“The Daily Show” host’s hordes of millennial fans and political junkies will soon find out what a sans Stewart election is like as they pick their way through the spin, obfuscations and outrages of the 2016 race without him. Stewart, sometimes known as “The Most Trusted Name in Fake News” made the surprising announcement on Tuesday that he would quit the Comedy Central hit before the end of the year after 16 years behind his desk.
In a slice of irony almost too delicious to be true, news of the fake newsman’s retirement emerged at the same time as a real newsman, Brian Williams, was suspended by NBC for six months after reports of his exaggerating war stories came to light.
Over the years, Stewart has carved out a unique place at the intersection of politics, entertainment and journalism, offering a mocking take on the news with his whiplash humor and pseudo anchorman’s persona.
Stewart’s grillings of politicians are legendary. Candidates who go on his show endure an unpredictable, high wire rite of passage and the host’s sharp tongue — all in pursuit of the young voters who form his core audience.
Young Americans
It’s been repeated so often that it’s now a cliche. But plenty of studies show that many young Americans get their political news not from TV networks or newspapers but from Stewart’s biting satire.
READ: Who will Comedy Central pick to replace Stewart?
In a 2012 survey, the Pew Research Center for People and the Press found that 39% of the Daily Show’s regular viewers were between 18 and 29, but the group makes up just 23% of the public as a whole.
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In 2010, Stewart mocked dueling protest marches engineered by Beck and civil rights campaigner Al Sharpton and drew more than 200,000 people to Washington’s National Mall with the “Rally to Restore Sanity and/or fear” with his Comedy Central partner Stephen Colbert.
Stewart’s ire often was directed at the state of political journalism itself — and the way news shows tend to play off a conservative and a liberal pudits on opposite sides and call it balanced news coverage.
CNN wasn’t immune from his attention. Stewart famously came on the CNN show “Crossfire” in 2004 to skewer hosts Tucker Carlson and Paul Begala.
“You’re partisan, what do you call it … hacks,” said Stewart. “Stop hurting America,” he blasted in an appearance on the set.
Stewart, who took a sabbatical from his show in 2013 to direct a movie, appeared to foreshadow his departure from the “Daily Show” late last year in an interview with “Fresh Air” host Terry Gross on NPR.
“I do feel like I don’t know there will ever be anything that I will be as well suited for as this show,” Stewart said. “That being said, there are moments when you realize that is not enough anymore. The minute I say I am not going to do it any more, I will miss it like crazy.”
Stewart’s fans, not least those in politics, are already feeling the same about him.
