The Daily Show

Wed 27 July 2005 by Kevin van Haaren

I’ve been saying it for years, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart is the best political commentary show around.

Last year he went on a rampage on Crossfire and CSPAN berating them for their style of inviting people at the show and then yelling over them and basically pummeling them. Stewart was totally on target. Those shows suck. They have since they were invented, I want to hear positions stated, attacked and defended — not who can yell the loudest or be the biggest ass.

Jon Stewart vs. Crossfire

One fair criticism that Crossfire had was that The Daily Show didn’t seem to do any better. Jon’s comeback that it isn’t Comedy Central’s job to show news channels how to do their jobs is very valid — but since the news shows seem incapable of doing it right, then somebody should.

It seems to me these last few weeks that Stewart has really stepped up to the plate and been showing up the news channels. He had guests that he disagrees with — Senator Rick Santorum and Bernard Goldberg in particular stick out, but was able to have a real DISCUSSION with them, let them state their points of view and get his across in a civilized manner.

It’s a shame that CNN, Fox and MSNBC need to learn from a comedy channel how they should be doing their jobs.