In the history of non-stories, this might be one of the biggest. The Daily Show and Colbert Report did their live election coverage tonight and the clip above opened the show. Basically Jon Stewart stopped by CNN earlier today to plug his new movie and talk a bit about the election, managed to make folks believe that he didn’t vote today, and then had to apologize for the confusion on his own show. From Deadline:
First of all, I’ve known where my thing is since I was 13,” Stewart told his The Daily Show audience at the top of tonight’s live election-results episode. “To set the record straight, I did vote today. ..I was being flip, and it kind of took off.”
“I shouldn’t have been flip about that… it sent a message that I didn’t think voting was important or that I didn’t think it was a big issue. And I do, and I did vote. I was being flip and I shouldn’t have done that. That was stupid. So, I apologize.”
The full CNN clip is below and they ran with the title, “Jon Stewart says he didn’t vote,” but that’s only part of it. Plenty of sites and folks on Twitter took the comments at face value. I don’t think Christiane Amanpour did, but who knows.
What do you think? Is it a lame excuse or damage control? I personally feel that it doesn’t matter and it shouldn’t apologize for it. It’s not my business who votes and who got your vote. If your view on voting is crushed because Jon Stewart didn’t vote, I pity your existence.
(Via Mediaite / Comedy Central / CNN/ Deadline)
