“Go fuck yourself,” Jon Stewart told the media — but, mostly, Fox News Channel — in response to an orchestra of news talking heads having pointed to Stewart’s snarking about the Affordable Care Act as proof of its failure. “If you’ve lost Jon Stewart you’re in trouble,” FNC’s Howard Kurtz said at the top of Stewart’s The Daily Show segment last night, followed by other mostly FNC talking heads and guests contributing plenty more where that came from:
* “I guess it was very significant that even Jon Stewart has turned against this.”
* “I can’t recall even Jon Stewart doing that before.”
* “When Jon Stewart and SNL are making fun of the job you are doing and the website, that speaks to the fact that young Americans are laughing at the secretary and the website.”
“If that causes things to end, why is the network you are on still on the air?” Stewart faux wondered aloud. “Don’t act like us making jokes about a certain program or the president is evidence that politician, or issue, has reached some tipping point for action,” he scolded, noting he’d also mocked former President Bush, VPOTUS Dick Cheney, etc.
“The jokes we do here on this program seem to accomplish very little,” he continued. “They do provide perhaps a little catharsis or perspective. Most of the stuff we complain about never changes. … Don’t’ you use our joke as evidence that the thing you hate must be stopped ’cause I’m sure when we joke about shit you like, you will be more than happy to ignore it. We add insult, not injury.” Stewart concluded with a tuneful message to media/FNC: “Go fuck yourself.” Watch here:
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