Jon Stewart Should Be Remembered for His Base Hits, Not Home Runs
Jon Stewart’s announcement Tuesday that he will be leaving the The Daily Show sparked a range of remembrances that highlighted some of his best bits and interviews. But a roundup of his top five greatest skits doesn’t do justice to Stewart’s most valuable asset: his consistency.
The Daily Show was never about home-run virality.
It’s slightly misleading to pick out a few videos that perfectly encapsulate Stewart’s reign atop The Daily Show (though outlets, including us, have of course tried). True, his position on political pseudo-debate is most obviously seen when he lambasted the hosts of CNN’s Crossfire and shamed producers into canceling the program. Those are 14 minutes to cherish.
But the real meat of Stewart’s success came in his everyday approach and his consistent ability to effortlessly make quality commentary Monday through Thursday nights. It was a rare show that viewers could flip to on a random night, even in the middle of an episode, and learn something with a smile.
That consistency is notable insofar that it’s the opposite tact of other late-night hosts. Stunts like Jimmy Kimmel’s hoax video of a twerking girl catching on fire were sharp-edged attacks at the modern media, but there was no telling when they would come.
Indeed, all the late-night hosts had their hits, but none came quite as regularly as The Daily Show. David Letterman, Conan O’Brien, Jimmy Fallon, and Seth Meyers ebbed and flowed with the quality of their celebrity interviews. Last Week Tonight with John Oliver showed the most promise in being a regular hit, but the show comes just once a week.
Clips from these late-night hosts’ over-the-top lip-syncs, or fascinating interviews, or a memorable Top 10 list would go viral. But then, more likely than not, they’d fade.
For Stewart, every night was another base hit.
You should consider Stewart to be the Cal Ripken Jr. of late-night TV. He always delivered solid performances and relied on above-average consistency. You could rely on the fact that four nights a week he’d be there delivering a soundbite or takedown.
For online media outlets, this took the form of a rote exercise. Wake up early, embed last night’s Daily Show clip in a story, slap a “Jon Stewart eviscerates/destroys/exposes X’’ headline, and then publish. It was an easy and reliable source of clicks.
Stewart’s hits came right on schedule, with regular rips at conservatives, the media, political hypocrisy, and Fox News. “Can you believe how insane this is?’’ he’d tell audiences, talking about anything from the faults of the Iraq War to his ridiculing of the “War on Christmas.’’
Tuesday night’s episode announcing his departure was a perfect example of his success.
Sure, the headlines from the episode were obviously about Stewart’s on-air announcement of his retirement. Yet he opened with a 7-minute screed against Fox News’s worshiping of Jordan’s King Abdullah II. The Middle Eastern autocrat was in the American news cycle last week after he announced Jordan would launch an offensive against ISIS in retaliation for their killing of a Jordanian captive.
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In his segment, Stewart took aim at tweets like this from Sean Hannity, for one:
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“Ultimately, what the Right is saying is ‘Why can’t Obama be more like this powerful Muslim King?’’’ Stewart says in the segment. “Which is weird, because, if I may say, that’s also been their biggest complaint about Obama.’’
The bit is classic Stewart: lampooning (largely conservative) media bloviators, digging into the past for hypocritical soundbites, and delivering it all with a sly, smiling knowingness.
As Will Leitch explains at Bloomberg, “What Stewart was doing wasn’t satire: It was the simple calling of bullshit, every night, when no one else was doing so, when the country was pleading for it. It was brilliant, and it was transcendent.’’
Nobody’s sure of Stewart’s future, least of all himself. He’ll surely continue to appear here and there on other cable outlets, making fun of the news of the day in enlightening interviews.
No, the loss with this departure isn’t that Stewart is going to disappear from the public eye. It’s that he’ll no longer be a regular, reliable presence in the conversation.
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