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Jon Stewart is leaving The Daily Show "later this year"

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T

Tedesco!

Member
TangoAlphaLima said:
The point was that Comedy Central could have had a successor plan in place. Maybe this all was totally out of the blue regarding Stewart retiring, but I doubt it. The writing should have been on the wall when he took the sabbatical to direct Rosewater. That's the point at which Comedy Central should have locked down either Colbert or Oliver to succeed Stewart at TDS. They probably would have had to pay handsomely to do so, but it obviously would have been worth it, given that they are now without any obvious replacement.
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They might have, but any decent contract is going to have outs built into it. For all we know there might already be a successor lined up, but CC is keeping quiet.
 
H

HylianTom

Banned
SURGEdude said:
Imagine the high fives happening at Fox News today. First Colbert now this. Ugh.
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FreeRepublic (among other conservative sites) was rather happy about this news. They knew as well as we do that Jon and Stephen and their shows have moved the needle, they've done some pretty good damage. You can almost sense the relief.
 
C

Cybit

FGC Waterboy
Ugh, every time I think about this it makes me upset. We are not ready for our generation's Cronkite to step down.
 
D

DrForester

Kills Photobucket
AbortedWalrusFetus said:
I have a somewhat irrational desire for Jon Stewart to take over the NBC Nightly News and revamp the nightly news format.
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I don't think Jon would do well there.

I do wish he had taken NBC up on their offer last year to take over Meet the Press. I think an actual interview show would be right up his alley and Jon could bring that show back to the glory days of Tim Russert.
 
C

Cybit

FGC Waterboy
DrForester said:
I don't think Jon would do well there.

I do wish he had taken NBC up on their offer last year to take over Meet the Press. I think an actual interview show would be right up his alley and Jon could bring that show back to the glory days of Tim Russert.
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I think he would do well whichever way he went; but I think he would be happiest doing satire to some extent.
 
benjipwns

benjipwns

Banned
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_...aily_show_he_was_bad_for_liberals.single.html
I grew up with The Daily Show. It hit its stride during the 2004 election—my last full year in high school—and was critical viewing when Barack Obama won the Democratic nomination and then the presidency, my last full year in college. I attended Stewart’s Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear in 2010 and have watched the show on a semi-regular basis for almost a decade. And as a liberal, college-educated millennial—the almost prototypical viewer for The Daily Show—I’m thrilled Stewart is leaving.

I’m not saying this because Stewart has given his time or deserves to try something new. I’m saying this because Jon Stewart, with his brand of left-leaning cynicism (sprinkled with occasional earnestness), is a bad example for the liberals who watch and love him.

The emblematic Stewart posture isn’t a joke or a witticism, it’s a sneer—or if we’re feeling kind, a gentle barb—coupled with a protest: I’m just a comedian. Sometimes, this is refreshing. Of everything Stewart can be proud of in his professional career, special attention goes to his appearance on an Oct. 15, 2004, episode of CNN’s Crossfire, then-hosted by Paul Begala and Tucker Carlson. In his now famous rant, Stewart goes after the two hosts—and cable news writ large—as bad for the country. “Stop, stop, stop, stop hurting America. … Right now, you’re helping the politicians and the corporations. And we’re left out there to mow our lawns,” he said.

More often however, Stewart’s stance is frustrating. His protests to the contrary, Stewart is a pundit, and like many pundits, he’s wed to a kind of anti-politics, where genuine difference doesn’t exist (or isn’t as relevant as we think) and political problem-solving is mostly a matter of will, knowledge, and technocratic know-how.

...

Cable, however, isn’t the only forum for debate, and most political conversations aren’t as shallow as the ones you see on TV. On op-ed pages and around dinner tables, Americans have substantive conversations about politics. And while the facts aren’t always right, the discussion is often valuable. Stewart gives short shrift to that kind of talk. Instead, in the world of The Daily Show, the only politics is cable politics, where venality rules, serious disputes are obscured, and cynicism is the only response that works.

Not only does this discourage people who want to make a difference—like the earnest young viewers of Stewart’s audience—but it blurs the picture and makes it hard to see when those arguments really matter. It’s how we get the spectacle of Stewart’s rally, when tens of thousands of liberals gathered on the National Mall in Washington to hear an ode to civility—with an extended metaphor about the Lincoln Tunnel—as if Washington gridlock were a case of bad manners and not deep-seated ideological differences about government and its place in the world.

