Jon Stewart, Bully
But while The Daily Show’s behavior may not be surprising, it is kind of disgusting, isn’t it? Stewart is at the height of his career and in a position of power. For him to have his minions take action that costs a 23-year-old up-and-comer his representation is bullying, plain and simple.
This is not Crowder’s opinion, by the way. Crowder has adopted a philosophical and forgiving attitude in both his videos and our private conversations. He points out Stewart has the right to have anyone on his show he wants. I agree. It’s not the ban on conservative pundits I object to. As I say: that’s par for the course. But Crowder has as much right to publicize that ban as Stewart has to put it in place. After all, if Stewart is ashamed of the policy, he should stop it. If he’s not ashamed, he shouldn’t mind when it becomes public. The Daily Show’s response to Crowder’s video was simply despicable.
Crowder calls Stewart “hilarious,” and “brilliant.” I would have said “amusing” and “clever,” but that’s beside the point. A talented bully is still a bully. I don’t know Stewart. He may be a nice guy. But being a nice guy and being a good man are two different things. Blacklisting a 23-year-old and intimidating his rep are not the acts of a good man. And it really isn’t funny in the least.
[I’m not sure I need to say this, but just by way of full disclosure: my agent sends my material around too. I know he’s sent it to Comedy Central, and he may well have sent it to The Daily Show. If he hasn’t yet, I guess I just saved him the postage!]
I have to disagree Andrew.
Any group that whines incessently about Blacklists from the ’50s has No Right to be engaging in the same tactics for different reasons in the 2k tens.
That is Hypocracy of the highest order in my book.
Like everything else the left puts out, they don’t oppose injustice, only who is on the receiving end of injustice.
They are perfectly hypocritical, so of course they will use any tactic to get their way. Lie, obfuscate, black list, whatever they want to in order to win their position. Witness the rush of defenders for Wiener’s junk shots, that persisted for some time even after he was caught out lying. He’s their guy, their side who has the right views and votes the right way — that’s all that matters to the Left.
JD–
I admire your clarity in assuming that the Left (after enshrining “blacklisting” in the Hall of Unimaginable Evils next to Limbaugh’s microphone) has no moral right to blacklist Conservatives.
But you need to think like a Lefty for a minute. Then you’d realize that there’s a bona fide need to take “affirmative action” against the evil blacklisting of the past. Only by engaging in sufficient amounts of blacklisting the other way can we over hope to someday balance the cosmic scales of Justice.
How much blacklisting is required to achieve such balance? I don’t know. In her ruling on a famous affirmative action case, Sandra Day O’Connor never told us how much it would take- just that we can someday hope the day arrives.
H
Name her; shame her.
Publish the letter.
“…the Daily Show producer who wrote the letter went ballistic…”
I agree. I’d even like to know who the manager was that dropped Crowder — such cowardice also deserves exposure.
For his former representative, It would mean sacrificing his other clients for the benefit of Crowder. That’s more a job for an attorney rather than an agent.
AMEN Tim!
I So want to know the name of this female slimeball from the Stewart show, If she went Ballistic before wait till we organise a boycott of any shows she works on. Sponsors REALLY LOVE controversy and boycotts of their products after spending hundreds of thousands of dollars in advertising fees!
Shouldn’t anyone accusing anyone of HYPOCRISY know how to spell it?
Nope. Anyone accusing someone of poor spelling should know how to spell hypocrisy.
You apparently understood him, so no, proper spelling isn’t a requirement for those that want to be heard except to anal-retentives. The comment is childish.
No. Why?
Hippie-crazy
John Steward doesn’t think Iran poses a threat. He thinks Ahmadinejad is kind of ridiculous. If you don’t think Iran is a threat, then from that viewpoint of cause conservatives look like they are war mongers.
Hitler was kind of ridiculous too with his funny mustache and his little plan to take over the world ha ha ha ha…..
John Steward has good comedic timing that’s it. He is not clever. His judgment is beyond flawed. And he is not as intelligent as he tries to portray himself. And since his main shtick is to make himself look superior and everybody else stupid, it’s actually quite pathetic. Any average commentator on PJM would wipe the floor with him. He understands less than nothing about economy, foreign policy, history or anything related to politics what so ever. Why a conservative comedian would seriously try to submit work for him is strange. Unless it was with the strict purpose of exposing his bias.
All of what you say is probably true, but 50% of the USA think he is their “Walter Cronkite” (which is another story)
Jon Stewart is Walter Cronkite for 50% of today’s TV watchers and remember, Walter Cronkite lied. He lied BIG about the Tet Offensive and falsely portrayed it as a huge win for the North, and big loss for the US – giving fuel to the anti-war Left and its allies in the Congress and in Hollywood.
The Left today uses the 50′s exaggerated blacklist as an excuse to enact their own blacklist today – and they see no hypocrisy in that.
spot on JL. I dont normaly watch jon stuart as I never have liked him. I hate liberals and democrats,
Jon Stewart is neither hilarious, brilliant, amusing or clever. I used to watch his show on a regular basis back in the days and slowly I began to notice more and more of his partisanship, lack of logic and hypocrisy, what finally did it for me is when they had that writers strike (few years ago), I’ve truly seen how talentless he is without his writers.
One of the few TV comedians that is actually funny and is capable to improvise on the spot is hugely underrated Craig Ferguson.
I see some good reasons for Crowder to apply to the show. First, there is the capitalist argument, that the show is successful. Everyone needs to make a living and I bet Daily Show contributors make good money. Second, it’s obvious that he presented himself as a conservative or someone intending to produce conservative-leaning material. He wasn’t even debasing his beliefs to be on the show, which is a pretty nice platform to reach people whose minds can be changed (whether they can be changed is another issue). It does only so much good to preach to the choir week after week.
Charlie Chaplin mocked Hitler. fat lot of good that did.
re: #3
“Charlie Chaplin mocked Hitler. …”
and Hollywood blacklisted him for it too
plus c’est le change plus c’est la meme chose
Ridicule of der Hitler was NOT the reason Chaplin was blacklisted.
You mean the Charlie Chaplin who was a Communist sympathizer, pedophile, and lived in a mansion in neutral Switzerland? He supported WW II for the same reason our New Dealers did — it had to be won to save the Soviet Union. You can say what you want about Joe McCarthy, but we did have Soviet agent-of-influence Henry Wallace as Vice-President. Makes even O’bwana look pretty tame.
Hey JL. While reading your response to Klavan, I saw the reason for The Daily Show’s ban on conservative pundits…”Any average commentator on PJM would wipe the floor with him.” My solution has been to leave TV and solely turn to the internet where liberals don’t control exposure for my news and entertainment. Crowder is too talented to by defeated by this.
Jon Stewart’s modus operendi is mockery, pure and simple. Sometimes it’s deserved, as when he mocks cretins like Weiner. But mostly it’s “humor” from a liberal/left, Code Pink perspective. Basically, Stewart is a comedic nihilist; he attacks and attempts to destroy values for the sake of destroying them and getting a good laugh from his approving audiences. Something like a jihadist hoping to win a popularity contest by killing as many people as possible. Much like the Muslims in New Jersey who celebrated the destruction of the World Trade Center by their bosom religionists. Not an admirable quality.
Very well said…
Has anyone else noticed how much Jon Stewart looks like Weiner?
