Jon Stewart got busted by PolitiFact for peddling a falsehood on “The Daily Show.” To be fair, the Comedy Central show supposedly got the whopper from The History Channel. That didn’t stop Stewart and co. from continuing to mock those upset that the War on Christmas continues.

Never let a good, albeit false, meme go to waste.

In the attached clip, Stewart explains how the show incorrectly claimed that Congress worked on Christmas Day for 67 years straight, thereby showing that Christmas isn’t as deserving of federal respect as many claim it is.

Turns out the number was off by 66 years, as Stewart cheerfully notes.

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Even Jon Stewart couldn’t stomach the layers of hypocrisy – and filth – at the heart of Occupy Wall Street.

“The Daily Show” honored the end – for now – of Occupy Wall Street’s Occupation of Wall Street by sending one of its crack reporters to cover the movement. What they found was hypocrisy of the highest order, the kind of uncomfortable to watch comedy conservatives have been waiting to see since OWS first began.

So much material, and so few comedians having a crack at it.

But even the liberal folks over at the Comedy Central program couldn’t hold back. The result? A dilly of a comedy segment which didn’t even bother interviewing the most mentally unstable OWS members for comedy gold. They didn’t have to in order to mock the oh, so mockable OWS.

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Comedy Central’s Jon Stewart wipes off the greasepaint when it’s time to salute – and protect – the First Responders from 9/11.

It’s one of his more admirable stances, even if it’s often accompanied by slams against the GOP.

But ‘The Daily Show’ host apparently drops his affection for the men and women in blue when they dare to protect citizens from the violent Occupy Wall Street types.

This week, Stewart climbed aboard his funny pulpit to admonish cops for cracking down on the folks Occupying Oakland. According to Stewart’s highly edited clip reel, the protesters were hardly a menacing bunch, but cops used tear gas and other forceful methods to keep them in line all the same.

How. Could. They?

As my tag team partner John Nolte said earlier, Stewart clearly left out this, this, this, and this. Oh, and this, this, this and this. ADDED: And this!

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Anyone who caught “Real Time” this past weekend got to enjoy some great television.  Much like the boss (and much unlike your average buttoned-up conservative), Ann Coulter thrives in a political environment where there’s an emphasis on entertainment, humor, and thinking on your feet.  If you’ve read her books or seen enough of her speeches and media appearances, you know she’s easily funnier than you average Hollywood or New York “comedian.”

Credit where it’s due, as usual, to Maher and co. for having her on.  “Real Time” continues to be the only liberal-leaning late-night current events/comedy show eager to engage articulate conservative commentators.

Here are some highlights, starting with Coulter telling MSNBC’s Chris Hayes that his mother, who has a government job, “is a drain on society”:

Next is a long chunk of the round-table discussion where Maher and Coulter’s sardonic repartee takes center-stage.  This is an act they could take on the road (UPDATE: Apparently they have):

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Business Insider:

President Obama’s standup routine at the White House Correspondents Dinner got rave reviews — and it turns out he has writer Kevin Bleyer of “The Daily Show” to thank.Bleyer, who took on jokewriting for the commander-in-chief as a side project, has been a “Daily Show” writer since 2006, sharing in the scores of Emmy nominations and wins with that staff. …

Before boarding Jon Stewart’s ship, Bleyer was a writer on Bill Maher’s old show, “Politically Incorrect,” and “Dennis Miller.”

He got his start in writing as a freelance reporter for “All Things Considered” on NPR.

And Bleyer strikes us as pretty brave: he recently did Republican-skewering jokes during a lecture in Boca Raton, Fla.

The White House Correspondents’ gig wasn’t the Stanford grad’s first time writing for Obama.

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Jon Stewart’s October 30th bout of rally envy—despite the comedian’s rickety attempts to disavow the patently invidious nature of the convocation—was hubristically (not to mention wishfully) titled “Restoring Sanity.” (Because of its obvious facetiousness, the Colbertian “Restoring Fear” portion of the event deserves no mention here.)

The danger of Stewart’s shedding his Daily Show mask of irony and becoming a full-fledged, Obama-style community-organizing activist is that in officially adopting the views of one political party over another, he devalues the only currency of the satirist—impartiality. Because human folly is an equal opportunity character flaw, the successful satirist must not take sides. He must be able to sling arrows in all directions, else the only thing he has to peddle—the precious honesty of his criticism—is called into question. A satirist who exposes the foibles of one political party and excuses those of the other is as useful as a bus that only goes in one direction. The bus company itself would soon also only go in one direction—out of business.

