Today's asshole

Jon Stewart

We, all of us - except for the really well balanced - have had occasion to meet someone you just want to bitch slap at first glance.  One of mine is Jon Stewart, the smarmy liberal ass-licking host of Comedy Central's The Daily Show.  Today the Daily News ponders Stewart's appeal ... ''It's during these moments, when I'm missing Stewart's appeal, that I realize I'm not alone. A lot of people are feeling the same way. ''Take a look at the Nielsen figures for the show, and the numbers are startling. This supposedly terrific program, with its high hipness factor - people actually say they get their only news from "The Daily Show" - is averaging 1.3 million viewers in January, most of them men between the ages of 18 and 49. During November, the political high season in which Stewart and his cohorts supposedly thrive, the show averaged 1.45 million viewers. ''For comparison, Nielsen estimates there are 218 million people over the age of 18 in the nation's 112 million homes with televisions. ''That's a lot of people not getting Stewart's comedy. ''Now, before the legions of Stewartites start bellyaching that the show airs on Comedy Central, so the numbers are going to be smaller, stop. Comedy Central is in 88 million homes, so it's well-distributed.'' This pretty much coincides with Harry Stein's treatment in last year's article for The City Journal, where he considered Stewart's appeal among some really horrible people. ... “When future historians come to write the political story of our times,” intoned Bill Moyers on his recently ended PBS show, “they will first have to review hundreds of hours of a cable television program called The Daily Show. You simply can’t understand American politics in the new millennium without The Daily Show.” “Mr. Stewart has turned his parodistic TV news show into a cultural force significantly larger than any mere satire of media idiocies,” chimed in the New York Times’s Frank Rich in a column entitled ''jon stewart’s perfect pitch ... .'' ''While all this is certainly heady for Stewart and his fans, what does it mean? After all, the fair-minded viewer might find the half-hour show intermittently humorous, but he won’t detect anything “fearless” or even especially original in it. In truth, Stewart’s elevation to near-iconic status says more about those doing the elevating than about the comedian himself. His “bravery” and much-vaunted grasp of political nuance consists mostly of his embrace of every reflexive assumption shared by every litmus-tested liberal holding forth at every chic Manhattan dinner party.'' I liked these articles so much that I bought the companies, so to speak.  You can read, and save, both articles in one stop at the Jon Stewart Pissatorium.  You're welcome