Jon Stewart, Bully

Over at Breitbart’s Big Hollywood, 23-year-old comedian Steven Crowder has been outlining an appalling show business story.

According to Crowder—my sometime colleague at PJTV—his manager submitted his work to some producers at The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.  One senior producer wrote to the manager to say, “Steven is definitely a talented guy,” but “we never book conservative pundits.”  Crowder then made one of his weekly YouTube videos in which he displayed the letter and discussed the incident.  Mostly, he did this by way of promoting his friend Benjamin Shapiro’s new book Primetime Propaganda which, aptly enough, exposes TV’s tacit blacklist of conservatives.

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At this point, according to the next Crowder video, the Daily Show producer who wrote the letter went ballistic at being publicly exposed as a political blacklister.  She furiously phoned Crowder’s manager and upbraided him for showing Crowder her letter.  The reaming was so bad, Crowder’s manager, feeling he had to protect his business and his other clients, dumped Crowder.  (I emailed the manager requesting an interview and received an away message.  Crowder asked me not to contact The Daily Show, but if they want to tell their side of the story, they can reach me here.)

Now of course there’s nothing surprising about any of this.  We know that leftists mistake their politics for virtue.  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.  We know that, whereas conservatives love nothing better than to argue things out with their opponents, leftists want only to shut them 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.

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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.

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[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!]

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