Tuned In+Television | January 13, 2012

PAC Man Colbert “Gives” the Money and Runs, for President

By James Poniewozik

With the announcement of a second run, Colbert will hand over the money from his Super PAC to Jon Stewart and give up control of the war chest. Wink, wink.

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Tuned In+Remembrance | December 16, 2011

Christopher Hitchens, RIP

By James Poniewozik

Christopher Hitchens, the brilliant, pugilistic essayist and journalist, died Thursday of cancer at age 62. This is not a personal remembrance of Hitchens; I didn’t know him. It’s too bad, because from all accounts knowing “Hitch” was a bracing experience, involving arguments and legendary drinking bouts that Hitchens, inevitably, would win. (There will be plenty [...]

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Tuned In+Uncategorized | August 16, 2011

The Morning After: Jon Stewart Sticks Up for Invisible Man Ron Paul

By James Poniewozik

In a way, criticizing the political media for imbalanced coverage of the Iowa Straw Poll is like criticizing the sports media for imbalanced coverage of the Lingerie Bowl. It’s a nonbinding, festival-like event in which candidates essentially buy votes (or at least buy entrance, food and entertainment for their voters), so arguably the most misleading [...]

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Tuned In+News Media | April 8, 2011

RIP Jon Stewart's Glenn Beck Impression, 2009-2011

By James Poniewozik

It was too soon. Dammit, they took him from us too soon. So it was that, with the announcement that Glenn Beck would be leaving his Fox News show, Jon Stewart and his Daily Show writers took what they must have assumed would be the years’ worth of Beck material they would have in the [...]

+January 11, 2011

The Night Shift: Jon Stewart Confronts the Arizona Shootings, Makes a Passionate Appeal For Sanity and Hope

By Steven James Snyder

  Talk about a hard night to be a late night comedian. Given the very public violence of the weekend, and the attempted assassination of a sitting United States congresswoman, more than a few media observers wondered aloud as to how the nation’s funny men would return to the air Monday night. In the case [...]

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Tuned In+News Media | December 17, 2010

Never Forget: Jon Stewart Keeps Responding to First Responders

By James Poniewozik

9/11 was a tragedy that happened to the entire nation, and in its larger ramifications, to the world. But New Yorkers also felt it, and still feel it, on a personal level: not just the fear, the terrible sights and the awful memories (the rest of America watched 9/11; we smelled it), but also the [...]

+TV Networks | December 14, 2010

The Night Shift: Jon Stewart's Seamless, Searing Takedown of Congressional 9/11 Hypocrisy

By Steven James Snyder

It’s always been a touchy subject on The Daily Show – the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, which redefined the battlefield of American politics. Following his emotional return to the airwaves in 2001, Stewart seemed somewhat hesitant about discussing the attacks. In the nine years since, he’s unloaded freely on the Bush administration’s rush to [...]

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Tuned In+News Media | November 12, 2010

Stewart on Maddow on Stewart on the News

By James Poniewozik

Last night, Rachel Maddow devoted her MSNBC program to an interview with Jon Stewart about the message of his Rally to Restore Sanity, and its critique of the news media, especially—this being a cable news show—cable news. (See the whole thing here.) I don’t want to oversimplify the interview, which got into some interesting points [...]

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Tuned In+News Media | November 11, 2010

Tucker Carlson Generously Proves Jon Stewart Right

By James Poniewozik

Conservative journalist and sometime TV pundit Tucker Carlson is not Keith Olbermann; he just plays him on the Internet. This past summer, Carlson’s website, The Daily Caller, purchased the URL keitholbermann.com and used the domain to host (generally unfavorable) Daily Caller articles about the liberal MSNBC host. Last week, after Keith Olbermann’s suspension from MSNBC [...]

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Tuned In+News Media | November 10, 2010

The Morning After: Olbermann Is Sorry, But Not for That

By James Poniewozik

Keith Olbermann returned to the air after what turned out to be a brief “indeterminate” suspension from MSNBC for violating its policy by making unapproved donations to three political candidates. He had three apologies to his viewers, but not for the donations. Olbermann was sorry, he said, for (1) all the drama; (2) being unaware [...]