There is already a “silent boycott”. It is reported as “lower ratings” for liberal media, empty theater seats for most of their anti-war or the trash promoting liberal causes. The Entertainment left never stratifies the bad results and has a habit of blaming the non-viewer as too unsophisticated to appreciate their renderings. Many companies that chose to get in on the conservative bashing find their sales level when their competitors are running away with the market. Those unsophisticated conservatives look at a label and put he product back, opting for the competitor without this type of name recognition. Here is a list of sponsors to avoid just from the Glenn Beck show: http://stopbeck.com/dropped-sponsors/
There’s nothing stopping Crowder from starting his own hugely popular comedy show that is a conservative version of Jon Stewart’s.
Then he can present his own version of a national dialogue.
Money and ratings talk, not politics.
There’s nothing stopping Crowder from starting his own hugely popular comedy show that is a conservative version of Jon Stewart’s.
Until recently, the answer was network producers who were unwilling to put such a show on the air. Republican comics like Jay Leno and Dennis Miller attained the level of success they have by avoiding being perceived as too political by the hollywood left.
But I actually agree with you now. With new entrants like PJ Media, we finally have a forum to really find out what will win in a free market. With that said, I hope we can avoid becoming like the leftists– as funny as these shows are, is it healthy for our nation that so many ignorant college kids get most or all their news from an admittedly “fake news show” on Comedy Central? That Jon Stewart is emerging as the intellectual center of gravity of the democratic party? That might be worth a point or two at the polls, but it shows in the battle of ideas: the left has nothing left but hysterics.
ASDF: You have serious thought process disturbances if you think Jay Leno is a Republican or conservative; Miller, yes, a staunch conservative/libertarian, but Leno has been a scathing critic of anything conservative. Like all libtards, your idea of principle is whatever feels good to you at the time.
Yeah nothing stopping him except, you know, no one knows him, nor cares what he has to say. The people on this site really have no idea how media works. Side note to the people who don’t think you have a conservative voice in the media. How you can you have one of the most watched networks(Fox) and complain that you don’t have a voice in the MSM? So conservatives are blacklisted by the liberal media, but the most watched network on TV is just presenting the ‘alternate side’ as Chris Wallace puts it. So then, what do you think about any person on Fox news? Is Chris Wallace just a liberal biased reporter spouting off dissent towards the liberals for the sake of sarcasm? That must be it, Fox news is the most fair and balanced sarcastic news agency on the planet.
In reply to your question “How you can you have one of the most watched networks(Fox) and complain that you don’t have a voice in the MSM? So conservatives are blacklisted by the liberal media, but the most watched network on TV is just presenting the ‘alternate side’ as Chris Wallace puts it,” let me try to explain the media landscape to you.
The NYT, Washington Post, USA Today, the Associated Press, the AFP, Reuters, the BBC, ABC, NBC, CBC, CNN and all other cable channels besides Fox News, 95% of book and magazine publications, 98% of all Hollywood television and movie productions, casting directors, agents, producers, directors, actors and writers are all very, very liberal and aggressively pushing their liberal agenda through their work, consciously or not, every day. And this doesn’t even take into consideration the massive leftward bias of our entire educational establishment. Against this you have roughly one third of the internet and two thirds of the radio political commentariat, a majority of the opinion shows on Fox and the editorial section of the Wall Street Journal (the reporting side shows almost as much the same liberal bias as other nationally prominent papers). Even Fox News, when viewed with an analytical bent, produces only a small majority of conservative points of view, as opposed to the other media whose representation of conservative opinion is between tiny and non-existent.
Fox enrages the Progressive/Socialist/liberal hive, not because it doesn’t show the liberal side at all, but because it is the only medium-sized “channel” on most TV sets which doesn’t massively suppress conservative opinion. The amount of liberal opinion, in both putative news reporting and story selection, opinion and just plain propaganda in “entertainment” venues, is massively more than the small trickle of conservative ideas coming from Fox or the other conservative media. The answer why Fox and Limbaugh and others are so incredible offensive to the liberal establishment is simple; they are a tiny minority who have rejected the MSM hive mentality, and the Left is afraid that once the genie is let out of the bottle, once people pay attention to those pointing out that the emperor is naked, that they will never be able to stop the spread of a new and much more enlightened point of view that might eventually threaten the monolithic many-decades-long Progressive lock on media content. They are simply afraid of conservative ideas themselves, afraid they make more sense and offer more solutions than their own, and afraid that when and if people really consider them, that the liberal orthodoxy supporting the Leviathan welfare state will crumble.
I hope that explains it well enough for you.
Oh my, yes, do they ever! But at long last, in the world of entertainment at least, there are countermeasures:
– Independent E-publishing systems;
– Independent Print-On-Demand systems (good for music, too);
– Independent video-publishing systems.
Let’s make Steven Crowder a major sensation via those channels — big enough to make his former manager, the producer who blacklisted him, and everyone else involved grind his teeth nightly in frustration. We can do it!
Crowder calls Stewart “hilarious,” and “brilliant.” I would have said “amusing” and “clever,” but that’s beside the point. A talented bully is still a bully. I don’t know Stewart. He may be a nice guy. But being a nice guy and being a good man are two different things. Blacklisting a 23-year-old and intimidating his rep is not the act of a good man. And it really isn’t funny in the least.
Selectively showing the gaffes and idiocies of conservatives while largely ignoring the more insidious nonsense of his fellow travelling leftists is not brilliant. It is cynical and a cancer on political discourse and civility. It is a public disservice. And Stewart is a hypocrite for accusing Fox News of being biased. Yes, Fox is biased 66-33. Stewart is biased 95-5.
The legacy of Jon Stewart is the substantial number of young people who are uninformed, ignorant, uncivil, stupid and cynical.
You could call Stewart brilliant for giving the people what they want. He’s one of the people who has continued to find success, despite the recession (yes, I’m reaching on direct cause and effect, but then, consider what his ratings should be, based on the people he supports — the people who caused the recession — and the recession should have put him out of work).
There have always been fools. Kings used to have them in court in order to remind themselves they were still human. Fools were never given power though, they were fools after all. Today we have a fool in Jon Stewart. As fools go he is really a one trick pony but I digress. The difference today is that somehow we have given the fool power. Anytime a fool gets power there will be tragic consequences after all, he is a fool.
Love that last paragraph. Perfect.
I’m curious…
Aren’t there any production companies or cable channels for conservative creative endeavors like film, episodics, theater etc? If not, why not?
How can Americans/conservatives expect positive results by submitting their work to hollywood types who despise the American people and culture and all it stands for?
Conservative radio seems to be doing well. Why wouldn’t independent conservative production companies and broadcast outlets enjoy the same success?
Why keep returning to the same poisoned hollywood well? At what point do you turn your back on the ignorance and hatred and go your own way?
You know, that liberty/entrepreneurial spirit thing.
Hollywood and the left are chaotic nihilists with nothing positive to offer us.
Where are our outlets?
Must we accept the lies and outright hatred the leftist seraglio vomits up as entertainment or worse, the truth?
What’re our alternatives?
They might. In fact, the trend might have started already. F/X, USA, and even TNT and AMC have been airing some unusual, highly entertaining shows by “off-axis” production companies. (I’m rather sad that Rubicon only ran one season.) Meanwhile, the “major” networks remain mired in Sitcom Hell.