Again, there are times when this basic perspective is vital, when we need someone to bathe our government in light and mockery and challenge the dishonesty, incompetence, and self-seriousness of our leaders and elites. But this approach, which worked wonders during the Bush administration, isn’t always the best one. For liberals in particular, the idea that government is only hypocrisy and dysfunction is self-defeating and nihilistic.

The natural response to all of this is a version of Stewart’s protest—He’s just a comedian—and a refrain from The Dark Knight: Why so serious? The answer is easy: He’s influential. And for a generation of young liberals, his chief influence has been to make outrage, cynicism, and condescension the language of the left. As a comedian and talk show host, Jon Stewart has been pretty funny. But as a pundit and player in our politics, he’s been a problem. And while I wish him luck in his next move, I’m glad he’s stepping from the stage.
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L

LurkerPrime

Member
benjipwns said:
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_...aily_show_he_was_bad_for_liberals.single.html
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Wha-... what? This is exactly what Jon Stewart was arguing against in Crossfire. He and his show are, ultimately, comedic in nature and should be no replacement for genuine news. It is only because journalism and reporting in North America are so broken that he can be seen as any sort of legitimate news source; it's like mistaking the Colbert persona as something real.

Stop hurting America, whoever it was that authored this article. Go after the actual news programs that are utterly failing in their task. Leave the comedians and their humble shows alone. Jon Stewart is not a political pundit - he's a comedian with a bent for political targets... that make it all too easy.

I guess it's time for another Crossfire-esque blaze of glory to refresh people's minds.
 
C

Crud

Banned
LurkerPrime said:
Wha-... what? This is exactly what Jon Stewart was arguing against in Crossfire. He and his show are, ultimately, comedic in nature and should be no replacement for genuine news. It is only because journalism and reporting in North America are so broken that he can be seen as any sort of legitimate news source; it's like mistaking the Colbert persona as something real.

Stop hurting America, whoever it was that authored this article. Go after the actual news programs that are utterly failing in their task. Leave the comedians and their humble shows alone. Jon Stewart is not a political pundit - he's a comedian with a bent for political targets... that make it all too easy.

I guess it's time for another Crossfire-esque blaze of glory to refresh people's minds.
Click to expand...

Hes on point about the cynicism though.
 
N

not psycho

Member
Crud said:
Hes on point about the cynicism though.
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Yeah, I at least partially agree with that. Unfortunately, most of the cynicism was justified, but it did go a bit above even what I'd consider useful. Especially lately, when before this announcement I could tell his heart wasn't fully in it.

However, I disagree with the rest of that article. It takes the "I'm just a comedian" line too seriously. In reality, he clearly did have high standards for the accuracy and informational content of what he presented, and if he got something wrong he would correct it more conscientiously than the networks do. He also had some very interesting interviews, such as with people from other countries presenting their points of view on serious issues, in addition to the more standard comedic interviews.

Basically, Jon Stewart obviously knew he wasn't just a comedian, and despite using the line he never acted like just a comedian.
 
T

Talka

Member
People I'd like to host:

  • Rob Cordry or Aasif Mandvi, neither of whom I think would agree to do it
  • Jason Jones and/or Samantha Bee, who might agree to do it
  • Whose that new tall correspondent with the redish hair? He did a segment on magicians recently? I like him.
  • Someone new I haven't heard about
  • Somehow miraculously John Oliver comes back to do it, but then I'd be sad because his HBO show is so wonderful
I don't really like the other options. Don't think a lot of the names being discussed as ideas are good fits (e.g., Jessica Williams).
 
L

lednerg

Member
Amir0x said:
Anyway let's share some of our favorite Daily Show moments that encapsulated why Jon Stewart became such a staple in our homes.

I already mentioned two before:

1. Jon Stewart's first show back from 9/11 - The humour was stripped bare and he just said the simple truth everyone felt. It's not that it was complicated or profound. It's that what he said was authentic and you knew it. On par with David Letterman's reaction.

2. Jon Stewart is rendered speechless over the non-indictment in Eric Garner case - Sometimes there are things that are so self-evidently fucked up that it's hard to know how this happens side by side in a supposed rational and civilized country. This reaction represents what many of us felt... anger and confusion and why.

3. When Jon Stewart went after Bill De Blasio's approach to eating Pizza - All New Yorkers know the problem here. Jon Stewart's hilariously straightforward attack on De Blasio's pizza eating ways though just was gut splittingly funny in action.

