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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: DMaA who wrote (20000)	12/15/2003 11:13:17 AM
From: LindyBill	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 793677

You got my Grub, DMA! Hard to believe we have had that many posts. This week's Person of the Week is Jon Stewart, host of Comedy Central's The Daily Show ABCNEWS.com Politics With Attitude For The Daily Show Host Jon Stewart, All Politicans Are Fair Game By Peter Jennings ABCNEWS.com Dec. 12— Jon Stewart, the anchor of Comedy Central's The Daily Show, is the man who often says in public what the rest of us tend to say only in the newsroom. And in politics, he has become something of a pop icon. The Daily Show covers politics with attitude. "I can't tell you how many times we'll run into government officials or people in the press who say, 'Yeah, you tell it like it is, I'd love to be able to say that,' " Stewart told ABCNEWS. "Geez, you know, maybe you should.… Maybe you should say it all the time." Stewart, who is 40 or 41 — we are not sure he tells the truth — says he takes up the stories he is truly obsessed with. Don't take me too seriously, he says. "All we can do is hope that our internal barometer is correct in how we're interpreting whatever madness we're seeing on the television and seeing in the papers," said Stewart. "We don't have colleagues. We don't have dinners where we get together with other fake news shows and discuss the state of fake news in America." Unapologetic Humor Politicians use Stewart's show when they can. It has an audience of about a million people — liberals and conservatives. Sen. John Edwards, D-N.C., took it so seriously that he announced his candidacy for the White House when he was a guest. Stewart said to Edwards: "We're a fake show, so I want you to know that this may not count." Presidential candidate Wesley Clark was a guest on the show Thursday night. And former Sen. Bob Dole was Stewart's co-host on "Indecision 2000," The Daily Show's take on the last presidential election and the Florida recount battle that ensued. Stewart's humor is unapologetic — and all politicians are fair game. Once, after Stewart once showed a clip of President Bush saying, "I look forward to listening and occasionally talking," the anchor said, "Wow, listening and talking, wow. What is this guy, Superman?" Is there nothing that is over the line? "There is no desire here to purposefully offend, but on the flip side of that, you can't avoid offending people," said Stewart. "[You'd have] to go out to all the people and say, where's your line? 'Cause everybody in our audience has a different one." "People's sense of humor goes as far as their ideology," he added. Who Is Jon Stewart? With a real name of Jon Liebowitz, Stewart grew up in New Jersey and went to the College of William and Mary in Virginia. He wrote a book of comic essays entitled Naked Pictures of Famous People. All the attention he's been getting "creeps me out," he said during our interview on The Daily Show set. "Honestly, this is how my wife and I eat dinner. I come home, I mike up, she asks me some questions about my day — she's usually prepared, I think, a pretty in-depth interview, very similar. There's always a 9/11 question, and then we have dessert and go to bed." On Sept. 11, 2001, he stopped doing his program for almost a month. When he returned it was a signal to many people that life was going to be OK again. "The view from my apartment was the World Trade Center," he said on his show, choked with tears, "but you know what the view is now? The view is the Statue of Liberty, and you can't beat that." When I gave him 10 seconds to come up with something funny to end the interview, he answered, "Why don't anchors have term limits?" On that note — Jon Stewart is World News Tonight's Person of the Week. abcnews.go.com