Best of Enemies: Jon Stewart’s 10 Favorite ‘Daily Show’ Targets
The Daily Show With Jon Stewart never featured a sidekick like Ed McMahon or Andy Richter — in their place, Stewart introduced a rotating cast of cleverly clueless correspondents. But even more memorably, he managed to assemble a Murderers' Row of punching-bag public figures who unwittingly became supporting players in the show's nightly cavalcade of mockery and scorn.
Zeroing in on hypocritical politicians and blowhard media personalities, Stewart and his writers could produce a week's worth of material from, say, the absurdity of Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign or a certain senator's resemblance to a tortoise. Here now are 10 of his greatest nemeses, everything from Dubya to the home of Bullshit Mountain to America's most popular purveyors of roast beef.
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Mitch McConnell
Stewart has savored delivering taunting impersonations of several of his favorite targets: George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Chris Christie. But arguably his best impression remains his dead-on vicious parody of the senior U.S. senator from Kentucky. Others have commented on Mitch McConnell's droopy eyes and lazy drawl, but Stewart found the perfect pop-culture reference point for the politician's faux-downhome charm by likening him to Cecil Turtle, the sometimes-adversary of Bugs Bunny in the old Looney Tunes cartoons. The host's exquisitely slowed-down imitation made McConnell's frequently infuriating public comments slightly more tolerable: We'd turn on The Daily Show just to hear him light into the guy. Jon especially had fun in 2014 by encouraging his audience to go #McConnelling, which involved fans marrying different pop songs to one particularly vanilla McConnell campaign ad. Pro Tip: Any song with the word "eyes" in the lyrics works great.
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Bill O’Reilly
What angered Stewart most about host of The O'Reilly Factor wasn't the man's politics — it's that he believed in his heart that the political blowhard was smarter than the moronic Fox News talking points he uttered. The two men's interactions on The Daily Show played out like emotional interventions: Stewart implored his frequent guest to stop dumbing down his beliefs for ratings; O'Reilly countered by playfully needling Stewart and his fellow liberal "pinheads." For all their bitter political differences, the duo always had easy rapport and an understanding that they were both playing parts in a silly act of theater — which is what made their double act so consistently watchable.You'd always know Jon was getting to Bill when Papa Bear would spit out a grumpy "Stewart!" in his responses.
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And the Rest of Fox News
CNN and MSNBC received their fair share of criticism, but let's not kid ourselves: Stewart's biggest cable target was Fox News, for its habit of distorting news for its own political purposes. Going after everything from the rotating crop of airheads on Fox & Friends to Sean Hannity's smug, bullying commentaries, Stewart encapsulated his angry campaign against the network by dubbing the channel "Bullshit Mountain" in 2012. And, no, he won't miss keeping tabs on Fox once he retires. "Let's say that it's a nuclear winter, and I have been wandering, and there appears to be a flickering light through what appears to be a radioactive cloud and I think that light might be a food source that could help my family," Stewart told the Guardian this spring about his post-Daily Show life. "I might glance at it for a moment until I realize, 'That's Fox News,' and then I shut it off."
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Dubya and the Bush Administration
On the first Daily Show after the 9/11 attacks, an ashen Jon Stewart told his audience how fortunate he and his staff felt to be able to do a show like theirs during such terrible times: "We can sit in the back of the country and make wisecracks, which is really what we do — we sit in the back and throw spitballs." The subsequent months and years provoked plenty of spitballs, but as the Bush Administration wandered from one disaster to another — Iraq, Abu Ghraib, Hurricane Katrina — the show forged its legacy as the principled, angry, very funny response to the lunacy enveloping the country. Jon's snickering-dumb-guy impression of Bush and Penguin-like parody of Dick Cheney were a tonic against their brusque incompetence, but it only belied the genuine anger underneath the jokes. Living through the Bush years was excruciating — sharing our pain, Jon helped us get the rage and disillusionment out of our system.
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Jim Cramer
There was plenty of blame to go around regarding the 2008 economic collapse: the banks, the Fed, Wall Street, Congress. In March of the following year, The Daily Show took aim at CNBC and, specifically, former hedge fund manager Jim Cramer, the host of its popular, hyperbolic show Mad Money. Stewart accused them of being desperately out of touch with the reality of the financial markets, despite their insistence on their own economic expertise. A public feud soon brewed between the two men, culminating with the financial whiz sitting down for an interview on March 12th. During their lengthy discussion, Stewart dissected Cramer's know-it-all screamer routine, pinpointing the lack of insight beneath the shallow TV pizzazz. His guest's humiliated, apologetic tone felt momentarily cathartic but made for awkward television — which Stewart himself later acknowledged. Talking to Howard Stern in 2014, he confessed regret about the smack-down interview. "You begin to believe your own responsibility to 'get this guy,'" Stewart said, "even though that's complete bullshit."