Perhaps production companies themselves are a barrier, though, given the way technology has reduced the cost of entry, that ought not to be the case for long. A group of conservative writers, actors, and directors can form a production company with a relatively modest expenditure. Perhaps we’ll see more of that in the future.
Overheard at an SF convention some years ago:
“Perhaps production companies themselves are a barrier, though, given the way technology has reduced the cost of entry, that ought not to be the case for long.”
Perhaps.
Certainly with the technology available one can shoot and edit a story, ongoing or one time only, that would appeal to Americans and fill a specific time slot. but is that time slot on the internet or broadcast TV? Or both?
I don’t have a clue as to what a slot costs on cable.
Are those “wonder bra-work your abs-buy my personal wealth dvd” paid programming slots financially prohibitive? If not, mightn’t that be a reasonable and affordable route?
I have to assume some like minded individuals are already moving in that direction. Unfortunately I am unaware of who they might be at this particular time.
Father Grandier— “More’s the pity for that.”
see http://declarationentertainment.com/ as one way
They might. In fact, the trend might have started already. F/X, USA, and even TNT and AMC have been airing some unusual, highly entertaining shows by “off-axis” production companies. (I’m rather sad that Rubicon only ran one season.)
I believe we are in something of a Golden Age in terms of quality television provided you look at the smaller cable networks and basically ignore the major networks. Virtually all of the programs I watch and care about are on the smaller networks like HBO, F/X, TNT et. al.
But which of these shows are conservative? Southland feels conservative to me and, in fact, feels like Joseph Wambaugh’s best work brought to the small screen but I’ve heard that John Wells and the rest of the production team are actually liberals. What about Burn Notice? Sons of Anarchy? Damages? Breaking Bad? Justified? etc. Are they conservative or liberal?
It seems to me that many shows have elements of both since some characters have left-leaning views and others have right-leaning views.
Meanwhile, the “major” networks remain mired in Sitcom Hell.
I would have said Reality Show Hell, not Sitcom Hell. There seem to be a lot of reality shows – including assorted talent shows – and relatively few sitcoms. And while I enjoy a few sitcoms, I loathe each and every reality show on principle.
GBTV–coming soon to a computer near you.
Liberals, including Stewart, have strong, inflexible opinions with a complete innocence of facts or logic. Facts are to be ignored and logic confuses them.
Conservatives just are not smart enough to deal with Progressive logic. Therefor they have to hide it from us. Isn’t that exactly what Saul Alinsky is all about? Isn’t that why Obama, who can’t get his agenda passed in the open, is now resorting to executive orders through proxies like the EPA? It’s so obvious. Conservatives, people who cling to God guns, just can’t handle the “truth”.
Stewart is not funny. I saw him on Fox’s Sunday with Chris Wallace. He had no problem lying to Wallace and the public. …and Wallace had no problem letting him lie.
excellent essay Andrew Klavan. More of these articles need to be written. Thank You.
I heard that show yesterday in the car, and at the time I thought I must be missing some visual cues because Stewart sounded so rude and personally vicious to Chris Wallace. Who is vicious to Chris Wallace??
So I watched it when I got home. Stewart is an ass. You could see the rage flicker across his face specifically when Wallace challenged him on an imitation of Herman Cain. (I am sanguine about these things, but even I thought it was over the top.) After that, the mask was off.
Thanks for telling the story, Andrew. Off to comment on Steven’s post. Both of you are talented and deserve a huge audience. My boys love the Homelanders!
Jon Leibowitz, AKA ‘Stewart’ is a pinhead. I recall Stewart having the ‘Scientific Method’s’ Public Enemy #1, EPA’s Lisa Jackson on her program recently. jackson was speaking of the EPA’s ‘difficulty’ in trying to push its fictional and draconian business killing regulation, err, ‘legislation’ whereas Leibowitz says, ‘yeah because it’s the Republican’s holding it up’. What a scientifically void bunch of morons.
Leibowitz attempts to posture as a ‘comedian’ yet panders to his Illiberal base of counterproductive useful idiots for which he’s obviously a proud member of.
Leibowitz is what, ~50 and spouts emotionally-ridden fiction expected from a tweener or person at LEAST half his age.
Yuck it up Leibowitz, as well as his frontal lobe-less audience and cheerleaders. Their choice to bask in idiocy/stunted mentality is why more and more Independent and Libertarian voters snicker at your juvenile dogmas.
Stewart is an a**hole.
You’re worse
robt, it’s shallow, opinionated quips like that which will NOT get you onto my ‘future’ late night comedy show. See, now YOU’VE been blacklisted, pal..!
I agree. Steward seems to have the emotional maturity of a 7th grader.
Jon Stewart’s hubris on display:
“Being a comedian is harder than what you do”
http://www.businessinsider.com/jon-stewart-fox-news-sunday-bias-wallace-video-2011-6
http://video.foxnews.com/v/4003531/entire-jon-stewart-interview/
I’ve never found Jon Stewart all that funny. He reminds me too much of my old college mates from the 60s, who were all busting their guts to be cool, hip, ironic… when, in truth, they were all nerdy kids fresh out of high school.
O’Reilly has had Stewart on his show a few times. The next time he has him on he should ask him about this. In fact, O’Reilly has a segment on liberal media bias, this should be a subject for that segment. And I agree that not having Crowder on the show because he is conservative is biased, but reasonable, but then blacklising his manager because he dared to publically complain about it is boyond the pale, and smacks of McCarthyism.
I wonder if Stewart even knows about this, and maybe that leftie Stewart employee was so teed off at being exposed because he didn’t want Stewart to know about it. I say this because Stewart has had right wing guests on before this, and has appeared on conservative shows like O’Reilly, so he doesn’t mind debating with conservatives. Sometimes the real problem with leftist media bias isn’t just with the on air personalities, but the employees under them, who are often even worste leftist extremists than their bosses.
I wonder if Stewart even knows about this, and maybe that leftie Stewart employee was so teed off at being exposed because he didn’t want Stewart to know about it.
Not being an employee of Stewart’s organization, I have no idea if Stewart knows what the policies of his minions are. However, the notion you’ve raised about minions working against a boss’s wishes is something I take with a huge grain of salt in general. Personally, I think minions are there to give the boss “plausible deniability”: if something done by the organization goes awry and tarnishes the boss or what he represents in some way, minions can easily be thrown under the bus. The boss – or his spokesman – declares that the minion exceeded his authority and the boss is utterly horrified so he has fired the minion or at least removed him from his former position.
Solzhenitsyn reported in his books that the ordinary people among the Soviet populace widely believed that Stalin was not aware of the horrible miscarriages of justice taking place during the Purges of the late 1930s and, if only some way could be found to reach him and bring it to his attention, he would stop it. Naturally, these people had no proof of this; they were simply decent people that couldn’t believe that Stalin could be so evil. After all, the media constantly told them how brilliant and wonderful and benevolent he was. They assumed that his minions, particularly in the secret police, were acting on their own initiative. Ordinary citizens had been told that the Purges were a result of the murder of Kirov, one of the top Politburo men, and Stalin’s pledge to root out all the people who stood against the Soviet government.
