I was there for and loathed the rise of Jon Stewart. The smug smirk, the mingled sarcasm and outrage, followed by arch deflection helped taint the culture and break the media. Between the Daily Show and Gawker, arguments quickly devolved into sarcasm, tribal sneering, and contempt.
When he finally retired, anticipating a Hillary administration, I wrote that, “Jon Stewart did not offer an alternative to the media. He was what the media was becoming. The merging of opinion and reporting along with the overlay of cynical humor over every story have become ubiquitous. Stewart didn’t pave the way for a better media. He paved the way for Buzzfeed, Vice, Politico and Vox. He turned the news into a joke with an agenda… which is exactly what it is now.”
“Stewart’s Daily Show had offered an antidote to the Bush era of patriotism, sincerity and decency. Its antidote was passive aggressive ridicule and political satire as sincerity. After the Bush era ended, Stewart and his fellow comedians had little left to do except take on the job of defending Obama, while occasionally critiquing him. They had become the official court jesters of the Democratic Party.”
Stewart, who always kept saying that he wanted to seriously address issues, is back to do just that. And it’s hilarious. Unintentionally.
After all this time, Jon Stewart has been reincarnated as Keith Olbermann. The old Stewart persona has made way for an angry shrill woke leftist, and that’s probably who he was all along, stripped of his stage routine.
Jon Stewart’s current Apple TV show persona is instantly recognizable as the elderly wealthy urban leftist with a lot of cash and even more rage. The constant rants about white people only cement Stewart as hopelessly out of touch, trying to catch up with last year’s wokeness.
The new “White People Get Off My Lawn” routine is repulsive, but it’s also pathetic.
Stewart always knew that he didn’t deserve his place in pop culture. His retirement was an act born out of that insecurity. His comeback, wrapped in furious woke pieties, a familiar tool for lefties looking to overcompensate for their personal shortcomings, is funny only because of how much it destroys his legend.
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