4chan Oh No Theyre Back Again
Jon Stewart cares less about his legacy than you practice
On the eve of entering the one-act hall of fame, the former host of 'The Daily Show' is already in his 2nd act
"Mostly, they are non particularly careful about where they make their bowels," he explains.
Vii years after he retired from hosting "The Daily Show," just as Donald Trump was starting what seemed in 2015 to be a kind of a joke of a campaign, Stewart is calling past video conversation from Hockhockson, N.J., where he lives near a 45-acre animal sanctuary he runs with his wife, Tracey, a veterinary technician. The town regulates how much creature waste is allowed to accumulate on certain pastureland. "So you detect yourself in a situation where you're like, 'Oh, the beast got out on the matter, but, you lot know, we're pooped out. We're at our poop capacity,' " says Stewart.
Stewart has called himself a "turd miner" in his comedy work, too. For 16 years every bit the host of and creative strength behind "The Daily Prove," he was panning for truth and laughs through the sludge of politics and cable news — while also co-creating "The Colbert Written report" and racking upwardly 22 Emmys, v Peabody Awards, 2 Grammys and 2 New York Times best-selling books along the way. When he started in 1999, no one expected him to plow a satirical riff on the news into appointment national idiot box, and on One-act Central, no less.
Merely he was funny and gave catharsis to a country (well, mostly liberals) grappling with 9/11, the Republic of iraq War, the financial crisis and the rise of 24-60 minutes punditry — in an age earlier social media, or even YouTube. Every bit distrust in government and media grew, Stewart was where immature people turned to make sense of the world.
"He created a genre," says Trevor Noah, Stewart'southward successor at "The Daily Testify." "Everyone thought for a very long time that one-act was an escape from seriousness. 'No, we just brand the jokes. Don't say anything existent. … And I think what Jon Stewart successfully did was he inverted that thought and he said, 'No, comedy, and especially satire, will exist the home of actuality and hard subjects and ideas.' "
The show worked because "he congenital it in his epitome … it was so uniquely virtually him," says Lorne Michaels, creator and executive producer of "Saturday Night Alive." He picked the satirical targets, he brought in correspondents who made him laugh, he interviewed serious people without being a peachy, Michaels explains. It's what Michaels and David Letterman did to build successful shows: "You build it around the things you're actually interested in."
On Sunday, Stewart will become the 23rd recipient of the Marker Twain Prize for American Humor from the Kennedy Eye. It'south substantially an consecration into the one-act icons' hall of fame, alongside Michaels, Tina Fey, Eddie Tater, Nib Murray. Stewart gave speeches at the Twain Prize ceremonies for both his buddy Dave Chappelle and his hero George Carlin, so he knew what it meant when the Kennedy Center called. But still, it was weird. All this? For turd mining?
"I recall thinking similar, Oh, that can't be. I'm a young comedian," says Stewart. "And it took me a little scrap to go like, Oh right, I'g onetime. I get it now. I'm that guy. I'thou the guy they want to exist like, 'We're gonna throw you a party because nosotros don't know how long this is gonna go.' "
Thing is, Stewart is immature, at to the lowest degree relative to other large-fourth dimension comedians who've left their history-making shows. And he's not done. In fact, he just started experimenting with a second human activity in streaming TV that's a lot like the show that fabricated him famous. It'south an open invitation for comparisons and criticisms — a ruby-red greatcoat in the Internet bull band — that seems to demonstrate a full lack of business organisation for preserving his legacy.
Which makes this an odd time to receive a legacy award.
Stewart, a lot like your dad on Zoom, has positioned his camera so that I am either closely examining his pores or frequently talking to the elevation of his head. He's in his home function and has on glasses and a gray sweatshirt. But talk to anyone who worked with him on "The Daily Evidence," and they'll say he wears the same outfit every single day: a T-shirt, khakis and a Mets cap, like Steve Jobs and his turtlenecks. "It's possible that he had xx different versions of the same T-shirt and pants combo," says Samantha Bee, who was "The Daily Show'due south" longest-running correspondent. As a joke, the staff bought him that exact outfit for his 50th altogether.