The reality though was that Stalin himself ordered the murder of Kirov, who he feared as a rival. Not only that, but Stalin arranged for the assasin to be killed so that he couldn’t spill the beans. Then he arranged for all of those who had killed the assasin to be killed too so that they couldn’t reveal what they knew. Then Stalin had the audacity to launch an immense nationwide multiyear hunt for anyone who might have been involved in the supposed plot against Kirov, all the while being perfectly aware that he himself was the mastermind of the assasination! When access to the Soviet archives was finally possible, researchers were able to establish that Stalin not only knew about the mass roundups of citizens but he personally signed execution orders for many thousands of them. Soviet citizens who imagined that Stalin would have opposed these things if only he’d known about them were merely indulging in wishful thinking.
Again, Stewart may not have wanted conservatives excluded from his show and some minion may simply have assumed wrongly that he did. But I wouldn’t count on it.
Chris Wallace’s interview with Stewart shows that the Comedy Channel comedian is completely blind to his own prejudices. Chowder should continue to publicize what happened — others may feel it is OK to share their stories.
The only response to this is for conservatives to start developing and promoting their own entertainment venues. I do believe Glenn Beck is going just this. Beck isn’t my favorite pundit, but I think his new network will be a step in the right direction.
Who is John Stewart? Does he matter?
That’s my question, too.
Color me shocked.
I Vote with my wallet, I don’t do Jon-Jon.
Blacklists are unvarnished evil when it was done against Communists at the height of the Korean War.
Now its just called “booking”
Of course Stewart won’t book conservatives- it would ruin the entire flow of his show- which is just one long riff against the right.
Glad they finally admitted to it-
Ever read “Witness?”
As the ship of state sinks leftists cling more fanatically to the absurd belief in salvation through government. You won’t get any Voltaire like statements from this bunch. And so they shut people down, try and silence them. It should be a very interesting run up to the 201 elections, expect violence from this crowd.
Stewart sounded like a an arrogant, ill-mannered, disrespectfully crude and misguided liberal. Wallace was gracious, respectful and non-pulsed while exposing Stewart for the bully he is. “Being a gentleman is harder than what you do!” Libs are all emotion and no class. God Bless Fox!
Did you really have to break this short article into two pages, PajamaMedia?
Do you really, really need that second click so badly?
To Mike My aren’t we picky picky
No, I totally agree with him. I susupect it is to increase potential ad revenues, but it is very irritating. I make a habit of clicking on ‘view as single page’ as soon as the pjm page loads, while I’m reading the first couple of sentences of the article.
Webmasters tend to have very little respect for their visitors. They put obnoxious popup ads in front of what we are trying to read, they start videos when we don’t want to watch them, they place those same videos in places on the page where it is a hassle to locate them and shut them off…and they make us click to do something we normally should not need to do.
I make a list of the ad sponsors that are annoying me, and I will not buy from them. The webmasters are not masters of the universe, and they are not nearly as smart as they think they are (They must be liberals).
Mutnodjmet said…
“Chris Wallace’s interview with Stewart shows that the Comedy Channel comedian is completely blind to his own prejudices. Chowder should continue to publicize what happened — others may feel it is OK to share their stories.”
Interesting that you keyed in on the part of the interview that struck me as well. Stewart made an interesting statement about “swimming in soup” as a way of taking a tangential swipe at Chris Wallace, FoxNews, and their “right wing bias”. I was disappointed that Chris didn’t take the opportunity to ask Stewart if he was aware of the omnipresent soup he currently dog paddles through. Missed opportunity to be sure, but I doubt it would have made any difference.
Andrew, love your writing and your videos. You are exactly correct that collectivism requires a single narrative and an inescapable system of bureaucracy and control. Dissent, or anything that challenges the pretense of competence of the political class, is dangerous and must be treated as heresy. Unfortunately young Mr. Crowder was a drive-by victim in defense of the current normalization of political and economic deviance.
16. paul_unalaska
Jon Leibowitz, AKA ‘Stewart’ is a pinhead…
Leibowitz attempts to …
Leibowitz is…
Yuck it up Leibowitz…
Is there any reason to repeatedly mention Stewart’s obviously Jewish given name other than anti-Semitism? Go away you idiot, your kind are not needed at PJM.
Your calling this poster an anti-Semite is just another form of race baiting. More interesting is why Stewart feels the need to run from his real name.
There have been books written on this subject. People with ethnic-sounding names (Jewish or other) frequently modified their names to ones that sounded more Anglo, or changed them altogether. This was done for a multitude of reasons, among them: to make it easier for the audience to remember them, to be known solely for your talents as a performer and not be categorized by your ethnicity, or to avoid discrimination (more of an issue in earlier generations).
Max you can ask Stewart why he chose to use a stage name. However, it’s pretty obvious why Paul repeatedly called Stewart by his givenname – do you dispute that contention?
i dispute it
stewart disdains his jewish heritage and like many american jews will only “cling to his religion” when it suits his selfish ends for it is in “progressivism” that stewart’s soul is consciously attached
Way to ignore TMK’s point. There’s no reason to mention “Leibowitz” over and over, except to drive home the point that “AND HE’S JEWISH TO BOOT!!”
PJM’s better than that, or it should be.
i’m afraid i did not get this impression at all regarding paul unalaska’s post
i believe p unalaska is pointing out the hypocrisy
stewart is “jewish” yet his beliefs/modus operandi fulfill the statist agenda
if anything– stewart is “un” jewish
the only impression i am getting from tmk and robt is hyper sensitivity
also, the same response is given around here to jerry rivers
is calling geraldo rivera “jerry rivers” anti-semetic as well?
daxypoo.. THANK YOU!!! You hit the nail on the head. Jon (to alleviate the rush to judgement types) uses his stage name as a cover, a facade, a ‘I may be Jewish but unlike my ancestry may convey I don’t buy into the ‘continuing Jewish occupation’ in the West Bank’ amongst other hot topic items. For ‘Jon’s a, ‘Moderate/Progressive’ or whatever the present label is to the Illiberal.
As for being ‘anti-Semetic’, puhlease. If you can’t read my comment as nothing more than proving (though daxypoo did respond with a far better comment, again thank you) the hypocrisy of the Illiberal brand, that’s a shame.
BTW, when I visit Israel in the future I’ll try to ‘tone it down…’
I had to change my last name: Haytblax.
Don’t re-mention it.
TMK75? What’s that. Are you a robot or just jewish?
The fact that John Stewart is Jewish has nothing to do with his show or his politics. Perhaps that is precisely why he originally chose a generic Anglicized stage name – so he would just be a comedian, rather than a Jewish comedian (not that he hides his Jewishness, as has been pointed out). Repeatedly highlighting his religion in a posting critical of him can only serve as an attempt to bring up some negative stereotype. In the most simple terms, what does Stewart’s religion have to do with the original topic of this article? Absolutely nothing – so why bring it up?
Oh and for the record I am a Jewish Republican (registered R since I turned 18 almost 20 years ago, and I have never voted for a Democrat in my life). I am no fan of Jon Stewart, having never sat through an entire episode and finding him to be a cheap shot artist who is occasionally funny but mostly a political hack.
If this reply is pointed at me, I have to ask where the, ‘..repeatedly pointing out his religion..’ and ‘..being critical..’ of said religion?
I didn’t look too far back but here’s a comment I’d made to a somewhat recent Ron Radosh PJM piece highlighting my ‘criticism’: http://pajamasmedia.com/ronradosh/comment/194110/
You missed the ENTIRE tongue-in-cheek of my post. Jon (insert name to your liking ‘here’) hardly sells himself as a Jewish man, man of faith or ‘even-handed’ person.