Those (I suspect Mr. Stewart is among them) who claim that the “Restoring Rally” was apolitical—just a modern-day Woodstock with shorter hair and fewer hallucinogens, a Peace Train plea for reason and temperance—are either dupes or practitioners of a cunning form of political artifice.

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So along with Jon Stewart’s rally happening this Saturday, there will be a smaller group of people planning to march – they being young federal employees fed up with their reputations as loafers and losers.

Organizers call it the “Government Doesn’t Suck March,” but I prefer to call it “The Tepid Rally to Restore Self-Esteem and Show Off My New Vintage T-shirt,” – for it’s a reaction to the nearly universal disgust we hold for people who ride desks in government.

And so, these “web-savvy feds,” as the Washington Post calls them, feel bad that the rest of us hate them – and think the best way to make people like them, is to attach themselves to a more popular figure: Jon Stewart.

According to Steve Ressler, who’s running the thing, the goal of the march is to “remind the world that government employees…. are a lot of cool cats” – and, as the Post points out – they’re folks who work hard, listen to good music and watch “The Daily Show.”

Cool cats indeed. Awesome, daddyo. Anyway, that one quote tells you everything you need to know about these federal employees – they are just earnest libs desperate for approval from the “other cool cats.” And by cats, I think they mean sheep. (more…)

UPDATE: The day after Obama’s appearance Stewart appears ready to double down with — wait for it! wait for it! — “When Grizzlies Attack: A ‘Daily Show’ Midterm Teapartyganza.”

Yes, watch establishment/Obama-approved Jon Stewart Speak! Truth! To! Those! Not! In! Power!

In the comments, try to guess the toughest questions Stewart will ask. Our money is on the following…

1. “Can you believe how racist those Tea Partiers are?”
2. “Where do you get those suits?”
3. “Do I please you?”
4. “Could you be any more awesome?”
5. “When did Fox News stop beating their wife?”

Associated Press:

President Barack Obama is taking his campaign message to “The Daily Show” with Jon Stewart.

White House spokesman Dan Pfeiffer says Obama is taping an appearance on Oct. 27, just days before the Nov. 2 elections. Stewart is coming to Washington next week for the “Rally to Restore Sanity” he is holding three days later on Saturday, Oct. 30, on the National Mall.

The host of the Comedy Central show says the rally is for people who think the loudest voices shouldn’t be the only ones people hear. (more…)

Now that Steven Colbert’s congressional “testimony” has had its fifteen minutes, I think it’s time for someone to say his whole shtick has run its course. I don’t want to discuss if it was appropriate for a comedian to be at a congressional hearing. If it weren’t, Al Franken could just have his check direct deposited and show up to vote once in awhile. Come to think of it that is just about what happens. Mr. Colbert is an acceptable sketch comedy actor who has taken a character he developed for John Stewart’s “Daily Show” and parlayed it into his own low-rated show. I don’t begrudge him his success, in fact I say well done!  I think it is a tribute to the greatness of our country that a guy with one joke and with some help of his friends and a simpatico entertainment industry can become a multimillionaire. In the words of Max Bialystok, “Flaunt it, baby!”  

Calling his recent appearance before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration “comedy” may leave Mr. Colbert open to legal action for lying to Congress. There were also several points in his testimony that were of questionable, as he would say, “truthiness.” Political comedy in sketch form is tricky, but as stand-up it is a balancing act that requires great skill. To my mind there are two rules: first you must, as my friend Will Durst says, be an equal-opportunity smart ass. Unless you are willing to slap at both sides of the aisle or only work highly partisan events, you lose at least fifty percent of the audience from the first joke. The second is that no matter who or what you are attacking, it must be funny. Mr. Colbert’s stand-up or sit down in the case of his Congressional gig, fails on both counts. Mr. Colbert’s one-dimensional, highly partisan act has run its course. We get it, Steve — any sincere conservative is a dim witted, xenophobic, racist, Christian numbskull who just doesn’t understand the issues.

It is difficult to take a sketch character and develop it into a more than a series three minute scenes. One only has to look at the number of horrible Saturday Night Live spin off character films that have been made to prove that point. It is even harder to take a character out of the sketch and build it into a stand-up routine. Mr. Colbert has now proved this to be the case…twice. (more…)

If you have been following Big Hollywood’s marquee or if you frequent any site on the internet, you know Jon Stewart and Bernie Goldberg have been going at it.  If you feel like watching all the verbal fisticuffs, we’ve compiled the exchange thus far in this post.

