Jon Stewart Uses Debate with Bill O'Reilly to Expose How Toxic Fox News Is for America

Strange, I don’t think I’ve ever seen Jon Stewart less funny. Granted, he wasn’t really trying to be funny, so determined was he to carry off the quixotic project of taking O’Reilly’s bullying grunts seriously as opinions. But it does sometimes seem as if he assumes that melting the gold of The Daily Show’s crafted satire into the dross of prosy opinion is enough to maintain his magic and open people’s eyes. It’s not. (The trickster, the jester, needs his masks; cf. Colbert.) Without the jokes what we’re left with are the impeccably correct politics of a  bien pensant Upper West Side New York City liberal—not that there’s anything wrong with that! But it’s barely worth $4.95, much less a Saturday night.