Jon Stewart returned from the media wilderness last night on the Late Show with Stephen Colbert to deliver a brutally effective skit humiliating Donald Trump and ripping apart the disastrous start to his presidency.  In what started out as a funny back and forth with Colbert, ...read more

• By Ben Cohen
  Feb 1, 2017

"I see they brought that idiot Jon Stewart back from the dead... I know you’re a rich liberal. Are you donating money to those families, the 46 million American families on food stamps, Jon? Hey, Jon, are you helping out the 50 million Americans in poverty? Hey, Jon, are you ...read more

• By Chez Pazienza
  Jul 23, 2016

Appearing from underneath Stephen Colbert's on the Late Show last night, America's most beloved comedian and political commentator Jon Stewart returned to prime time television to lay waste to Donald Trump, his supporters, and Sean Hannity -- and all in one breathless monologue. ...read more

• By Ben Cohen
  Nov 9, 2018

On Monday night, Jon Stewart returned to The Daily Show. Nearly four months to the day since stepping down as host of the show he made absolutely essential, Stewart was back on-set, this time only to reprise a call to arms he brought to the country five years ago. It was then ...read more

• By Chez Pazienza
  Nov 9, 2018

Last year at the Billboard Music Awards, Michael Jackson made a comeback in the form of a holograph. Despite it costing millions of dollars to produce, the performance was a great success and generated an incredible amount of attention. The video below has almost 42 million ...read more

• By Ben Cohen
  Feb 17, 2016

As Jon Stewart's 16-year run as influential host of The Daily Show comes to an end this week, it has become all the rage to look back at the targets of his satirical death ray and assess the effects of his influence. On his next-to-last broadcast, Stewart did a bit of this ...read more

• By Tommy Christopher
  Feb 17, 2016

Throughout Jon Stewart's career there were many, many instances when the comedian played the part of the nation's moral and psychological compass.Specializing in taking on right wing lunacy and corporate media banality, Stewart was never afraid to take on the biggest names in ...read more

• By Ben Cohen
  Feb 17, 2016

Among the many tributes to Jon Stewart currently running all across the media landscape, my favorite is Bill Carter's piece for The Hollywood Reporter titled 'How Jon Stewart Changed Media (and Made Megyn Kelly Cry).' The piece looks back not only on Stewart's relentless, ...read more

• By Chez Pazienza
  Feb 17, 2016

Coming back from a break, Jon Stewart delivered an epic smack down of Human-Orangutan mix Donald Trump last night, labeling him "our first openly asshole President". Hitting Trump for his inconceivably offensive statement about John McCain's war hero credentials, Stewart likened ...read more

• By Ben Cohen
  Feb 17, 2016

On last night's Daily Show, Jon Stewart laid into Justice Antonin Scalia for his pissy dissent over the Supreme Court's gay marriage ruling. “I think we found Scalia’s tell,” said Stewart. “The crankiness of Scalia’s insults runs inverse to his intellectual consistency.” ...read more

• By Ben Cohen
  Feb 17, 2016

Jon Stewart will be leaving his show on August 6th of this year. He will leave a huge void not only because of his comedic talents, but his moral voice that has for over 15 years represented to many, the conscience of America. In the wake of tragedy Stewart has been a centering ...read more

• By Ben Cohen
  Feb 17, 2016

In a hilarious segment on his show, Jon Stewart took apart the GOP line up for the 2016, ripping into the likes of Rick Santorum, Carly Fiorina, Lindsey Graham and Donald Trump, who has announced he is mulling a bid for the job. Referring to Trump as "Fuckface von Clownstick," ...read more

• By Ben Cohen
  Feb 17, 2016

Before Jon Stewart hosted The Daily Show, there was Craig Kilborn. Kilborn's smugness and snark were practically weaponized and his ability to fire off acerbic one-liners was a thing of genuine beauty, so much so that when Stewart took over it felt like his earnest schlub ...read more

• By Chez Pazienza
  Feb 17, 2016

(Photo: Action Press/Rex) “Watching these channels all day is incredibly depressing. I live in a constant state of depression. I think of us as turd miners. I put on my helmet, I go and mine turds, hopefully I don’t get turd lung disease." -- Jon Stewart, in a wide-ranging ...read more

• By Chez Pazienza
  Feb 17, 2016

With a week to mull it over, The Daily Show and host Jon Stewart returned from a week off Monday night with a chance to address the controversy that erupted over future Daily Show host Trevor Noah's Twitter feed. Barely hours after Noah was announced as Stewart's eventual ...read more

• By Tommy Christopher
  Feb 17, 2016

On Monday morning, The New York Times's Dave Itzkoff confirmed for us a rumor that began just last week. Trevor Noah, a 31-year-old South African-born stand-up comic, will be taking the reins of The Daily Show following the departure of Jon Stewart. Noah's just beginning to ...read more

