After 16 years hosting Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show” Jon Stewart announced that he will be leaving the show this year. It has left many of us stunned and saddened. That news, and the news that NBC’s Brian Williams, host of “The Nightly New,” had been suspended for 6 months without pay, dominated the nightly cable shows, especially MSNBC. It was very apparent that Jon’s departure was more important than anything else.
After announcing Williams suspension, MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow devoted the next two segments of her show to Jon’s retirement and the impact that his style of humor has had on the news and the news media for a generation:
The tributes are still pouring in:
Jon Stewart: comedian, satirist, newsman
By Amanda Holpuch, The Guardian
He insists he’s a comedian, but the outgoing Daily Show host has treated us to more than a decade of influential, and often devastating, political speeches
He’s been called the “most trusted news source in America” – but Jon Stewart has repeatedly insisted that he is a comedian first, and has played down the influence of The Daily Show on American political life.
His work has toed the line of political action, and has sometimes abandoned comedy altogether to provide the serious, though short, dose of reality absent from almost all American broadcast journalism.
A Dear Jon Letter: A TV Writer’s TV Marriage Suddenly Ends
By David S. Simon, The Huffington Post
I got dumped last night.
A 17-year relationship ended just like that and I have no idea how I will go on. Okay, it was with a married man and I knew that sooner or later that son of a bitch would go back to his family. But the thing is I just cannot imagine life without my TV life partner Jon Stewart.
Here’s the thing. Like most relationships the most significant, intimate part of our life together is at bedtime. During the day he went his way and I went mine, but at the end of the day we were there together in the bed zone to discuss not only the day’s events but the state of our lives on a level that would be incomprehensible with anyone else.
Jon Stewart Leaving His Fake News Desk Is A Loss To Real News
By Frazier Moore, The Huffington Post
Jon Stewart’s fans were gobsmacked by the sad news he delivered on Tuesday’s edition of “The Daily Show”: He’s leaving his phony anchor desk and ending his reign as phony newsman, and the loss is to real news.
“This show doesn’t deserve an even slightly restless host and neither do you,” he told his audience. He said he might depart in July, September or maybe December. He didn’t say what he means to do next.
To appreciate the impact of his 16-year Comedy Central reign, and the loss his impending exit represents, the distraught viewer need only consider Monday’s broadcast. [..]
Stewart didn’t invent satire, but he modernized it and tailored it for an information age ruled by TV and the Internet. In compact “Daily Show” segments, he struck a blow against the flabby boundlessness of cable-news and talk-network fare.
No wonder political leaders, authors, scholars and others with useful things to say flocked to his show right along with celebs who came to pitch their latest projects. Stewart, playing his designated role as court jester, goaded them with humor to get them to say what they meant in ways “serious” interviewers can’t or won’t. In the process, he usually displayed them to their best advantage.
And on those rare occasions when the news was too awful to abide the usual sassiness and Stewart’s passion burned through, viewers knew to take special note. On “The Daily Show,” unlike so many “real” news dispensers, everything that happens ISN’T “Breaking News.”
This was Jon very first appearance as host of “The Daily Show”
Below the fold are the videos from “The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell” which devoted the majority of the show to Jon Stewart. Lawrence O’Donnell was joined by Rachel Maddow, Hunter Walker, Kevin Avery, Beth Fouhy, Lizz Winstead and Harry Enten.
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