4. Jon Stewart's Indecision 2000 - was the first time comedic coverage of a Presidential Election seemed more relevant than the 24 hour news networks themselves. The sheer absurdity of it all was never more perfectly highlighted than Jon Stewart's genuine shock at how this is even possible in a modern country.

5. Jon Stewart vs. Betsy McCaughey - Remember the conspiracy about death penalties, living wills and abject nonsense that almost single handedly derailed the health care debate as Obama sat idly like a fucking moron letting this nonsense criticism accumulate until it literally almost destroyed his entire signature health care proposal? Yeah, Betsy McCaughey was the person who started that. And Jon Stewart eviscerated her.

6. Jon Stewart illustrates the nuttery of Glenn Beck-isms with Glenn Beck-isms - I rarely laughed as hard at the show as I did when Jon Stewart broke out the black board and began to deconstruct Glenn Beck's intentionally misleading brand of conspiracy nuttery. Glenn Beck knows what he does and why he does it, he admits it's an act. But only Jon Stewart was so effective at illustrating the type of damage this act does, through humour.

7. Jon Stewart vs. Jim Cramer - this feud was hilarious from the get-go, with both taking shots at each other through the show. But when Jon Stewart took Jim Cramer to task on the show, the sheer level of incompetence on Cramer's part almost made one feel bad for the dude. It was like seeing an ugly snowman melt before your eyes.

8. Jon Stewart vs. Bill O'Reilly, The Rumble 2012 - I'm a little unsure whether this should count, since it was related to a Daily Show debate challenge but obviously due to the format gave both sides way longer time to articulate their answers than usual. When Jon Stewart called O'Reilly the king of shit mountain though, you knew you were watching Gold. The debate wasn't particularly in depth stuff, but it was comedy gold. Their back-and-forth friendly feud is long term, but this was the peak.

9. Jon Stewart vs. War on Christmas - Also related to O'Reilly, Jon Stewart underlined perfectly in one simple attack on the absurdity of politically reactionary nonsense why the level of discourse in this country has gone so wildly off track. He deflated the attack for the irrational garbage it was, eviscerated those who were pushing it as intellectually bankrupt frauds and made the entire thing anathema to even discuss. Then he got O'Reilly on the show to embarrass him further. At least O'Reilly is a good sport ;P

10. Jon Stewart attacks BP and Obama's address to the Nation - This to me illustrates the crossover appeal he could have. Jon Stewart throughout this crisis was particularly critical of Obama's half-measures and stating of the obvious with less regard on practical matters at times, but his entire attack on BP and Obama was a hilarious thing to behold start to finish. Party lines don't matter when you're wrong.
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The Rally to Restore Sanity (and/or Fear)

I was there in Washington DC along with some 250,000 of the coolest people you could ever hope to meet. This was in October of 2010, a few months after Glenn Beck spent the anniversary of MLK's "I Have A Dream" speech for his own little rally. However, this wasn't the liberal response to Beck that so many in the media made it out to be. Instead it was, as the title implied, a cry for sanity in media and in political discourse in general. The event lampooned how the current news media relies on making practically everything into a war between diametrically opposed viewpoints, and how they so often depend on making even the most mundane and trivial matters as sensationalized as possible. The message was that we aren't as different from each other as the profit-driven news media makes us out to be, even at different sides of the political spectrum. The speech at the end by Stewart encapsulated everything brilliantly; you can skip to 2:42:00 to hear it. The whole experience was something I'll remember forever.
 
O

Ourobolus

Banned
lednerg said:
The Rally to Restore Sanity (and/or Fear)

I was there in Washington DC along with some 250,000 of the coolest people you could ever hope to meet. This was in October of 2010, a few months after Glenn Beck spent the anniversary of MLK's "I Have A Dream" speech for his own little rally. However, this wasn't the liberal response to Beck that so many in the media made it out to be. Instead it was, as the title implied, a cry for sanity in media and in political discourse in general. The event lampooned how the current news media relies on making practically everything into a war between diametrically opposed viewpoints, and how they so often depend on making even the most mundane and trivial matters as sensationalized as possible. The message was that we aren't as different from each other as the profit-driven news media makes us out to be, even at different sides of the political spectrum. The speech at the end by Stewart encapsulated everything brilliantly; you can skip to 2:42:00 to hear it. The whole experience was something I'll remember forever.
Click to expand...