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Tuned In+News Media | November 2, 2010

Sanitized? Olbermann Suspends 'Worst Person' After Rally

By James Poniewozik

After the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear Saturday, Keith Olbermann went on the defensive on Twitter, tweeting that Jon Stewart had “jumped a shark” in behaving as though left and right voices in cable news were equally as guilty for creating a toxic tone in media discourse. (To be fair, Olbermann said it was [...]

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Tuned In+News Media | October 30, 2010

Stewart and Colbert's Rally: Irony and Sincerity, Merged

By James Poniewozik

America is about putting together things that are not supposed to go together. Korean tacos, for instance. (Which, really, you should try.) Or Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and R2D2. Or irony and sincerity. Which is to say, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert put together a very American show on the National Mall today with the Rally to [...]

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Tuned In+Uncategorized | October 29, 2010

How Political Is the Rally for Sanity?

By James Poniewozik

Before anyone opines on The Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear this weekend, it’s worth noting that the thing hasn’t actually, um, happened; there have been an awful lot of judgments made on an event whose content we don’t even know yet. So I can only judge the event on the basis of what Jon [...]

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Tuned In+Uncategorized | October 28, 2010

Obama and Stewart: What Fake News Can Do

By James Poniewozik

“I don’t want to lump you in with a lot of other pundits,” President Barack Obama told Jon Stewart in his interview on last night’s Daily Show. In saying that, Obama brought up a question that Stewart’s rising prominence, and this weekend’s Rally to Restore Sanity, have underscored: should we lump in Stewart with other [...]

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Tuned In+Uncategorized | October 25, 2010

The Morning After: Me on CNN on Jon Stewart on CNN

By James Poniewozik

As promised/threatened, I went on CNN’s Reliable Sources with Howard Kurtz Sunday to discuss the impending Jon Stewart / Stephen Colbert rally in Washington. Among other things, I mentioned that you could see the rally as an outgrowth of Stewart’s appearance on CNN’s Crossfire in 2004, in which he said that show, and other cable [...]

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Tuned In+News Media | October 22, 2010

Juan Williams: Did He Have a Problem Opinion, or Do We Have a Problem With Opinions?

By James Poniewozik

You do not really need to shed a tear for Juan Williams, unless you weep droplets of gold, and them you can pile them on top of the three-year $2 million contract Williams received from Fox News after NPR cut ties with him. To sum up: Monday night, Williams said on The O’Reilly Factor that [...]

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Tuned In+October 22, 2010

Dead Tree Alert: Sane Clown Posse

By James Poniewozik

Is Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert’s Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear a political event? NPR—which is currently having its own problems defining the limits of public commentary with its Juan Williams scandal—says so, having forbidden its reporters to attend the event. In an essay in this week’s print TIME (not yet available online), I [...]

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Tuned In+Uncategorized | October 15, 2010

Sanity and Qualms: Stewart, Colbert Merging D.C. Rallies

By James Poniewozik

It’s been heavily foreshadowed for a while to anyone watching The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, but sure enough, on last night’s TDS we learned that Stephen Colbert didn’t get a permit (or “didn’t get a permit”) for his March to Keep Fear Alive counterpoint to Jon Stewart’s Rally to Restore Sanity. So last [...]

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Tuned In+Uncategorized | October 6, 2010

Jon Stewart Talks Sanity, Sukkot with Terry Gross

By James Poniewozik

Earlier this week, Terry Gross of NPR’s Fresh Air interviewed Jon Stewart on stage at New York’s 92nd Street Y to discuss his upcoming Rally to Restore Sanity, Glenn Beck and other media and politics matters. And while the talk was recorded before the Rick Sanchez “Jon Stewart and the Jews Control the Media” flap, [...]

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Tuned In+News Media | October 1, 2010

Oy Gevalt! Rick Sanchez Blasts "Bigoted" Jon Stewart, Says CNN Run by Jews

By James Poniewozik

Update: CNN announced this afternoon that Sanchez is “no longer with the company.” CNN’s Rick Sanchez, a frequent target (like many anchors) of The Daily Show, went on comedian (and CNN contributor) Pete Dominick’s satellite radio show and said that Stewart was picking on him out of bigotry. And then he took it a little [...]