• By Chez Pazienza
  Feb 17, 2016

On Wednesday night, comic and regular Daily Show correspondent Aasif Mandvi took the podium at the 2015 Radio and Television Correspondents Association Dinner and basically breathed fire over the room like he was a comedic Drogon. By the time he was done, 22 minutes later, very ...read more

• By Chez Pazienza
  Feb 17, 2016

"And then, something happened. I let go. Lost in oblivion. Dark and silent and complete. I found freedom. Losing all hope was freedom." -- Fight Club Let's make an effort not to make this nihilistic for a moment. There's an easy experiment anyone can do to demonstrate that as ...read more

• By Chez Pazienza
  Feb 17, 2016

Welcome to this week's Members Only column, dear Banterers, where I will regale you with a tale or two, and tease you with all of the goodies I couldn't find for you this week. In a really weird coincidence, I stumbled across photos and videos that I thought were long lost as I ...read more

• By Tommy Christopher
  Dec 20, 2018

Photo by Wasim Ahmad/Stony Brook University School of Journalism In what is quickly becoming the worst month for media ever, the New York Time's David Carr has passed away at the age of 58. Tragically, the enigmatic journalist collapsed in the newsroom last night, leaving ...read more

• By Ben Cohen
  Feb 17, 2016

You can't go anywhere on the internet right now without hearing about Jon Stewart and his decision to leave The Daily Show. Stewart is regarded by many as a voice of calm and reason in the general chaos of modern politics and he's undeniably an icon to many progressives. Over ...read more

• By Sam Doloncot
  Feb 17, 2016

Since we're only just getting the news that Jon Stewart is leaving The Daily Show, we thought it might be fun to speculate on who would be worthy enough to fill those very big shoes and take over as host. Below are seven people that we thought could do a pretty kickass job -- or ...read more

• By Jamie Frevele
  Feb 17, 2016

Monday night on The Daily Show, Jon Stewart was pissed. While he expressed disappointment in NBC News's Brian Williams for possibly trying to ride so fine a line between newsperson and celebrity that he felt the need to exaggerate his own role in the Iraq war, he saved his real ...read more

• By Chez Pazienza
  Feb 17, 2016

The Colbert Report is over, and the reign of The Nightly Show has begun. Unlike many of Colbert's fans, I'm very happy that Comedy Central's  11:30 p.m. timeslot now features Larry Wilmore. Here's why. The Colbert persona never really resonated with me, for a few reasons. I'm ...read more

• By Tom McKay
  Feb 17, 2016

Viewers of Wednesday night's The Daily Show were treated to a huge, steaming pile of stultified Bill O'Reilly, partially courtesy of Jon Stewart, but mostly of his own towering sense of privilege. Stewart's White Privilege lecture, however, was, itself, not devoid of privilege. ...read more

• By Tommy Christopher
  Feb 17, 2016

Here's it is, folks -- your quote of the day: "Fuck you and all your false patriotism. When Bush took us to war, any criticism was shouted down as treasonous. But a president you don’t like has the country poised on the same precipice (and) no transgression -- no matter how ...read more

• By Chez Pazienza
  Feb 17, 2016

The Israeli government's assault on Gaza has left the besieged Jewish state even shorter on friends than usual, but when an influential pop culture icon like Jon Stewart is comparing you to the Tucson mass shooter, you know something has gone really wrong. Israel's military ...read more

• By Tommy Christopher
  Nov 9, 2018

Jon Stewart presents a somewhat maddening irony in our culture. He's a comedian by trade and yet the show he hosts regularly serves as one of the most insightful, tenacious, and journalistically sound news programs on television. This may be less a commentary on Stewart himself ...read more

• By Chez Pazienza
  Feb 17, 2016

On Tuesday's The Daily Show, Jon Stewart announced a kickstarter to buy CNN. Stewart's facetious campaign comes in the wake of the revelation that Newscorp's Rupert Murdoch recently offered $10 billion to buy Time Warner, which owns CNN. Murdoch's offer was rejected, but it's ...read more

• By Michael Luciano
  Mar 22, 2019

The revelation that all of the emails from former IRS official Lois Lerner's hard drive have been lost has given new life to the long-dead IRS "scandal," but there are a few key facts that the mainstream media, and its influential, unofficial ombudsman Jon Stewart, are failing ...read more

• By Tommy Christopher
  Nov 9, 2018

The Daily Show host Jon Stewart is getting copious attaboys from liberals over his "ripping" of Fox News' hypocrisy on #Benghazi, while they ignored Bush-era scandals and lies that led to the deaths of thousands, if not tens of thousands. In responding to Stewart's attack, Fox ...read more

