Jon Stewart Takes It To Crossfire

Last week Daily Show host John Stewart, apparently a frequent critic of the CNN show Crossfire, was a guest on said show. Clearly, Paul "Left At Whatever Cost" Begala and Tucker "Can't Admit When I'm Wrong" Carlson expected Stewart to go on the show and do shtick and make vibrator jokes about Bill O'Reilly.

Didn't happen!

Stewart, who any reasonably intelligent person (most of his audience, according to a recent poll) can see is a deeply concerned and principled man, refused to perform, saying "No. No. I'm not going to be your monkey."

Instead he took the show to task, accusing it of, among other things, "partisan hackery" and failing "miserably" in their "responsibility to the public discourse." Carlson in particular learned (we hope) a valuable lesson in how not to underestimate a guest when he snarkily said to Stewart: " You need to get a job at a journalism school, I think." and Stewart shot back with "You need to go to one."

Admittedly, I do not watch "Crossfire" every day, but I have NEVER seen anyone take that whinging, self-righteous cartoon of a pundit Carlson to task as Stewart did. Granted, I was already a fan of Stewart and of his show, but to see him go on a show like "Crossfire" and shred Begala and Carlson as easily as he did was just fantastic.

The cherry on the sundae? In response to Carlson's platitude about Stewart being more fun on [The Daily Show] (after dissing Stewart for asking soft questions on said show):

CARLSON: I do think you're more fun on your show. Just my opinion.
STEWART: You know what's interesting, though? You're as big a dick on your show as you are on any show.

When is the last time you saw someone so self-assured in their beliefs and their place in the world, as to really say what they mean on television.

You can see the whole clip here.

A big Shout Out to my friend Ray Pride who, in his fine blog alerted me to the availability of this clip!