Jon

(I found this picture here.)

There's nothing I can really say about Jon Stewart's decision to leave the Daily Show.  Actually, there's a lot of things I can say & why not say them here?

Though I think it's right & proper to continue the show, we have to admit it's going to be weird without him behind that desk.  I've watched it faithfully for a very long time now.  I started watching it way before the 2000 election - but I just read that he started in 1999.  I wasn't a regular viewer of the Craig Kilbourn version, so I must have heard some buzz about it early on.

This is how long ago it was: I was often not home at 10pm (when it aired in Texas) so I would have my VCR programmed to tape it.  I would have videotapes of the show to watch when I had time.  Videotapes!  Sometimes I'd accidentally tape over something I hadn't watched.  Those pre-DVR days were so barbaric!

I watched him during the 2000 election.  I watched him on his first show after 9/11.  I've watched him I guess fifteen years now.  It's a long relationship.  It's crazy that it will end this year.

Not that I haven't had my problems with him.  I thought the "Rally To Restore Sanity" was really dumb & ineffectual.  & most damning of all: not funny.  Politically, it might have really made a difference.  I remember the wife & I almost drove up to DC to take part in it, but when I was watching it, that Saturday morning, from home, I was so glad we didn't.  Bands I didn't like (mostly boring commercial radio fare) played for a long time before half-assed attempts to humor intending to promote reasonable discussions in the country were performed, & so fucking lame they were.  Oh my god.  A month or so later, in an off-year election that Stewart might have actually influenced, the Republican Party began its resurgence.  If Stewart didn't have his "I'm just a comedian defense" (another thing about him that I find disingenuous), he might feel a bit ashamed for wasting his considerable clout on a mostly unfunny performance at gathering of his fans.

Even though what I just wrote nearly attained the level of rant, I truly respect & admire the man.  I wish the people who should watch his show - mainly people who trust Fox News - actually did watch it, but there were times when, by sheer virtue of how he presented a story, he did enlighten me, inform me, even sometimes changed my mind.  & of course he was so very funny.  I don't think I watched one show that I thought, eh.  I always found something to laugh at.

I think my heartbreak over the end of the Colbert Report was ameliorated by the fact that he'll be back on the air soon.  I don't know what Jon Stewart intends to do - he surely isn't going to do a talk show that will compete with his friend.  I haven't seen Rosewater, but will when it comes to DVD - yet I certainly hope he won't spend the rest of his days behind a camera instead of in front of it.  As much as I love John Oliver's show on HBO, I didn't really think he was all that great when he subbed for Stewart.  I missed Jon Stewart so much that summer.

& I'll miss him more knowing he won't be on weeknights mocking the self-important & telling jokes to power after this year.