowest, in other polls they were merely near the bottom.
[Laughter]
Some of Fox’s individual shows scored as more informed than let's say viewers of, I don't know, this show. So thanks for fact-f--king me, stoners. Get a job!
[Applause]
All and all, not a bad apology. If only he had stopped there:
STEWART: Hey, I wonder, I know PolitiFact checks mostly political statements of politicians and such, but has PolitiFact ever checked Fox for false statements? I'm hearing they have.
From there, Stewart spent three full minutes enumerating various times PolitiFact found a statement made on Fox to be false. Said comments were listed on the screen until the "Daily Show" host could no longer be seen behind them.
This is how a child admits a mistake, not a grown man, especially as Stewart chose not to address the error he made the previous evening when he falsely accused Wallace of saying Fox doesn't tell both sides of the story.
Instead, he chose to further belittle the organization that he twice inaccurately besmirched in so many days.
And this is the man folks on the left hold up as being the nation's top political satirist.
On a personal note, I, too, used to have a lot of respect for Stewart as a comedian and an entertainer.
Sadly, this esteem has diminished in recent years to where he now oftentimes comes across as a bitter little man needing to castigate others in order to elevate his own stature while compensating for his own insecurities.
This is what we've seen from him in the past four days.
Shame on you, Jon. You used to be so much better than this.