• By Tommy Christopher
  Feb 17, 2016

If you haven't seen it, last night Jon Stewart opened The Daily Show by launching one of his most incisive and blistering attacks in years -- and that's really saying a lot. Stewart is always at his best when he's doing something as simple as running past video clips to expose ...read more

• By Chez Pazienza
  Feb 17, 2016

Happy Thursday! There's a light at the end of the tunnel! Here's what's happening on the interweb: 1. Russia Didn’t Share All Details on Boston Bombing Suspect, Report Says The Russian government declined to provide the F.B.I. with information about one of the Boston ...read more

• By Bryce Rudow
  Feb 17, 2016

You're not going to believe this but apparently we're still talking about Suey Park. Actually, let's make a clarification that's much easier to believe: Salon is still talking about Suey Park. It's not exactly surprising that the internet's most powerful engine for turning ...read more

• By Chez Pazienza
  Nov 9, 2018

Photoshop: Paul Murphy Last night on The Daily Show, Jon Stewart returned from vacation to find that his old nemesis CNN had basically turned itself into an insane asylum over the time he was gone. Let his five-minute segment completely eviscerating the network and what it's ...read more

• By Chez Pazienza
  Feb 17, 2016

Jon Stewart reacted to new accusations that Chris Christie's office used Sandy aid as political leverage last night, slamming Christie for what he called "Some old-school New Jersey corruption". In the hilarious segment, Stewart also made fun of Hoboken Mayor Dawn Zimmer who ...read more

• By Ben Cohen
  Feb 17, 2016

It's that time of the week folks: 'Glenn Beck Comment Porn', our weekly review of the funniest/craziest/dumbest quotes from Beck's prestigious online venture 'The Blaze'. This week, we have a solitary comment that is definitely a contender for the greatest ever (there have only ...read more

• By Ben Cohen
  Feb 17, 2016

Six years ago Jon Stewart mercilessly made fun of a segment I produced. My first reaction when I saw this, sitting at my desk at work, was to laugh along with the studio audience on TV and raise my hands above my head in a little show of mock triumph. It was the response of ...read more

• By Chez Pazienza
  Feb 17, 2016

• By Guest Contributor
  Nov 9, 2018

Here's your quote of the day and you should read it a couple of times so that it's seared into your memory: "Just because Jon Stewart makes fun of it doesn’t mean he’s right." That's CNN Worldwide President Jeff Zucker, at a meeting of the Atlanta Press Club earlier this week. ...read more

• By Chez Pazienza
  Feb 17, 2016

By Jeff Cohen I spent years as a political pundit on mainstream TV – at CNN, Fox News and MSNBC. I was outnumbered, outshouted, red-baited and finally terminated. Inside mainstream media, I saw that major issues were not only dodged, but sometimes not even acknowledged to ...read more

• By Guest Contributor
  Feb 18, 2016

I'm not sure where I'd be if I woke up one morning and discovered that Alternet and Salon were suddenly bastions of rational, practical thinking, free from ridiculously pie-in-the-sky moralizing and a lot of liberals shooting themselves in the collective foot. I think it ...read more

• By Chez Pazienza
  Feb 18, 2016

• By Guest Contributor
  Nov 9, 2018

This really is Jon Stewart at his best. Responding to the Right's call for the poor to pay more taxes, Stewart calculates the net worth of the 50% of Americans who pay no tax at all (they own around $1.45 trillion, or 2.5% of the nation's wealth), then asks what taking half of ...read more

• By Ben Cohen
  Feb 18, 2016

In this week's mailbag we discuss whether the media should apologize for subjecting us to a 24/7 GOP primary circus, Jon Stewart's continued assertion that there is equivalency between Democrats and Republicans, and whether we miss Rick Santorum or not! The questions: Would you ...read more

• By Ben Cohen
  Nov 9, 2018

By Chez Pazienza: All it took was one retweet for the wrath of God to rain down on me. Last Friday morning I did what a lot of hacky self-proclaimed online pundits were doing in the wake of Geraldo Rivera's galactically stupid claim that the choice to wear a hoodie is what got ...read more

• By Chez Pazienza
  Nov 9, 2018

Other than promoting America's foreign wars and attacking minorities, one of the most disgusting things Fox News engages in is non-stop propaganda for crony capitalism. In fact, you could argue that the entire point of the news network is to convince poor white Americans that ...read more

• By Ben Cohen
  Nov 9, 2018

Chez Pazienza boils down the competing theories as to why Ron Paul is largely ignored by the mainstream media, despite his obvious popularity (Paul actually finished second in the Iow straw poll last week - a fact no one seems to recall): There are two contradictory arguments ...read more

• By Ben Cohen
  Nov 9, 2018