
Jon Stewart on Thursday looked across the pond to the Leveson Inquiry's questioning of News Corporation's cozy relationships with politicians. The UK judicial inquiry touched on the company's ever-widening hacking scandal -- but like an earlier round of questioning, Rupert Murdoch deflected the questions, blaming subordinates and their underlings. "My god, this scandal goes all the way to the bottom," Stewart said.
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)The Secret Service's prostitution scandal seems to be ever-widening, but what shocked Jon Stewart the most happened on U.S. soil.
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)Jon Stewart on Thursday took on the "mediagasm" surrounding charges against George Zimmerman -- or, as Stewart dubbed it, "Zimdecision 2012."
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)So, Sean Hannity promised an "explosive" and "exclusive" video of President Obama speaking out for Harvard Law Professor Derrick Bell. It was supposed to finally be the "vetting" Obama never got in the campaign. It also turned out to be pretty lame -- and a made-for-The-Daily-Show moment.
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)Jon Stewart on Tuesday returned to discussing the "punanny state," this time looking at a Virginia bill that would force women to have a transvaginal ultrasound before getting an abortion.
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)The Learning Channel's programming isn't all innocent shows about young boys and girls dolled-up in pageants. Sometimes the network slips up, Jon Stewart said Tuesday.
Like TLC's new show, All-American Muslim. "What are they thinking?" Stewart said. "Who gives a jihadi terrorist cell a show? I say ... assuming that that must be it, because there's a controversy."
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)Jon Stewart has long tracked the nation's war on Christmas. And this year he declared war himself. "If there has been a war, Christmas is the aggressor nation," Stewart said earlier this week. But Stewart has lost his humbug spirit.
"Look how war ages a man," Stewart said Thursday. On Wednesday, "one of Santa's unusually large elves fired back" at Stewart: Fox News host Bill O'Reilly responded to Stewart's segment saying, "There is no question Mr Stewart is going to hell."
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)Glenn Beck, comedy entrepreneur, is trying to tap into the market for a "nonpartisan" alternative to The Daily Show with a fake news show on his GBTV network, called The B.S. of A..
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)Jon Stewart on Tuesday unloaded on former Penn State football defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky, who is accused of sexually abusing young boys. NBC's Bob Costas on Monday interviewed Sandusky by phone -- a moment almost tailor-made for The Daily Show.
"I'm no lawyer, but it seems to me when you're accused of one of the most heinous crimes imaginable, you might not want to literally phone in your defense on national television," Jon Stewart said.
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)While Occupy Wall Street protesters dig in and the public decries income inequality, Jon Stewart on Tuesday tried to unravel the government's complex relationship with the financial sector.
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)The Fast and Furious scandal at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) has reached the Daily Show stage.
On his program last night, Jon Stewart mocked the ATF plan, in which the agency asked gun dealers to allow sales of weapons to individuals they suspected were straw purchasers so they could track where the weapons ended up.
"If this was the plan that they went with, what plan did we reject?" Stewart asked.
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)Jon Stewart isn't having any of top social conservative David Barton's views on the separation of church and state.
In an extended segment of The Daily Show on Wednesday, Stewart and Barton argued over the Founders' views of religion, and how religion is reconciled in American culture. Barton is known for preaching a somewhat revisionist version of American history, which focuses on the religious beliefs of the Founders, arguing that the country has mistakenly ignored those beliefs when it comes to teaching American history. Among his arguments is that "the Declaration of Independence is nothing more than a listing of all of the sermons that folks had been hearing in church in the decades leading up to the American Revolution."
But Stewart isn't impressed. "You seem to be taking your religious views," he told Barton, "channeling them through sort of a faux-scientific or historical method for use in political and curriculum activities. And that's where I think it creates some trouble."
The Daily Show with Jon Stewart aired TPM's footage of anti-Sharia protestors taunting and throwing crosses at the feet of a Muslim man worshipping in front of the White House in a segment last night on Rep. Peter King's controversial hearings on the radicalization of the Muslim community.
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)Jon Stewart last night debated whether Wikileaks found Julian Assange is a villain or super hero, saying "he seems to combine the technical expertise of a Steve Jobs, with the cunning of a Lex Luthor, the aggressive free-speech passions of a Larry Flint and the hair of a Martina Navratilova."
But since Assange recently turned himself in to the police, Stewart said he can't really be a villain. And Assange's legions of supporters around the world make him out to be a hero. Ultimately, Stewart was stumped on how to frame his coverage.
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)Jon Stewart last night lampooned Sen. John McCain's (R-AZ) continued stalwart opposition to repealing Don't Ask, Don't Tell, even after the Pentagon released its review indicating that a repeal of the ban on openly gay men and women would have little to no effect on military readiness.
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)Jon Stewart last night opened his program by focusing on the ongoing coverage of WikiLeaks' release of secret State Department cables, and addressed Rep. Peter King's (R-NY) call for WikiLeaks to be declared a terrorist organization.