Tracey did the decorating, he says, "because she knows that left to my own devices, my office would be milk crates." Behind him are photos of his kids, Nate and Maggie, blackness-and-white photographs of the Jersey Shore taken by his adept buddy, Bruce Springsteen, and, near prominently displayed, a large blowup of the 1972 New York Knicks championship squad with Clyde Frazier and Bill Bradley.
"That's up at that place to remind me that they did win once, similar 50 years ago," he says.
That Jon Stewart still lives in New Jersey is very Jon Stewart. At one signal in his younger life, he says, "the only band that I had seen more than than Bruce was a band called Backstreets, which was a Bruce tribute band."
He comes from a long line of Jewish immigrants. 1 grandmother lived through the pogroms in Russia. One grandfather, from a Jewish customs in Inner Mongolia, fled Japanese invasion. Stewart and his older brother Larry were raised in Lawrenceville, N.J., nearly Princeton. Their father, Donald, a physicist, left their mother, Marian, a teacher, when Stewart was eleven. Eventually, Stewart and his male parent became estranged.
Information technology was on his 2nd dark doing stand-upward in his 20s that he became Jon Stewart. He'd been built-in Jonathan Stuart Leibowitz, as Trump once helpfully reminded the earth on Twitter. But the emcee had trouble pronouncing it and, every bit Stewart said in his Twitter war with Trump, "Can't an overrated Jew have a complicated human relationship with his dad without being accused of hiding his heritage?" (They reconciled by the end of his father's life.)
Repeated failure is the backbone of whatever showbiz get-go, and Stewart had a pretty spectacular run.
"I always felt estranged from the world," Stewart says. "I always felt similar, this is a brain that would like to exist in the world but not participate in it. It doesn't work right. At that place's something wrong that is not valuable to what appears to be normal society."
He'd dreamed of being a professional soccer thespian but knew it was a long shot and, anyway, blew his knee out in higher at William & Mary.
And so he moved back to Jersey and tried real jobs, only to get fired once again and again. Porter in a bakery. Autoclave guy at a cancer-inquiry lab. Sorting live mosquitoes for the New Bailiwick of jersey Section of Health. His own brother fired him from his get-go chore equally a stock male child at Woolworth's. Later, in New York, he collection a catering van and managed to get it towed with the nutrient he was supposed to drop off at a holiday party still inside. "I had to chase that f---ing van all the style from Midtown to the impound lot," he says.
That comedy might exist the answer, he says, "I'd always had that in my head." But it wasn't until he started bartending at City Gardens, a legendary punk order where he'd sentry Joan Jett, GWAR and Butthole Surfers that he could see a possibility of a different life. Maybe on a stage. Not behind a bar. Non in Trenton. Drinking himself into oblivion at the other bar where he worked, which was located under a liquor store, he had an epiphany. "I was like, 'Okay, this isn't how I'm going to die.' " He got a half dozen-calendar week lease in New York, "and merely said, like, 'I'one thousand going to become where I call back my encephalon will feel at dwelling house.' "
"Jon was a jerry-built soccer histrion who thought he was funny, and he was funny," says Denis Leary, who came upwards in the clubs with Stewart, aslope Colin Quinn, Chris Rock and teenage Dave Chappelle working for beer money at Grab a Ascent Star or a plate of hummus at the One-act Cellar. His souvenir, says Leary, was being and then charming yous didn't realize he was too this angry, ranting guy. "He tin can be really goofy, and at the aforementioned time, before y'all knew it, you'd be like, 'Oh wow, that's a consummate obliteration of the Reagan AIDS policy he but did.' "
It took half-dozen years, but in 1992, Stewart did the first of many stand up-up sets on "Letterman" — his ultimate goal — with jokes about dearth in Russia, immigrants, bigotry, nuclear state of war, Israel, and imagining Jesus, Moses and Muhammad as rivals on the aforementioned high school swim team. So he went home and the high concluded. "I was like, I all the same live in a hovel," Stewart says. "It was an illegal sublet with a pigsty in the flooring where you could meet rats running around."
