Stoned slackers

The Daily Show's Jon Stewart appeared on conservative media attack dog Bill O'Reilly's program earlier this month to promote his new book, and O'Reilly decided to poke a little fun at Jon Stewart's influence among the voting populace.

"You know what's really frightening?" O'Reilly said. "You actually have an influence on this presidential election. That is scary, but it's true. You've got stoned slackers watching your dopey show every night and they can vote."

The teasing may have been meant in good fun, but Stewart's Comedy Central bosses were annoyed, so they decided to do a little research and discovered that their audience of "stoned slackers" is actually more educated than viewers of O'Reilly's program. It backs up the findings of an earlier poll saying that viewers of late-night comedy were better-informed about political issues. And the most well-informed of all late-night viewers? Yep, you guessed it right, Jon Stewart's gang of stoned slackers.

If you've seen The Daily Show, you wouldn't be surprised by the polls' results. It's probably the most intelligently-written in American television, and its strength lies in the fact that it trusts its audience to be intelligent enough to handle what it dishes out. Of course, of the thousands of news satire shows in the history of television, there has never been a host quite as clever and dead-on as Jon Stewart.

It's too bad we only get it on TV once a week (The Daily Show Global Edition runs on CNN every Saturday night at 11:30, with a repeat on Sunday night also at 11:30, WATCH IT). But hey, that's why we have the Internet.

- posted by jaemark @ 9/28/2004 05:52:00 PM