Former New York Times TV reporter Bill Carter wrote a valentine for Jon Stewart in The Hollywood Reporter, suggesting Stewart’s departure “is expected to leave a void for loyal followers of liberal causes, though it also may inspire sighs of relief from the horde of public officials Jon has eviscerated over the years... It is no exaggeration to say it: When Jon Stewart goes, the country will be losing the most focused, fiercest and surely funniest media critic of the past two decades."
The liberal media loved him, even when he mocked them. As one longtime executive at CNN told Carter: "The irony always was that most people in the place truly enjoyed his show, never missed it. So it was always incredibly painful that he would attack us the way he did." Carter began by noting how Stewart and Colbert and Co. hugged and celebrated when Obama was first elected in 2008:
On Nov. 4, 2008, the night Barack Obama was elected president, I was sitting with the audience of The Daily Show With Jon Stewart in its studio on the west side of Manhattan. No one would have been gobsmacked by the rooting interests that night of both the guests or the host. Stewart has never hidden his point of view; and on this night he looked, to put it simply, pumped.
The show was a live election-night special. Stephen Colbert of The Colbert Report was co-anchoring, and, as the returns came in, the celebratory mood grew in intensity. When the news networks called enough states to make it official, Stewart looked straight into the camera and told his audience: "At 11 o'clock at night, Eastern Standard Time, the president of the United States is … Barack Obama."
As the crowd unleashed a roar of approval (and Colbert did his best faux harrumphing, saying it was still only a "maybe"), Stewart exerted a visible effort to swallow down the grin that threatened to explode across his face. It was only after he left the air a short while later that the explosion came, as first he and Colbert shared what looked like a victory hug, and then Jon met his wife, Tracey, who was in the audience, and they also embraced.
That night was momentous both for Obama and Stewart, who cemented his position as the comic voice (and conscience) of the political left-of-center in 21st century America. Since then, Stewart has used that position to become the left's most trusted critic of political hypocrisy and mendacity.
What a coincidence: He also became the Right's most obvious example of political hypocrisy and highly-edited mendacity. The leftist Britissh paper The Guardian also gushed that Stewart's show was a "superpower" and a required stop for any political leader. (No. It wasn't. Ask President Bush.) Stewart was the left-wing Drudge:
The Daily Show was essentially the first blog, and Jon Stewart was the liberal answer to Matt Drudge, who launched the Drudge Report in 1996 and gained momentum on the internet.
It took conservatives taking over the government, however, for Jon Stewart to truly become vital. During a recent segment, Stewart was so befuddled by ridiculous statements made by Republican presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee that he was speechless. He just showed a series of clips, grunted and pointed, and let the audience realize the insanity of Huckabee’s statements. That’s what Stewart did through eight long years of the George W Bush administration. He was the one bastion of sanity in a world that, to liberals at least, seemed like it had gone completely mad.