Hosting gigs came and went, until in 1993, MTV gave him "The Jon Stewart Show," its version of a belatedly-night talk testify. Stewart wore a leather jacket; interviewed MTV VJs; did goofy sketches, like a version of Orpheus in which a puppet Tori Spelling is rescued from Hades; and showcased musical guests like Organized religion No More, Ol' Dirty Bastard, and "Weird Al" Yankovic, who were as well hip for the networks. If he was bored or had greater ambitions, he didn't show it.
"The hugger-mugger of Jon is to non be living in the future, but to be living in the nowadays and enjoying the at present and not going, 'Why do I accept to interview this impaired person?' " says Steve Higgins, a writer on "The Jon Stewart Prove" and now a longtime writer-producer on "Sat Dark Live."
When Stewart took over "The Daily Show" in 1999, from its inaugural host, Craig Kilborn, he was that guy from MTV who'd had his eponymous talk show canceled after Marilyn Manson burned a Bible onstage.
It was going to go canceled anyway, but that's the better story.
Expectations were low, and freeing. "We were these hacking pirates launching ourselves into legitimate news circles and making fun of everything around the states," says Colbert, describing the experience of running around the 2000 presidential conventions every bit a contributor, ambushing delegates and pushing out four or 5 shows. Steve Carell, meanwhile, managed to talk his way onto John McCain's double-decker.
Stewart talks frequently nigh being raised on the tenets of "The Emperor Has No Clothes." And that philosophy permeated the show. He laid it out in his "Bull---t is everywhere" rant on his final show: "If yous smell something, say something."
That's why Stewart went on CNN's "Crossfire" in 2004 and famously eviscerated co-host Tucker Carlson, telling him that the show was "not just bad, but hurting America," and that he was doing theater, or performing "partisan hackery" in a bow tie, instead of really fostering debate. And when the show got canceled iii months later, CNN's president said Stewart's advent was a factor.
Cut to 18 years after and Carlson is the biggest star on Fox News, with 3.four million viewers a night. His pro-Russian stances are existence distributed as Russian propaganda. He's called the Ukraine crisis a mere "edge dispute" and asked what'south so bad about Vladimir Putin ("Has Putin e'er chosen me a racist?").
Does Stewart think that, by knocking him down, he may accept inadvertently given Carlson the incentive to ascension and be more Tucker Carlson-y?
"At that place'due south mythologizing every bit far as, similar, a villain origin story," Stewart says. "Not even close. Like that dude has been that dude forever and only plant his place. It's not that the crystal found the right dwelling and suddenly the Fortress of Confinement was built. I don't remember he's any unlike than he'south ever been."
Other late-night hosts have been missed when they left, but none with the urgency of Stewart during the Trump years. He was greeted with raucous cheers and continuing ovations whenever he came on Colbert. There was lamentation, sometimes anger among liberals who thought he'd abandoned them in their time of need.
In his stead, though, was a political comedy landscape dominated by people whose careers he'd either started or nurtured: Colbert, Samantha Bee, John Oliver, Trevor Noah, Michael Che on "Weekend Update."
For the most part, since he left the show, Stewart has led a groundhog-like existence, puttering away in happy seclusion with Tracey and their now-teenage kids and popping his head out every once in a while to do stand up-upwardly gigs with Dave Chappelle or bluster about Trump's "gleeful cruelty" on "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert." His running gag was to physically pop out from under Colbert's desk — his pilus white, having grown that classic beard of a former late-dark host gone feral — claiming he's been living there this whole time.
He has also frequently popped up in Washington to shame Congress into "showing a baseline of humanity," every bit he put it in a contempo Reddit AMA. In 2019, he chosen out Congress'due south "rank hypocrisy" and "shameful" lack of activeness in impassioned testimony for the reauthorization of the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund. He's spending the calendar week before his Twain Prize commemoration going to rallies in Wilmington, N.C., and Kansas City, Mo., supporting legislation to provide additional funding for veterans dying from exposure to toxic burn pits.
