WashPost Touts Jon Stewart, America's 'Moral Compass,' But Something's Missing?

Sunday’s Arts & Style section of The Washington Post has a huge mythic photo of Jon Stewart that looks like a painting. Jada Yuan, a Post reporter, wrote a touching tribute to Stewart’s acceptance of the Kennedy Center’s Mark Twain Prize in comedy or “the comedian hall of fame.”

It was just “Jon Stewart has something to add.” Yuan gushed Stewart was “The comedian who was the country’s moral compass during the Bush and Obama years, the guy with the fake news show on Comedy Central who in a 2009 Time poll was named America’s most trusted newscaster,” which says a lot about “news.”

Yuan acknowledged that he is a hero for the liberals at least once in a sugar puff.

He started Comedy Central in 1999.

But he was funny and gave catharsis to a country (well, mostly liberals) grappling with 9/11, the Iraq War, the financial crisis and the rise of 24-hour punditry — in an age before social media, or even YouTube. As distrust in government and media grew, Stewart was where young people turned to make sense of the world.

Denis Leary stated that Stewart can be funny and then “wow,” which is a total obliteration the Reagan AIDS Policy he had just made. The “moral compass”

Yuan compared Stewart coming back for his Apple TV show like this: “He’s Shaun White doing the halfpipe at 35, or Michael Jordan returning to the Bulls after the baseball years.”

However, there was something missing. Stewart’s “What’s Wrong With the Media?” episode, where Stewart attacked the media’s gross overselling of the Mueller investigation, is a good example of this. Stewart briefly interviewed Bob Iger, former Disney chief executive. But there was no mention. 

However, it was mandatory for the Post that Stewart’s attack on Tucker Carlson, CNN’s Crossfire, in 2004 be reexamined by the Post. This led to the cancellation of the program months later. He created a monster. Stewart claimed that “Tere’s mythologizing has gone as far as, say, a villain origin tale…Not even close.” The dude who has always been this dude just recently found his place. The Fortress of Solitude didn’t just happen because of the crystal. He’s no different from he was before.

A final note on liberals. 

Although other late-night host have been missed since their departures, few of them were as urgent during Trump’s years. When he returned to Colbert, there were raucous applauses and standing ovations. There was lamentation, sometimes anger among liberals who thought he’d abandoned them in their time of need.

This is the “giving catharsis” again. However, at least Stewart’s tribe, which includes Samantha Bee, John Oliver and Stephen Colbert were performing all this — even if it was not funny.

PS.

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