He’s an entertainer first and foremost with a comedic spin/tilt for the Illiberal/Progressive ‘utopia’ agenda and further down in his amalgam ‘Id’ is his ‘roots’. Somewhere.
Jon ‘L’ is hardly the guy from the likes of Flushing, Canal Street or other Lower East Side area, frequenting the synagogue, kosher-only diet..
The ‘Beastie Boys’ (though Adam’s ‘Free Tibet’ hubris is far too preachy for me), ‘George Gershwin’ ‘Cohen’ brothers, the late Michael Landon, Sandy Koufax.. people who are far better examples of their ‘roots’.
He’s a fictitious self-anointed funny man who sums up decades of political policies in 5-10 second opinion-laced bits for his ADHD Jim Jones-like flock.
And no I’m not giving credit to Beck, O’Reilly or 99% of the other talking heads. 1 of the main cogs why I haven’t had cable for 8 + years.
Though Chris Wallace, Neil Cavuto and their guests. Especially Charles Payne, Cal Thomas, Mike Barone, Byron York, Tim Carney, Thomas Sowell, David Fredosso, Hugh Hewitt, Larry Elder etc.,
My last name is ‘Hello’, ‘Good day’ and lineage is Italian. I wouldn’t ATTEMPT to use my lineage to advance or feign sympathy to further a/my cause or situation amongst friends or colleagues which I deem applicable.
It’s disingenuous, divisive and comes off as opportunistic, shallow. Like Jon L., O’Reilly, Beck, Maher, Chris Matthews etc., incorporate daily with a myriad of methods.
Stewart strikes me as someone who doesn’t have the courage or integrity to simply state his position and so he resorts to ‘absurd’ passive-aggression. You’ll notice that when he’s interviewed, he’s very slippery about his actual political orientation. He wants people to believe that he’s a thoughtful moderate, but in reality he is neither. The recent Fox interview demonstrated that he’s actually a very angry and sanctimonious person.
A prior example of his bullying, was against Jim Cramer. I’m not a fan of Cramer’s but he had absolutely no responsibility for the financial collapse and Stewart knew it. Stewart’s own brother sits in a board position on the NYSE – something that he’d never acknowledged. But he mounted a sustained personal attack on Cramer, accusing him of being responsible for everything from personal bankruptcy to Bernie Madoff. It was pure character assassination and demonstrated how dangerous someone like John Stewart can be.
A few years earlier he’d gone after Tucker Carlson on cross fire, blaming him for ruining the news and damaging the country. Carlson tried to engage him, explaining that Crossfire was a commentary and debate show, and so people were supposed to argue with each other. But rather than address him, Stewart went into this weird character and just kept repeating ‘you’re hurting the country, you’re hurting the country’. It was one of the strangest Cross Fire episodes ever.
Basically Stewart seems like your typical sentimental upper middle class jewish Liberal. He’s so steeped in that culture that he thinks that his views are simply ‘pragmatic’ and self-evidently true. He probably does believe that he’s a moderate, but this is because he doesn’t actually have a very sophisticated understanding of politics.
Didn’t Sonja Schmidt’s piece on Jon Stewart’s profane use of Gospel Choirs? The commenter who identified Jon as a nihilist is spot on. Stewart is interested in making humor of destroying those with values, because he has none. Except he is craven in his behavior of Islamic issues. The man is despicable, but has somebody with talent doing his hair, so hey, he can’t be all bad, can he?
Maybe Jon is gun shy of conservatives. In the past he had a guy on to discuss Truman’s use of the atom bomb(s) on Japan to end the WWII. Stewart said it was wrong to use the bomb. Although the segment ended without much being resolved, Bill Whittle produced a devastating video rebuttal of Stewart’s position. It’s a classic and burned Stewart to a crisp (nuked him you might say). As a result, he won’t allow conservatives on his show anymore.
Seeing Jon Stewart on FNS with Chris Wallace yesterday was awesome! GUILT WRITTEN ALL OVER HIS FACE!!!
Stewart is the most useful of the idiots. Ask any hard core elitist communist in our society. They all pretend to idolize this guy. And he is consequently making a great living. He isn’t going to bite the hands that feed him. But, like all of the unwitting, he is just another “useful idiot”.
Stewart is not the real villain here. I believe in freedom of association. If a Lib does not want Conservatives on his show, I do not care.
The real villain is Crowder’s manager who released him, just because he (the manager) was upbraided (and probably threatened) by Stewart’s flunky. (You’ll never work in this town again.)
Crowder’s manager did the decent thing, and will probably never work in this town again. Were I one of his client’s, I would be looking for a new manager. But then that would mean I’m a liberal entertainer, and dropping his manager would probably get me a gig. The leftist would applaud me for that.
Wow. The hate in these comments is fascinating. I am particularly impressed with the poster who felt the need to use Jon Stewart’s ‘real’ name, as if Jon is otherwise hiding that he is jewish. The article says that conservatives “love nothing more than arguing things out with their opponents”, but the majority of these comments seem to suggest that it is easier to simply call your opponents ‘pinheads’ and accuse them of ‘hating America’. Apparently anyone who doesn’t agree is, to paraphrase many posts, is at best stupid or immature, and at worst a person with no morals/values who is out to destroy the country. Even if the points made about the ‘liberal media’ more generally and Stewart more specifically are conceded, how is this any better? All politics is these days is hate and division and everyone seems to be guilty of it.
I’m sure that commenter hoped you’d have that reaction. I’d suggest checking the UrbanDictionary.com definition of a “moby.”
I once thought Stewart funny.
Then he said Truman was a war criminal for dropping the bombs.
Truman’s decision probably saved the lives of my father and 2 uncles,
waiting in the Pacific for orders to Tokyo.
He’s not funny anymore.
This is why the MSM is irrelavent and losing audience. it is only the narrow-minded and intolerant that continue to listen.
Stewart slammed FOX News viewers as ignorant and uniformed yesterday on FOX News Sunday. For the few moments I saw before I changed the channel, it was clear that Stewart was the narrow-minded, partisan ignoramous that is seldom featured on FOX, except when Democrat politicians are interviewed.
Perhaps he should read some Hayek or Von Mises, although I suspect he would not comprehend.
The thing to remember is that there are several kinds of things which cause human beings to laugh, and among them are (1.) actual jokes, and (2.) flippancy, or mockery. These two are often mistaken for one another, but they are not the same thing.
Actual jokes require that the joke teller find something amusingly absurd, about the subject matter. This requires insight and intelligence.
Flippancy, or mockery, does not require much insight or intelligence, because it requires the comedian only to suggest that there is something amusingly absurd about the subject matter, without actually stating it. One says the name of the subject matter, introducing it to the conversation in a certain tone-of-voice suggesting that it is to be thought absurd…and all the crowd begins to laugh. It’s far harder to actually lampoon a thing, than to merely act as if you’ve already done so.
Now anyone who watches the Daily Show for five minutes can immediately see that this is Jon Stewart’s standard operating procedure. His job is to say “RePUBlicans…” followed by a hanging pause (or show a photograph or play an audio clip, then display a certain facial expression in reaction to it) and allow his audience to burst into laughter without ever asking themselves, “Were I required to spell out in precise detail what it is I find so contemptible or silly about the things I’m laughing at, would I even know enough about the topic to have anything to say?”
