When all is said and done, Jon Stewart’s insanely loyal fans are really going to miss the way that their beloved host always EVISCERATED/DESTROYED/NUKED/DEVASTATED those cartoon characters at Fox News. He really took them to the woodshed, we’d all say at the Uproxx Jager machine each morning, as the rest of the country’s most important demographic exchanged digital high fives for the way Stewart shredded line after line of mind-numbing talking points. Sure, The Daily Show has taken down each cable news network in its own way during Stewart’s run, but Fox News was simply the bread and butter.
What has always been most remarkable about Stewart’s love-to-hate relationship with the Fair and Balanced ones is his strange friendship with Bill O’Reilly. Out of the ashes of nightly bonfires rose a mutual respect between two men in rival gangs, and we benefited by watching them have (mostly) sincere and intelligent debates, which ended with handshakes and laughs. It was almost enough to make people who loathe these men appreciate them a little. You know, until they spoke again the next night.
Naturally, now that Stewart’s time on The Daily Show is done and his friends and enemies are saying their goodbyes, O’Reilly was asked by Deadline to write some parting thoughts for his adversary, and the Fox News star couldn’t have penned a better farewell.
Far more than a comedian dependent upon a squad of jaded writers, Stewart actually thinks about things from time to time. He’s good at spotting phonies and is quick with a quip when challenged. I always looked forward to verbally jousting with the man even though, at times, I confused him with facts and I felt bad doing it.
That is brilliant and delightful, and he’s just warming up.
Of course, Jon Stewart is being held captive by a self-imposed left wing view of society. That has served him well in the marketplace as his audience of young stoners and aging guys with ponytails lap up his snarky liberal talking points. I’m sure he would reply with a sardonic put down of my audience as out of touch white people, but then again most folks who watch me actually held a job at some point.
Guns a-blazin’ and villages burning to the ground. Typical O’Reilly. In the end, the man who Stephen Colbert nicknamed Papa Bear writes that Stewart “was great at what he did,” while tossing one more verbal grenade at his foe. These are truly the moments that we’ll miss the most from The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.
