NEW YORK, Aug. 5 (UPI) — Jon Stewart is bowing out of The Daily Show spotlight Thursday after a 16-year run in which the satirist set a new bar for comedy around “fake” news.
The 52-year-old comedian made waves with his late-night Comedy Central spot, commenting — with playful, at times harsh humor — on some of the country’s biggest moments.
Stewart announced his resignation in February, allowing a few months for a long bow. Comedian Trevor Noah will be the show’s new host, starting Sept. 28.
Stewart’s most iconic moments, ranging from hilarious to tear-jerking, fueled his intense influence on media, politics and the public conversation. Here’s a sampling:
Aftermath of Sept. 11, 2001 attacks
After the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon in 2001, Jon Stewart signed on to The Daily Show with a slight smile before explaining — quite solemnly — that leading such a show as his is a privilege, not a burden.
“The main reason that I wanted to speak tonight is not to tell you what the show is going to be, not to tell you about all the incredibly brave people that are here in New York and in Washington and around the country, but we’ve had an unenduring pain, an unendurable pain and I just… I just wanted to tell you why I grieve — but why I don’t despair.”
Stewart brings down ‘Crossfire,’ October 2004
An interview-turned-argument ultimately became the downfall of the once popular Crossfire. Stewart was arguably the cannonball that brought down Robert Novak and Tucker Carlson’s CNN show when he explicitly said the show was “ruining America.”
“Stop…You have a responsibility to the public discourse, and you fail miserably,” Stewart said, refusing to be funny, as the hosts asked. “I’m not gonna be your monkey,” he said.
After the interview, in January 2005, CNN announced that it would be canceling Crossfire in an effort to shift the tone of its shows.
“I agree wholeheartedly with Jon Stewart’s overall premise,” then-CNN President Jonathan Klein told The New York Times after the announcement.
Stewart vs. Jim Cramer, March 2009
One of the most highly anticipated television debates happened not between political candidates, but mass media helmsmen in 2009. Mad Money host Jim Cramer appeared on The Daily Show in March and was confronted with a parade of critiques of his supposed money-making show.
“Maybe we can remove ‘In Cramer We Trust’ and go back to the fundamentals and I can go back to making fart noises and funny faces,” Stewart said at the end of the debate.
“I think we make that deal right here,” Cramer said.
The interview bookended a weeklong criticism of CNBC’s journalistic practices, with Stewart asserting that the network publicizes information given to it by corporations rather than doing investigations. Watch part 2 and part 3 of the interview.
The Glenn Beck monologue
In 2010, Stewart hurled directly at popular Fox News personality Glenn Beck a solid 13 minutes of his show with a hilarious impersonation skit. Perfecting Beck’s use of theatrics, drama and tough one-liners, Stewart expertly mimicked and arguably exposed the host’s questionable logic. To finish, and after scribbling on several blackboards until ultimately blaming Bert (the muppet) for “telling our impressionable youth what to think,” Stewart said: “As I look around at all the truly random things that I scribbled, I promised myself that I would cry.”
Anthony Weiner scandal; Stewart field day, May 2011
Anthony Weiner accidentally sent a lewd photo to his public Twitter profile instead of a private chat, and obviously Jon Stewart — his friend — couldn’t resist the prime opportunity for hilarious commentary. “The cons of this story is, this is my friend Anthony,” Stewart exclaimed. “As a comedian, this is slam dunk — Weiner name, weiner picture — where’s my check?”
Charleston Church shooting
In the wake of the fatal shootings inside a Charleston church in June, Stewart lined up zero jokes for his Daily Show episode. Instead, he spent time normally used for sarcastic comments and jest to confront the underlying issue — racism. “This is a terrorist attack,” Stewart said in his memorable speech. “This is a violent attack on the Emanuel Church in South Carolina, which is a symbol of the black community.”
“This wasn’t a tornado,” he said in response to some outlets calling the attack a tragedy. “This was a racist.”
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