They can’t be allowed to think long enough to ask themselves that question, because 90% of Stewart’s audience is deeply ignorant about the details of these matters.
But Jon Stewart’s mention of them, in a flippant tone of voice and with the right facial expression, keeps his fans rolling in the aisles.
Nice work, if you can get it.
Stewart is more of an Anthony Weiner than a true bully, a yapping ankle biter i you will. Did Crowder really think Comedy Central would be interested in his conservative brand of humor?
PJTV and Red Eye on Fox are the only ones giving conservative comics a shot, even as Comedy Central keeps producing dreck like Tosh .0; Ugly Americans, South Park and Workaholics. Somewhere along the line, Americans have lost their sense of humor. Vulgarities and stupidity have taken the place of wit or cleverness.
I don’t have cable, so I can’t watch him. However, the few clips I have seen haven’t been funny or clever. Other than the audience laughing crazily every time Stewart pauses (is that a laugh track or a live audience) I don’t get it. I like sarcasm, dry humor, and subtle-make-you-think-for-moment humor. I like the Far Side, Calvin and Hobbes, and others in the funny pages. But I don’t get Stewart. Maybe the clips I see are the attack ones that aren’t funny, except to the liberal left (who have a huge sense of ironic humor after watching Maxine Waters, Al Sharpton, the lefties on The View, and the other paragons of leftist virtue).
I understand the sentiments of the letters sbove but I would submit that Stewart & his ilk have every right to bash the witch hunts of the 50s while in effect doing the same thing. You see, raging hypocrisy is a right in America. I am guessing it falls somewhere under free speech (way under).
Crowder is a bright guy and I am sure he has no illusions about where his politics will get him in Hollywierd (just as Whittle, Klavan, Simon and Chetwynd know). In fact dare I suggest that this may be Crowder’s goal, to make the cyclops take a swipe at him when he pokes a stick in its eye. I have a suspicion that Steven would rather be the conservative vistim crushed under the nazi-like boot of the Hollywood left than a successful liberal sell-out.
We all admire the last man standing at the Alamo. The doomed hero bravely going out in a blaze of glory worthy of Klingon song. I personally relish in the failure I have had in my media career due to my conservative politics. I enjoy being successful in other endeavors, allowing me the option to disagree with the powers that be or even circumvent them (just as Bill Whittle has done with his Declaration Entertainment; which I am a proud member of).
I am still trying to get my indie film off the ground but it remains MY FILM! Win loose or draw it will be my product. Stewart has earned his place at C.C. but he has no freedom. If he strays outside of his assigned role his masters (and he has them) will crush him whereas Crowder can still do HIS thing. Pure, undiluted and honest.
Screw the blacklist. Steven should wear his place on that list like a badge of honor….because it IS!
I, too, worked in the entertainment industry.
I say “worked”, because, once my opposition to “gay marriage” became known, work became something that existed for me only in the past tense. Lifelong friends and coworkers lambasted me in public and private as a hater. Internet hate sites targeting me appeared. I was ostracized and shunned by people I knew and loved.
If only I were Roman Polanski. Child molesters get more respect than I’ve gotten from my entertainment industry peers.
I’ve bounced back and am now happily and successfully engaged in other work, but let me tell you: if you are a conservative in show biz, you will be found out and destroyed. The GayGB will brook no deviation from strict Party orthodoxy.
You gotta love that liberal tolerance…
Hmmm…let’s see:
Evidence that any of this actually happened? Negative.
Name of big ole meany that supposedly said the mean things about Crowder? Negative.
Evidence that any of the posters here have ever watched TDS or get Stewart’s schtick? Negative.
Just for fun, I watched a few of Crowder’s videos…wow. “Unfunny” is about the best thing you can call him. Conservatives: butt-hurt when anyone *dares* to think/act/feel differently than they do.
I would like to thank “SuperiorIntellect” (sigh) for the funniest part of this article/thread:
“I personally relish in the failure I have had in my media career due to my conservative politics.”
Sure you do, buddy. Sure you do.
Conservatives: butt-hurt when anyone *dares* to think/act/feel differently than they do.
Why’d you feel the need to put this post up, Bobby? Project much?
Jake, did you read the story or the thread? Obviously not, or you wouldn’t be making such a dim statement.
A decade ago I used to watch a lot of Comedy Central and often caught the Daily Show. But Jon Stewart has been dead to me since 9/11. I watched the Twin Towers fall that morning and twelve hours later I turned on Comedy Central hoping for some relief, some distraction. And there was Jon Stewart sneering at President Bush, filling the air with mockery and contempt. It was a rerun of course. But then I realized it would be impossible for them to find a taped show where Jon Stewart was NOT filling the air with toxic levels of contempt. Eventually I dropped the whole middle block of cable TV because of Stewart, Maher and Carville.
Re the false name, it was probably a good decision. I recall he told someone he used Stewart because his family doesn’t think show business is respectable and he didn’t want to shame the family name. Guess he didn’t want Leibowitz to become a word like Lewinsky.
I wonder if the female producer was Liz Winstead. I recall an episode, maybe it was on Bill Maher, where Liz Winstead went ballistic, screaming at a conservative with uncontrolled rage. We saw the mask of tolerance ripped off and the psychotic hatred show itself for the camera. It sounds like the same thing happened to the agent, he saw the real Winstead and it terrified him.
Winstead’s hasn’t been involved in the Daily Show in well over a decade. I doubt she has any say over the show’s bookings.
I agree, AK. I worked in Hollywood for over 15 years, and was never able to move into positions that were my goal. And it seemed whenever my bosses learned I was conservative, suddenly my work wasn’t good enough, when the day before they were raving. And soon after, I was looking for work again. It’s been nearly 10 years since my last gig and I’m gradually realizing the ship has sailed and I’m unlikely to get another chance.
The blacklist exists.
If there were actually a story here, we’d see the “we never book conservatives” note. No note? No story.
But, hey, feel free to keep up the holier-than-thou whining based on something that *may* have happened sort of something like this, or maybe not.
Never put it past a conservative to miss an opportunity to play the victim!!
Please. Stewart has Conservatives on his show all the time: Huckabee, Ed Gillespie, Dick Armey, hell, he had Rand Paul on a month ago. The always seem to book news makers or anchors like Maddow for the left or Bret Baier for the right. I can’t think of any pure liberal pundits that Stewart has had on either. Stewart’s show seems to never book pure pundits of either side.
Crowder’s claim that the selection process is based on “Excluding specific points of view” is blown away in the same email that he uses as “evidence” for his claim. Look at the video. The highlighted line is “we never book conservative pundits”. The next line is not highlighted by Crowder, nor is it mentioned: “we stick with conservative politicians, sometimes high-profile news anchors, and sometime religious leaders”. Which when it comes to political guests, seems to be the same policy toward liberals as well: politicians, news anchors, religious leaders. And they also book people who are promoting things like books, movies, etc. Crowder is just another of many, many conservative and liberal pundits who have a lot of fans, some talent, and an opinion. The email says nothing about “if you’re a conservative, your view is not welcome,” and the slew of right-wing guests that Stewart has had on also belies that claim. The full text of the email is enough to dismiss Crowder’s argument.