The latest shot fired by Goldberg is that by taking on Fox News, Stewart is “throwing spitballs at a battleship.”  This is one issue where we at Big Hollywood disagree with what the venerable Mr. Goldberg said.  Although “The Daily Show” has significantly less influence than Fox News, Jon Stewart is an incredibly potent weapon in the Left’s war against the Right and it’s our editorial position not to underestimate him (among other things, there is a case to be made he is a primary reason the Democrats recaptured Congress in 2006).  We suspect Fox News and Goldberg agree with us to at least some extent since they are the ones who have been devoting time to try to take Stewart down a peg.

So, check them all out and let us know who’s winning so far. Here they are in chronological order with the most recent at the end:

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Since the election of Barack Obama, aggressive political parody has been hard to come by outside of Comedy Central. But, as noted here on Big Hollywood, ABC and Mike Judge are taking on political correctness and progressive activists with The Goode Family.

When Bush and Cheney left office, they became old news. Mocking them now is like making Eisenhower jokes, but that doesn’t stop the occasional hack like Wanda Sykes trotting out tired material. And Obama seems off limits lest anyone wants to look like a buzz kill during the ever-lengthening, forced-fed honeymoon. In fact, the only show that really dared effectively to venture into political mockery consistently this season was South Park.

Mike Judge

And spare me any mention of The Daily Show or The Colbert Report. Both shows kiss the Democratic ass (the donkey, I mean) all week until they realize how biased they’ve become. Then they scramble around to make fun of some minor Dem Congressman for 30 seconds and applaud their own objectivity. Meanwhile, Stewart rages at every conservative cause he can find with the furor (not the wit) of Murrow until he’s called on it. Then he scrambles back into his hole screaming, “I’m only a comic!”

Fortunately, The Goode Family levels the satirical skills of Judge (creator of Beavis and Butthead and King of the Hill) at the taboo supporters of global warming, racial hypersensitivity, animal rights and any other cause over-hyped by self-righteous busybodies. (more…)

This week’s Washington Times column:

On Tuesday night I was bestowed the honor of being ridiculed on Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show” with Jon Stewart. The segment in which I was featured had Mr. Stewart mocking those of us who dare criticize the new president. In the era of Obama, mainstream American political humor is now officially on the defensive.

Stewart lumped me with Sean Hannity, Mark Levin and Rep. Michele Bachmann, Minnesota Republican — a cross section of people you might expect to be critical of an administration implementing very liberal policies in a very short time.

The “joke” was that these right-wing zealots weren’t giving the new president enough time, that the previous president did worse things, and that I, in particular, was ridiculous for blaming the president for “St. Patrick’s Day” becoming “Potato Day” at my kids’ public school. (Yes, the name change took place. No, I did not blame President Obama — specifically.) (more…)

Everyone knows the old axiom about comedy.  There’s always a grain of truth in that which an audience finds funny.  Done well, comedy can make you squirm with its raw honesty.  It has the power to inform our perspectives about politics and news just as any good journalist.  Comedy helps provide insight into human flaws just as any good psychologist.   Often self-deprecating and socially awkward, comedians themselves will deny their impact.  Most comedians and writers prefer to think of themselves as lovable class clowns – laughing on the outside, crying on the inside.  Just as former NBA star Charles Barkley once famously proclaimed he was no role model, many in the funny business will dismiss their impact in the hearts and minds of their audience.

Modesty, however, cannot dismiss a growing body of evidence that suggests comedians possess greater power than ever before when shaping the national debate.   Notably in the last decade, television comedy has amassed an influence in politics to such and extent; nary a high profile politician can ignore its impact and resist the pull to participate.   Numerous studies have been conducted through the years analyzing the staggering impact of comedy in the opinions and perceptions of its audience.  The power is particularly significant with the country’s attention-short youth.  (more…)

Last week, Jim Cramer had to be asking himself, “Why me? Why now? Why did Pop Culture’s King Jester choose this point and time to turn me into a national joke for doing what I’ve been doing forever?”

It’s been a few days, so you have to wonder if Cramer’s figured it out yet — or if someone’s explained it to him. He certainly hadn’t pieced it together during his appearance on the “Daily Show” where he looked liked a fighter who didn’t see the punch coming – and he didn’t. Why would he? Through months and months of recession, Cramer’s been on the air doing what he’s been doing for years:  Ranting, raving, predicting, promoting, suggesting, picking, pointing, and putting himself across as some kind of Market Seer –just like so many others out there, only he uses action figures. (more…)