Brent Bozell and Tim Graham write in a May 21 column:
Just before the 2010 midterms, Comedy Central star Jon Stewart drew a large crowd to Washington to celebrate a “Rally for Sanity.” He gave a closing speech, intended to be inspirational and not comical, on how “we can have animus and not be enemies.”
The same man who succeeded in convincing CNN to cancel “Crossfire” in 2004 because its squabbles were “hurting the country” felt the need to sermonize about overdoing caricatures of our political opponents on television. This raises the question: Does this man watch his own show?
“The country’s 24-hour political pundit perpetual panic conflictinator did not cause our problems but its existence makes solving them that much harder,” Stewart proclaimed in his address. “The press can hold its magnifying glass up to our problems bringing them into focus, illuminating issues heretofore unseen or they can use that magnifying glass to light ants on fire and then perhaps host a week of shows on the sudden, unexpected dangerous flaming ant epidemic. If we amplify everything, we hear nothing.”
Simply put, Stewart is lecturing the media not to behave like … Stewart.
That’s right. The man who likened President Obama to a “skinny ghetto crackhead,” verbally abuses his fellow TV panelists, and hires misogynists as employees — among numerous other examples of incivility — is lecturing Jon Stewart about civility.
Oh, the irony.