Then, after trying to embarrass the Daily Show with a non-story and smear them as not listening to a right wing point of view, he actually has the audacity to complain when they get upset about his smearing them. Or did they? We only have Crowder’s word that his agent had to “put some distance” between them so he could still work in the entertainment business. Crowder seems to have some PT Barnum in him. I wouldn’t be surprised if he made that part up. Anyway, Crowder’s mock outrage is funny, but it doesn’t prove anything about Stewart’s “hypocrisy” one way or the other.
TWO classic quotes in this article:
—Leftists mistake their politics for virtue.
—Leftists want only to shut them [non-leftists] up—and they do this by blacklisting them, slandering them as bigots and, wherever the First Amendment isn’t around to stop them, legislating them into silence through “hate speech” laws and “Fairness Acts” and the like.
Why are so many people on this site going spastic over what Jon Stewart says
or thinks? Stewart’s audience, though it might be significant for cable, is
in reality quite small. It helps him make a nice living but politically
influences relatively few people. Most of the roughly 300 million Americans
legally living in America could care less about Stewart’s opinions and I’ll
bet a significant majority don’t really know who he is.
Conservatives have a lot more important issues and political enemies to
obsess over than Jon Stewart. It was probably even a waste of my time
to even write this post.
I dont see how Stewart can say that his job is harder than Chris Wallace’s. Last time i checked “Comedic Fiction” was alot easier than getting to and telling the Truth.
This is an interesting conversation, and frankly I found Mr. Klavan’s article a bit misleading when I read it the first time. Stewart has 2 groups of people on his show: the pundits who come on as guests, and comedians who do “bits” about various news items. I thought Crowder was applying to be one of the latter (which would seem to be what would suit him) and that the “Daily Show” producer was saying what everyone already knew: the bits all more or less have a liberal bias, so the “commentators” all are liberals. But no, it turns out that he was asking to be on the show as a “pundit”. Often, those people are flogging books, though O’Reilly et al are on just when the schedules mesh. Crowder, however, isn’t pushing a book or anything like that (as far as I know) and he *is* a little fish in the Hollywood lake. He’s not very well-known. The producer obviously made a mistake, saying that they don’t book conservatives on the show; probably if she’d worked for Beck or O’Reilly and said “We don’t book — on the show” she’d have been fired. But Stewart is big enough to shrug this off, and besides, they’re liberals so everyone knows they don’t really discriminate, ergo it must just be a misstatement.
Stewart is yes, a mocking comedian, and yes he mostly aims his barbs at the right. It was amusing watching him squirm on the hook when the Weiner story broke, because it was so clear he wanted to ignore it (Weiner’s a political ally and personal friend whom Stewart has known since college), but couldn’t because the story was too big. Of course if the story had involved “Dick” Cheney or “Dick” Armey we know Stewart wouldn’t have shown that much restraint. Mockery can be a potent political weapon, as Stewart has deomonstrated, but as various commenters have pointed out, in the case of Charlie Chaplin and Hitler, it didn’t work out so well.
Oh, and to KDW: Stewart has a small audience in terms of its size compared with the overall country, but he’s still very influential, because the audience is highly concentrated. It’s mostly young, white, upwardly mobile professionals, many of whom are on their way to positions of power and influence. While you and your friends might not watch the show, trust me, on Wall Street and in Washington, and in the State capitols, he’s on Tivo, they watch him on the internet, they never miss the show. Someone once commented recently that most young liberals think Stephen Colbert (a Stewart spin-off who has his own show, which runs right behind Stewards 3 times a day) is what conservative commentators look like and sound like.
Stewart’s influence, the hold he has over a particularly ignorant crowd of stoned slackers and wannabe Hipsters, makes me uneasy. The times I’ve watched him I have been utterly repelled by his filthy mouth and nasty mind (this is a man with children!), his snide demeanor and habits of the cheapest kind of degrading ridicule. I have started watching him just to figure out how such a repulsive creature could have such a powerful following. But then, he is dear friends with the repulsive Anthony Weiner.
Doesn’t he seem just like that mean kid in high school who sat at the Cool Table and mocked and jeered the teachers and the geeks and the jocks? He relishes using the adolescent fear of ridicule as a whip over those weaker heads. In such, he is a bully, and we know all bullies are cowards. Everyone sucked up to the mean kid because they were afraid of becoming the butt of his “jokes.” Jon Stewart makes me think of that Harry Potter character, Draco Malfoy, and Stewart’s howling mob-audience are a lot like the ugly goons that always stood protectively behind Draco.
When we figure out how to expose that cowardice effectively, much of his Cool will fade away, and he won’t be able to get out the loser vote.
As for real and talented funny men, Jack Benny & Flip Wilson were and are ahead of any variety show from both past and present.
Though David Letterman from the 80′s when sporting the plaid jacket and wrestling shoes was very good at most times for his guest’s spontaneity. Today, like so many, ‘Yes I’m a comedian but those darn Conservatives’ types, Dave’s let his nonsensical political leanings out and alas relies on his teleprompted jokes more so than our CiC.
I too don’t have cable, but Conan’s original program and the bits I’ve seen from his new program are pretty funny.
Stewart was on Fox News Sunday with Mike Wallace and spent most of the interview demonizing FOX, denying the Liberal domination of the main stream media, despite numerous incriminating video clips presented by Wallace, making flattering remarks to Mr. Wallace while patting himself on the back for being a comedian which is much harder, and presumably requiring much more talent and intelligence, in his modest view, than what Wallace and perhaps everybody else is doing. Wallace stood his ground and remained visibly cool, calm and collected I suspect mostly because he knew this guy was coming across as the perfect model for the intellectual left; smug, inflexible, narcissistic and clueless.
“(T)his guy was coming across as the perfect model for the intellectual left; smug, inflexible, narcissistic and clueless.”
ThankYou – That’s the perfect description of Mr. Stewart.
It’s Chris Wallace on Fox. Mike Wallace is the fossil on 60 Minutes.
Jon Stewart’s career peaked when he starred in a Muppit movie. It’s been all downhill from there.
They think that voting for Democrats somehow makes them good people, and that they are therefore justified in treating anyone who disagrees with them like trash.
Here is where Andrew Klavan compares Democrats to rapists. Boo hoo for Klavan and those blacklisted.
Humorous cartoon on Jon Stewart’s “Black and Blue List” with Steven Crowder. View it at http://drawfortruth.wordpress.com/2011/06/20/jon-stewarts-black-and-blue-list/
All my adult life I’ve heard about “the Hollywood Blacklist” but the blacklist was in regards to OPENLY COMMUNIST ELEMENTS in the show biz arena. During the blacklist period we were deeply entrenched in a life & death struggle not only for our existence but for the destiny of the entire planet! There were “Americans” who lived and worked in America but swore allegiance to the communist doctrine never realizing (for even a moment)that they could NEVER ply their craft in the good ole USSR. These cowards hid from exposure and were “outed” by true Americans who actually saw the ludicrous nature of such paradoxical association. Communists needed to be outed in the same way that radical Islamic terrorist elements need to be brought from the darkness into the light. And with them, ALL their sympathetic partners in treason. Now, all you VICTIMS, bring the hate. I laugh in your face.
Stewart just is not funny. He’s not FUNNY. Stewart has been phoning it in for years. Now, Albert Brooks, Jimmy Kimmel, Adam Carolla, Craig Ferguson, and Conan O’Brien, all folks mostly if not exclusively on the Left side of things, are funny. Sometimes screamingly so. Jimmy Kimmel is probably the most Left of them all, and he’s hilarious at times. His video taped bit with Richard Simmons left me on the floor, in laughter. His bits with little kids are screamingly funny. [Kimmel's background doing prepared radio bits shows -- he's not a stand up guy, more of a prepared bit guy like Conan.] Ferguson can be manically funny, Conan sometimes in prepared stuff hits 100% home runs, and Carolla’s stuff on podcasts and on Leno are hilarious.