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Lindsey Graham
Unlike his Republican peers, South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham has never been much of a bogeyman to the left. And that's primarily because of his voice, full of ineffectual Southern gentility that makes even his most extreme, idiotic comments — like "The world is literally about to blow up" in the midst of panicked GOP calls to attack Syria in 2014 — come across as harmless, even downright homey. Twisting the knife, Jon Stewart transformed the politician's accent into the sound of the most beleaguered shrinking violet, imagining the senator's pronouncements coming from a Gone With the Wind-era belle looking for a fainting couch. ("I do declare!") Some have accused the host of homophobia, charging that his impression suggested Graham was an effeminate gay man. But Stewart's parody was after something else, arguing that the Senator's refined demeanor was a sham deserving of skewering.
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Glenn Beck
Many of Stewart's greatest foes inspired his best work. We acknowledge this may be a minority opinion, but that wasn't the case with Glenn Beck. Sure, the fuming conservative gave The Daily Show plenty of great material thanks to his nut-job Fox News Channel show. But there seemed to be something deeply disturbing about Beck's tin-foil-hat paranoia that provoked not just humor but outright aghast disbelief in the comedian: He wasn't so much funny as he was apoplectic in response. How else to explain the special 2009 episode that was an extended parody of Beck's Tea Party-friendly 9-12 project, with Stewart going full method actor to conjure up his nemesis's wide-eyed insanity? Or the painfully sincere Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear in 2010, organized just a couple months after Beck's uber-patriotic Restoring Honor rally? Thankfully, Beck's political relevance has faded ever since Fox News dropped him in 2011, and the show's host could focus his righteousness and furious anger elsewhere.
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U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs
For years after 9/11, Iraq War supporters were able to rebuke their opponents with emotionally manipulative "Support the troops" platitudes. Starting in the spring of 2013, Stewart illustrated the hypocrisy of those sentiments by diving deep into the gross incompetence of the government's Veterans Affairs office, highlighting the suffocating bureaucracy that returning soldiers faced when they sought treatment for their physical and psychological injuries. The Daily Show first took aim at the department's stunningly antiquated computer system, which hadn't been updated since 1985. ("Have you ever caught the movie The Net on late-night cable and laughed out loud alone at how outdated the technology seems?" Stewart asked in 2014. "That's 10 years more advanced than what the VA is currently using.") But as time went on, he added a do-nothing Congress to his attack, as well as President Obama, consistently reminding us that our country's leaders enjoy hiding behind the troops when it's politically expedient but don't do nearly enough to help them when it counts.
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Donald Trump
The Donald elicits a strange set of mixed emotions within Stewart. On one hand, the loudmouthed egomaniac is such a cartoonish figure that it's very easy for The Daily Show just to treat him like the joke he is. (And in the past, Stewart and Trump had a congenial rapport on the show, with the billionaire proving to be a lively guest.) But as Stewart prepares to head off into the sunset, he's been both wistful and appalled by Trump's brash climb to the top of the GOP presidential polls. (Ridiculing Trump's bizarre escalator ride down to his press conference where he'd announce his candidacy, Stewart opined, "I haven't seen an entrance that majestic since my friend met me at the Gap after grabbing an Orange Julius.") In recent months, Stewart has looked quite happy to leave the anchor chair behind. But as Trump gave him day after day of risible, ridiculous material, the long-running host almost seemed sad to be hanging it up. Almost.
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Arby’s
"The Hannity of Roast Beef Sandwiches." "Because Your Hunger Is Stronger Than Your Memory." "Technically, It’s Food." Those are but three of the fake slogans Stewart has come up with for his favorite fast-food laughing stock. Of all Jon's beefs over the years, his slagging of Arby's felt more playful than serious, the Daily Show host often laughing apologetically after each new putdown. (The constant good-natured ribbing prompted some to wonder if the whole thing wasn't an elaborate stealth-advertising campaign for the company, a suspicion the show spoofed last week during a segment highlighting some of his best Arby's digs.) When Stewart announced his retirement in February, Arby's good-naturedly offered the comedian a job via Twitter. Not missing a beat, Stewart responded, "I do not accept your peace offer. We shall always be enemies! For while you are a worthy adversary, you will be vanquished." And then he offered one more unsolicited slogan: "Arby's: Come for the Tweets, Run From the Meats."