Clearly, Jon Stewart said, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is "Osama bin Laden, crossed with Magneto, and the albino from the matrix with more than a scootch of the Dyson vacuum guy."
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)Jon Stewart last night had some fun at Rep. Charles Rangel's (D-NY) expense, offering his analysis of some of the finer moments of the congressman's ethics hearing.
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (1)Last night, when Jon Stewart heard about America's apology to Guatemala for something that happened over 60 years ago, he was at first relieved: "I'm so glad it wasn't the atomic bomb thing."
But he was a little less relieved when he heard that the apology was for intentionally and secretly infecting people with STDs. In a segment called "syph happens," Stewart said: "By the way Guatemalan syphilis experi-mint -- worst Ben and Jerry's flavor ever."
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)Jon Stewart was incredulous that Florida pastor Terry Jones decided not to burn copies of the Koran because God supposedly told him not to. "Oh really," Stewart said last night. "God's telling you to stop? When God told you to do it originally, he hadn't anticipated the backlash?
"I think you might be confusing 'God' with 'everybody else in the world,'" he said.
Stewart continued: "Let me ask you this. When God told you not to burn the Koran, did it sound something like this: 'Don't be a fucking idiot, dude!' Cause that's not God. That's everybody."
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (1)Jon Stewart was very troubled last night by Terry Jones, the Florida pastor who is planning to burn copies of the Koran on September 11. "I'm seeing a pattern now of extremism in Christianity that a lot of Americans are finding very troubling," he said.
But Daily Show correspondent John Oliver defended Christians: "That radical hate-spewing extremist does not reflect the views of the vast majority of moderate, peaceful Christians. In fact, this man is fucking crazy. He no more represents Christians than Dr. Laura represents the United Negro College Fund."
But Stewart still had questions: "Where's the money coming from for these extremists? Who's funding these radical Christian clerics?"
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (1)Daily Show correspondent Aasif Mandvi was on the scene in Tennessee to report on local opposition to a planned mosque in Murfreesboro. "Opponents say building a mosque two blocks from Ground Zero is simply too close," Mandvi said. "But did you know that 18,000 blocks is also too close?"
Mandvi found out that there was already a mosque in the town that had been there for about 30 years. So he asked a local Muslim woman: "Thirty years? What is taking so long? I mean, let's go people. I mean, you're not a sleeper cell. You're a comatose cell!"
When she contended that all they want is a place to worship, Mandvi replied: "A few good apples like you could really ruin it for the rest of us, you know that?"
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (0)Jon Stewart had former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich on his show last night, and questioned him about the decision not to testify in his corruption trial. "There is not a person in the world that I believe could get you to pipe down," Stewart said. "Here's what concerns me. I would like to see you as a Dickens character. I would like to see you as a victim. But you make it so hard."
Stewart added: "You're a guy who's the most adamant about his innocence that I have ever met. So, like I say, you're either the victim of a terrible persecution, or you're a sociopath. I want to believe that you're not a sociopath."
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (1)Jon Stewart was a little bit confused last night about the controversy over the so-called "Ground Zero mosque," and with people like Tennessee Lt. Governor Ron Ramsey (R), who said that Islam may be a "cult" and not a religion.
"You know," said Stewart, "I can see being confused by Scientology, or the thing Madonna does with the red bracelets, or this whole Justin Bieber craze, certain 'World of Warcraft' guilds, Harry Potter book clubs. But I think 1400 years" pretty much qualifies Islam as a religion.
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (5)As we reported last week, Arizona released a training video for law enforcement officials training them how not to be accused of racial profiling while implementing the state's new immigration law. After watching the video, Jon Stewart concluded last night: "Mexicans are f*cked."
He was also confused by one speaker in the video, who said that "no officer should ever say, 'Show me your papers.' That's just rude."
Stewart asked: "What is that guy, the Emily Post of the open range? Racial profiling is rude. Tasering Mexicans, why it's just not done! And remember officers, always serve subpoenas from the left. Take documentation from the right."
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (2)As long as it's Miranda day around here: there's something in danger of being lost in all the chuckling today over Newt Gingrich's misidentification of shoebomber Richard Reid as an American citizen.
The fact is, non-citizens have the same rights under the U.S. criminal justice system as citizens. Non-citizens must be read their Miranda rights before so-called "custodial interrogation" by the police, just like anyone else.
PERMALINK | COMMENTS | RECOMMEND RECOMMEND (5)Jon Stewart has already cornered the market on lampooning CNBC for the chronic lack of skepticism that characterized its coverage of the financial world during the boom years.
But the network's failure wasn't just a case of cheer-leading for Wall Street banks that made bad bets on the housing market. Both before and after last fall's financial crisis, CNBC has lavished fawning coverage on several high-flying financiers who later, say prosecutors, turned out to be little more than frauds. And this past week offered the latest example.
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