But Stewart has been grinding it out so long he’s not funny. He’s like Letterman, or Leno, guys who were funny once, but have since turned into a comedy deathmarch due to the daily grind and demands for new material they just can’t deliver.
When a guy mugs a lot, it means his material is weak. Steven Wright’s famous deadpan delivery pointed out, his material was just screamingly funny. Seinfeld’s stand up was very muted, button down like Bob Newhart, because his material was strong. Seinfeld was funny.
David Letterman was funny. In 1987. Jay Leno was funny. In 1995. John Stewart was funny. In 1997. Since then, none of these guys has been remotely funny. Because the grind just tore out all the funny they had left, and they phone it in. You could replace any of them with robots and you could not tell the difference.
A simple internet search found these Conservative guest on TDS most of them this year. Mike Huckabee, Andrew Card, Lynne Cheney, Stephen Hayes, Bill Kristol, Ron Paul, Newt Gingrich, Donald Rumsfeld, Ed Gillespie, Rand Paul, Micheal Steele, Tim Pawlenty, Rick Perry, Condoleeza Rice, Eric Cantor, Dick Armey, Fred Thompson, Ken Blackwell, John Yoo. So please provide one shed of proof that conservatives are banned from the Daily Show
You must have missed this part of the letter sent from Stewarts “people” to Crowders “people”…….
“One senior producer wrote to the manager to say, “Steven is definitely a talented guy,” but “we never book conservative pundits.””
Well you got me there Heidi…….. I guess I should just take it as fact that TDS ‘Does not book conservative pundits’ because Mr Klavan says someone else told him so; without a shred of proof, and ignore empirical evidence(like the numerous conserv’s that have actually been on TDS) that seems to disprove it. I know it seems strange that someone would actually take ten minutes to actually check something out for themselves. I admit Groupthink is not one of my strong suits.
When speaking of the “Hollywood Blacklist”, it should be remembered that it was not created by an act of congress but by Hollywood itself. These wounded artists have none to blaim but their cohorts.
Wait, Bill Kristol isn’t a conservative pundit? Bill O’Reilly? John Bolton (didn’t I hear he might run for the Republican nomination)? Dana Perino? Pat Buchanan? All of these have been on his show, some (like Bill O’Reilly) many times.
Saw the Fox Sunday Morning show, thought Stewart came off as a bully.. He must have been playing for his stupid viewers, saying that the LSM isn’t biased.. He’s pathetic..
So, one whole day after the “interview,” in which Fox heavily edited Stewart’s answers, the unedited video is mysteriously absent from Fox Online. Could it be because Jon Stewart got Chris Wallace to admit that Fox puposefully slants its news coverage, or because he also got Wallace to lie on-air (re: Sammons emails)…neither portion aired on the broadcast version.
Biased? Fair and balanced? Chickens**t?
The 2 “comedians” we hear most about are Stewart and Maher. Both are Jewish. The heads of all the major film studios, most of the TV networks and a high percentage of large financial institutions are Jewish. The White House has made a large number of Jewish appointments. I wonder, with Jews being 2% of the American population, how is it they control about 70% of the country? Stewart (who is really Lebowitz) roomed with Weiner of recent congressional infamy in college – and is Canadian. Having read Cohen’s House of Cards which details the fall of Bear Stearns, it was a shock to see institutional bias in favor of Jews in the life-cycle of Bear Stearns. In case you are looking for an anti-semetic post, this is not it. I think it is a fair question to ask how so much of our country came to be headed by Jewish people – from NPR, to the Treasury Secretary (current and previous), to Stern of the NBA – oh, I could go on and on. I just hope American comedians – white, black, asian, hispanic – have the same opportunities as Maher and Stewart.
Judy M. I’m allowing this comment in the interests of free speech but we here at Klavan on the Culture do consider it anti-semitic indeed. The distinction between Stewart and Maher and “American comedians” is particularly shameful. Likewise the obsession with Stewart’s name. If Jews have been successful in certain fields, good for them. Perhaps others should strive to imitate those aspects of Jewish culture that are conducive to success rather than debasing themselves by retreating into ancient and hateful fantasies.
I don’t know what bunker you’ve been living in, Andrew, but when it comes to “mistaking their politics for virtue” and “treating everyone who disagrees with them like trash,” conservatives are hardly any better.
Any time day or night, I can take you to innumerable blogs and comments sections and show you conservatives, far from “arguing things out” in a reasonable manner, throwing temper tantrums and calling their opponents every vile name in the book. (“Gutter-dwelling leftist rat” seems to be a popular favorite, as well as the ubiquitous “libtard.”)
That’s just a sample of some of the “reasonable arguments” directed at me whenever I’ve posted an opinion online. And what did I do to merit such outrage? I disagreed. I didn’t care for their champion of the moment, whether it be Sarah Palin or Glenn Beck. And if you want to talk about bullies, how is it that you’ve missed the insult-mongering of Ann Coulter or the numerous on-air meltdowns of Sean Hannity?
Who is this “Jon Stewart” everyone is referring to? That is a pretend name used by a guy named Jonathan Leibowitz, who hasn’t learned that it’s now passe for Jews to hide their ethnic identities. “Jon,” it’s OK to be Jewish — really!
So again, class: you have to learn to refer to him as Jonathan Leibowitz, Jonathan Leibowitz, Jonathan Leibowitz, got that?
Speaking of the 50′s blacklist:
The so-called Venona files declassified after the Cold War, for all intents and purposes, vindicate the basic premise that Joe McCarthy used to initiate his hearings. He may have been the wrong guy to do this, and perhaps used wrong methods at times, but the underlying notion that dedicated Communists had infiltrated both the federal government and other American institutions (like the movie industry), and had spied for the Soviet Union, were true.
Leftists also try to narrate the period as being a “reign of terror,” which is an exaggeration. Most Americans were not “in terror” of these investigations.
Many of the “blacklisted” were simply given film work under assumed names.
“They were simply given work under assumed names.” Well, that just makes everything OK! Never mind the grotesque Constitutional violations. Never mind that official credit for one’s work is key in the entertainment industry. Why should the blacklisted have expected anything like an apology or vindication from the ideology that railroaded them for no good reason? At least, they still enjoyed the status of worker bees!
Conservative apologists and revisionists can try to weasel around McCarthy as much as they like, but there was no pervasive “Communist conspiracy” (America didn’t exactly collapse after McCarthy was ousted, did it?) that remotely justified the system McCarthy put in place — where a denial became an automatic admission of guilt, and the only way you could prove your innocence was to narc off your friends.
Crowder was foolish to think that they’d book him on The Daily Show to begin with. Would an anti-Semite try and get a piece published in The New Republic? He should send his reel (s) to that Fox show “Red Eye” with Greg Guttfield. He just wasn’t important enough to make a fuss that would eventually get back to his manager. Showbiz is tough, and it’s even tougher if you’re naive or stupid enough to think that just because you’re clever you can get a booking on the most popular satirical comedy show on TV. Especially, if you bring a right-wing pov to the table.