Stewart says he left "The Daily Evidence" and so he wouldn't miss his kids growing up. And for years he's stuck to that. His commencement public advent after retirement was going on WWE SummerSlam to get body slammed by John Cena, because his son is a wrestling fanatic.
He's gone vegetarian, is learning Brazilian jujitsu with his son and has taken upwards drumming. "The fact that he drums for an hour or hours a twenty-four hour period and didn't mention information technology to you lot is a little scrap odd," says good friend Jimmy Kimmel.
Stewart hands could have kept up that pastoral pace. He could be getting java with comedians in cars like Jerry Seinfeld or starting a travel evidence like Conan O'Brien.
Instead, he's Shaun White doing the halfpipe at 35, or Michael Jordan returning to the Bulls after the baseball years.
In January 2021, he started his first Twitter account with the energy of, well, a comedian who hadn't spent four days a week for the by one-half-decade thinking nigh and reacting to Trump.
Tweet No. 3: "So…if I do actually well on here I get to be President, yes?"
So in September, he jumped right dorsum into the turd mines, debuting his new Apple Television Plus prove and podcast, "The Trouble with Jon Stewart," which might as well be the fraternal twin of "The Daily Show." Information technology's a directly outgrowth of a 2010 episode of "The Daily Prove," when Stewart convened a panel of 9/11 first responders as a way of shaming Congress for stalling on the victims compensation bill. It passed before the finish of the year, and firefighters on that panel take largely credited Stewart.
Sure, in that location are differences. The streaming show isn't on every night. It'southward merely eight hour-long episodes, with accompanying podcasts, each devoted to a single issue, similar critical race theory and gun control. Every evidence has a panel give-and-take with real people and an interview with a power broker (old Disney CEO Bob Iger, SEC Chair Gary Gensler).
But he is dorsum behind a desk, delivering the kind of circuitous monologues on serious issues that he calls "geometric proofs for fart jokes."
He's also resumed his office as a political lightning rod, specially when semi-conservative provocateur Andrew Sullivan wrote a lengthy Substack saying Stewart "ambushed" him into making him look racist. A quick Google News search will bring up recent articles from Fox News or the National Review nigh his "distressing demise" or how his "super-woke" new show is a flop. On the left, he's been defendant of sympathizing with oil companies and defending Joe Rogan, after Stewart said he'd rather debate him than abolish him.
Even the proper noun of his testify, he says, is intentional allurement for bourgeois pundits to come across how many write screeds about what his existent trouble is. (Sullivan took the bait.) "The fun is in watching the laziness, the people who are coming up with their hot takes … and they're just laying down trope after trope," Stewart says.
Glory and humiliation are both possible outcomes, a lot like doing stand up-upwardly. What he did on "The Daily Show" is consummate and untouchable — a xvi-year mic drop. How do y'all follow up being the voice of a generation when the next generation either thinks yous're lame or has no idea who you are? How do you jump back into a game you divers that has evolved without you? And why try?
Maybe it has to do with how animated Stewart gets telling me nigh the fourth dimension he bombed — hard — at Radio Urban center Music Hall in 1999. So hard "I didn't even know half-dozen,000 people could be that tranquillity," he says. And so hard that Shirley Jones hugged him. "I don't even know the woman," he says.
Y'all accept risks. That'due south comedy. "Isn't that what's seductive about information technology?"
The bombing?
"No! It'due south the uncertainty of it," he says. The volatility. The thrill of riding that line.
"You know, if somebody said to me, 'Are y'all nervous about going out there once again with something new?' Information technology's like, 'I hateful I gauge, but what's my option? Aye, I'm nervous most it. And then I'm non gonna say anything to everyone ever once more?' "
Stewart's trying something new. He's notwithstanding got stuff to say.
"This is the life we've chosen," he says. "This is what we do."
Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/04/22/jon-stewart-twain-prize/
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