Jon Stewart

About

Jon Stewart is an American comedian best known for hosting the satirical Comedy Central news program The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. In February 2015, Stewart announced his upcoming retirement from the show.

Career

In 1986, Stewart began performing stand-up comedy in New York City.^[2] From 1989 onward, he helped write and hosted several comedy programs on television, including Short Attention Span Theater, You Wrote It, You Watch It (shown below, left) and The Jon Stewart Show (shown below, right).^[3]

In 1999, he became the host of The Daily Show, following the departure of Craig Kilborn (shown below).^[4]

Online History

The Daily Show

Episodes of The Daily Show are hosted by the program’s official website, thedailyshow.com,^[1] including exclusive extended interviews and one minute episode summaries.

Retirement

On February 10th, 2015, Stewart announced his impending retirement as the the host of The Daily Show (shown below). Following the episode, multiple posts about the news reached the front page of Reddit.^[18]^[19] In the comings days, several news sites published articles about Stewart’s announcement, including the AV Club,^[9]NPR,^[10] The Washington Post,^[11] The New York Times,^[12] Time,^[13]CNN^[14] and USA Today.^[15] The last episode of featuring Stewart was scheduled to air on August 6th, 2015.

During the last week of Stewart’s hosting the show, he scheduled only comedians as guests; these included Amy Schumer, Louis CK and Denis Leary. Comedy Central promoted the hashtag #JonVoyage for people to use on Twitter and Instagram to express their feelings about the finale, and it was used the more than 30,000 times in the 24 hours before the premiere aired on both platforms combined, and there were an additional 300,000 tweets using “Jon Stewart” or “The Daily Show.”^[20] Comedy Central took out an advertisement on the back page of the New York Times that read “Here it is, your moment of zen. Thank you, Jon, from all of us at Comedy Central,” in reference to Stewart’s last line of every episode.

Crossfire Appearance

On October 15th, 2004, Stewart appeared as a guest on the CNN televised debate show Crossfire, where he criticized hosts Paul Begala and Tucker Carlson for being “partisan hacks” and “hurting America” with polarized political rhetoric. Following the appearance, videos of the exchange spread widely across the Internet with many praising Stewart’s arguments. The following year, the show was canceled and CNN’s incoming president Jonathan Klein referenced Stewart’s comments when asked about the year’s cancellations.^[9] On January 16th, 2006, YouTuber Alex Felker uploaded a clip of the appearance, which gained over 8.4 million views and 15,800 comments over the next nine years (shown below).

Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear

On October 30th, 2010, Stewart and fellow Comedy Central satirical news host Stephen Colbert held the “Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear” which took place at the National Mall in Washington, DC. An estimated 215,000 people attended the rally according to aerial photography analysis reported by CBS News.^[16] The stated purposed of the event was to allow the majority of Americans to be heard above extreme fringe groups polarizing American politics.

Reddit AMA

On November 14th, 2014, Stewart participated in an “ask me anything” (AMA) thread on the /r/IAmA^[17] subreddit, where he promoted his 2014 drama film Rosewater, discussed his experiences as the host of The Daily Show and his infamous Crossfire appearance. Within three months, the post garnered upwards of 5,100 votes (93% upvoted) and 7,900 comments.

Social Media Presence

As of February 2015, the official Facebook^[6] page for The Daily Show has over 4.8 million likes and the show’s Twitter^[7] feed has more than 3.1 million followers.

Related Memes

#AccordingtoPalin

#AccordingtoPalin was a viral hashtag campaign launched by Jon Stewart and the staff of The Daily Show meant to satirize Sarah Palin’s inaccurate description of American patriot Paul Revere’s “Midnight Ride.” Tweets using the hashtag began circulating in June 2011 and generally consisted of intentional misrepresentations of historical events.

“I’m Not a Scientist”

I’m Not a Scientist refers to a flippant remark Republican Senator Marco Rubio made in response to a question regarding the age of the earth in November 2012. On June 4th, The Daily Show featured a segment covering the trend of conservative politicians saying they aren’t scientists.

#McConnelling

#McConnelling refers to a series of video remixes featuring footage from one of Mitch McConnell’s 2014 election campaign advertisements with unfitting music overlaid. The fad and its associated hashtag was launched by Stewart during a March 13th, 2014 segment of The Daily Show.

Santa Claus is White

Santa Claus is White was a statement made by Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly in response to Slate writer Aisha Harris’ op-ed article titled “Santa Claus Should Not Be a White Man Anymore.” Stewart was quick to mock the statements during an episode of The Daily Show in December 2013.

#TheDailyShowGoneTooFar

#TheDailyShowGoneTooFar is a hashtag protest started by One Direction fans against The Daily Show following the broadcast of a satirical news segment implicating the popular British boy band with global terrorism in September 2014.

Personal Life

Jon Stewart was born under the name of Jonathan Stuart Leibowitz on November 28, 1962 in New York City. He would later legally change his last name to Stewart in June of 2001. He attended The College of William & Mary in Virginia from which he graduated in 1984, majoring in Psychology while played on the soccer team. Stewart married Tracey Lyn McShane In 2000 and has 2 children with her.^[3] Although of Jewish descent and raised in Jewish tradition, he is irreligious.^[8]