In a recent tweet critiquing the legacy of Jon Stewart, I summarized that for my generation, who were coming of age during 9/11 and the war in Iraq, we were desperately in search of anyone who could cut through the corporate media partisanship. We craved an everyman to tell it like it was. We were given Jon Stewart. And just like he taught us, we became smug, disingenuous, and lazy thinkers.
The post went viral with Elon Musk weighing in, stating, “I rather liked the old Daily Show and Colbert Report. But now they’ve gone off in a direction that is…” Thousands agreed.
Three hours later Stewart tweeted, “There is no finer legacy than having the right people hate you. Frauds, liars and hack ideologues. Discuss.” So I thought I should.
Bush, ‘Crossfire,’ and the Birth of an Everyman
It’s Dec. 13, 2000. While all major news outlets analyze George W. Bush’s acceptance speech along predictably partisan lines ad nauseam, a fresh-faced Jon Stewart, host of “The Daily Show,” features a two-second clip of Bush saying, “I was not elected to serve one party…” The camera cuts to Stewart who looks us straight in the eyes: “You were not elected.” Boom! This was the guy who was going to hold our politicians’ feet to the fire and smash the news media corporations that propped them up. This was our guy.
In 2004, with the war in Iraq raging, Stewart appeared on CNN’s long-running debate show, “Crossfire.” He refused to
