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April212011

"The Most Trusted Man in America": Know Your Jon Stewart

Filed under: Looked Into   Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Emily Gordon writes:

While ambling around looking for photos of Jon Stewart and Laura Kightlinger together after hearing her be witty (and briefly mention having dated Stewart) on the Marc Maron podcast recently, I happened on this Moment magazine profile of Stewart by Jeremy Gillick and Nonna Gorilovskaya. Read it! It’s smart and thorough, and explores, among other things, Stewart’s Jewishness and relationship to Israel and Jewish history and politics. Here’s a graf I appreciated, followed by one that I know friend-of-Emdashes Ben Bass will either have already noted on his blog or soon will:
After waiting to hear some “constructive criticism” of Israeli policies that “may not be in the best interest of the world,” Stewart rolled clips of silence and went for the kill: “Oh! I forgot! You can’t say anything remotely critical of Israel and still get elected president! Which is funny, because you know where you can criticize Israel? Israel!”

Although the topic doesn’t come up often, it’s also evident where Stewart stands on intermarriage. In 2000, he married Tracey McShane, a veterinary technician and a Catholic. Stewart, who does The New York Times crossword puzzle daily, popped the question with a puzzle of his own. The paper’s “Puzzle Master,” Will Shortz, found Stewart a puzzle creator for the occasion.
I also liked this, toward the end:
Despite his effort to be a fair and balanced mocker, Stewart’s reputation as the “most trusted man in America” should be taken with a grain of salt. Such stature is not unusual for a comedian, says Nicholas Lemann, the dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University. “Johnny Carson in his heyday, you could make that statement about.” Lemann warns against generalizing about how far that trust spreads beyond Stewart’s core audience. “I think that’s a kind of a blue-state perspective and youth perspective. To many of my cousins in Louisiana, Rush Limbaugh is the most trusted man in America.”
Anyway, as I said, read it all!
1 comments

Comments

You definitely beat Ben Bass to this one, yet the puzzle convention trip report I posted this week is a veritable Shortzapalooza.

Ben BassJuly 15, 2011

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