I was there as well. It was a fantastic experience. His end speech really was great.
 
S

Sickboy007

Member
You know, Bassem Youssef would probably be my pick. I know it'll never happen, but if a Briton can have a current affairs show, why not an Egyptian? And he's probably the closest to the real thing we could get.
 
Battersea Power Station

Battersea Power Station

Member
LurkerPrime said:
Wha-... what? This is exactly what Jon Stewart was arguing against in Crossfire. He and his show are, ultimately, comedic in nature and should be no replacement for genuine news. It is only because journalism and reporting in North America are so broken that he can be seen as any sort of legitimate news source; it's like mistaking the Colbert persona as something real.

Stop hurting America, whoever it was that authored this article. Go after the actual news programs that are utterly failing in their task. Leave the comedians and their humble shows alone. Jon Stewart is not a political pundit - he's a comedian with a bent for political targets... that make it all too easy.

I guess it's time for another Crossfire-esque blaze of glory to refresh people's minds.
Click to expand...
I don't think the article is blaming Stewart, or at least not intentionally. It's more of a pragmatic complaint: Jon Stewart is so good at what he does that it discourages its audience from meaningful action. I tried to start a thread on it a while back; maybe I can dig it up.
 
B

B!TCH

how are you, B!TCH? How is your day going, B!ITCH?
I haven't been following the news on this but is there any good reason not to give it to Jason Jones and Samantha Bee? They could change up the format of the show a bit with two anchors while still keeping the core intact... at least I like the idea of that, LOL.
 
K

kess

Member
lednerg said:
The Rally to Restore Sanity (and/or Fear)

I was there in Washington DC along with some 250,000 of the coolest people you could ever hope to meet. This was in October of 2010, a few months after Glenn Beck spent the anniversary of MLK's "I Have A Dream" speech for his own little rally. However, this wasn't the liberal response to Beck that so many in the media made it out to be. Instead it was, as the title implied, a cry for sanity in media and in political discourse in general. The event lampooned how the current news media relies on making practically everything into a war between diametrically opposed viewpoints, and how they so often depend on making even the most mundane and trivial matters as sensationalized as possible. The message was that we aren't as different from each other as the profit-driven news media makes us out to be, even at different sides of the political spectrum. The speech at the end by Stewart encapsulated everything brilliantly; you can skip to 2:42:00 to hear it. The whole experience was something I'll remember forever.
Click to expand...

I was there too, and the people who came out were great. It was a huge crowd, almost reaching down to the Washington monument. One of the best moments was when the Mythbusters guys came on stage and told the entire crowd to jump all at once, resulting in a kind of resonant thud that echoed down the mall. There were a lot of decent people there who were genuinely interested in the message and it was, by far, the most orderly crowd that I've seen on the mall. It was a serious lol moment when on the bus ride back home Fox News said only 30,000 people showed up to the rally, but it was a serious gut punch when the election results streamed in on Tuesday.
 
TheContact

TheContact

Member
Well I've been watching the daily show since around 2002. Hope he moves onto another news-like platform with a comedy spin to it, like a late show or something.
 
DietRob

DietRob

i've been begging for over 5 years.
B!TCH said:
I haven't been following the news on this but is there any good reason not to give it to Jason Jones and Samantha Bee? They could change up the format of the show a bit with two anchors while still keeping the core intact... at least I like the idea of that, LOL.
Click to expand...

Because it would be bad?
 
O

Orbis Tabula

Member
B!TCH said:
I haven't been following the news on this but is there any good reason not to give it to Jason Jones and Samantha Bee? They could change up the format of the show a bit with two anchors while still keeping the core intact... at least I like the idea of that, LOL.
Click to expand...

I think they hosted an episode together recently and it was not received well. They were probably testing the idea out, but I doubt they'll go with it. It does sound good in theory, but I guess they weren't the right fit.
 
R

Raxus

Member
-griffy- said:
Less than zero.
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StudioTan said:
Zero.
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giphy.gif


There is no chance.
 
E

Earthstrike

Member
AbortedWalrusFetus said:
I have a somewhat irrational desire for Jon Stewart to take over the NBC Nightly News and revamp the nightly news format.
Click to expand...

The only problem with this statement is your characterization of itself as irrational. Jon Stewart has an actual philosophy about what news should be and it'd be nice to see him implement it.
 
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