The American Spectator

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The Scold Returns

By Shawn Macomber on 3.18.09 @ 5:23PM

Tucker Carlson--my initial choice for president in 2008; not a popular one, apparently--has posted a great takedown of the sanctimonious and preening Jon Stewart, which includes some funny bits about Stewart's off-air antics after his absurd appearance on Crossfire a few years back. The summation:

The relationship between Stewart and the media is a marriage of the self-loathing and the self-loving: He insists their real news is fake, they insist his fake news is real. He doesn't take them seriously at all. They take him way too seriously. But nobody takes anybody as seriously as Jon Stewart takes himself.

Along those same lines, I wrote after Stewart's Crossfire appearance:

The problem with Stewart is that he demands respect but is unwilling to take responsibility for the things he says. When it is time for a Stewart lecture, there is no room for kidding around. But when his conclusions or statements are questioned, it's suddenly time to roll his eyes and morph back into the Teflon comedian. On Crossfire, for example, after pleading with a straight face for the hosts to "stop, stop, stop hurting America" and praising his own show for its level of "civilized discourse," Stewart summarily shot down Carlson's questions about the kid-glove handling of John Kerry on The Daily Show last month. "If you want to compare your show to a comedy show, you're more than welcome to," Stewart said, adding snarkily that he didn't realize that, "news organizations look to Comedy Central for their cues on integrity." When Carlson protested that he thought Stewart was going to be funny, Stewart shot back acidly, "I'm not going to be your monkey."