Comedy Central

Roger Ailes was right. Earlier this week, the Fox News president made waves by asserting that Jon Stewart confessed to being a "socialist" while the two were in a bar once. Outlets such as Huffington Post and Mediaite reported the story as an accusation or an open question. It isn't. Appearing on CNN in the year 2000, the comic openly explained his ideology.

After a caller on the December 15, 2000 Larry King Live asked about being objective, Stewart conceded, "I think I would say I'm more of a socialist or an independent." He added, "No one would ever I think watching our show think that, boy, that guy is just leaning so far right." [See video below. MP3 audio here.]

Warning: Remove all food, liquids, and flammables from proximity of your computer before proceeding.

The folks at Comedy Central actually published an article Thursday with the headline "Conservative Hashtag Games Are Ruining Twitter":

As NewsBusters reported last month, Comedy Central's Jon Stewart did a truly vile sketch a few weeks ago displaying a Nativity scene over a woman's vagina.

According to BuzzFeed, Delta Airlines has dropped its sponsorship of the Daily Show as a result [reader discretion advised: offensive graphic displayed below page break]:

In a fawning interview with liberal comedian Stephen Colbert on Friday's NBC Today, fill-in co-host David Gregory gushed over the Comedy Central host being a factor in the 2012 presidential race: "What a treat for me to be in for Matt [Lauer] today....Stephen Colbert is a man who has had a loud and influential voice in this political season."

Gregory began the farcical exchange by proclaiming to Colbert: "You have a super-PAC and you have a character on television. And you have a real impact on this race." Colbert himself was skeptical: "How do I have an impact on the race?" Still, Gregory urged the fake newsman to share his supposed wisdom: "What are you exposing about the race and about the political system in 2012 that you think the rest of us miss?"

Can you imagine a liberal comedian demeaning the appearance of a physically handicapped, Pulitzer Prize-winning, liberal syndicated columnist?

On Thursday, Comedy Central's Stephen Colbert called Charles Krauthammer "Count Chocula" (video follows with commentary):

In a snarky segment aimed at mocking Fox News for dismissing the Democratic/MSNBC "war on women" meme, Jon Stewart placed a depiction of Jesus Christ's Nativity over a women’s vagina, gratuitously offending millions of Christians, not to mention non-religious folks with any shred of common decency. [Audio here. Video and image after the jump. Viewer discretion is advised]

Comedy Central’s Jon Stewart surprisingly took on NBC News Monday for the network’s dishonest editing of George Zimmerman’s 911 call regarding Trayvon Martin.

Less shocking, the Daily Show host also took some punches at conservatives for how they handled this story including Media Research Center president Brent Bozell (video follows with transcribed highlights and commentary):

I don't know about you, but I thought Sarah Palin did an extremely good job in her guest-host stint on NBC's Today show Tuesday.

Comedy Central's Jon Stewart predictably didn't, and began his Daily Show later that evening with a blistering attack on the former Alaska governor (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Plugging his new book, The Crisis of Zionism, on Thursday's The Colbert Report on Comedy Central, the Daily Beast's Peter Beinart - formerly of Time magazine - advanced the irrational view that it is the Israeli government and those who support the existence of Jewish settlements in the West Bank who are the obstacles to peace with the Palestinians. (Video below)

Comedy Central's Daily Show took the news of Dick Cheney's heart transplant as another opportunity to attack the former Vice President.

On Monday, whoever is responsible for the show's Twitter account posted a series of supposedly comical messages about the recovering patient including "Please warn your children not to accept candy from or get into a car with #CheneysOldHeart":

In an attempt to mock Rush Limbaugh, yet again, Stephen Colbert on Thursday compared the conservative radio host to the Taliban. Highlighting advertisers who have pulled out of Limbaugh's show in the wake of the Sandra Fluke controversy, the comedian insisted that the U.S. Army would no longer buy commercials.

Colbert smeared, "Yes, the Army is pulling out of Rush. Meanwhile, they're staying in Afghanistan to negotiate with the Taliban who evidently have a better track record on women's issues."  [MP3 audio here. See video below.]

Of all the pathetic media defenses of Georgetown University law student and women’s rights activist Sandra Fluke, Comedy Central’s Jon Stewart on Monday might have mounted the silliest one.

During a lengthy segment about “Extremely Loud & Incredibly Gross” Rush Limbaugh, the Daily Show host also went after Fox News’s Megyn Kelly by hysterically claiming institutions paying for contraceptives is the same as employers paying for maternity leave (video follows with transcribed highlights and commentary):

Comedian Jon Stewart apparently thinks the economy is just fine and that any news outlet that says otherwise must be doing it because they don't want President Obama to get reelected.

Even more preposterous, on Tuesday's Daily Show, the host did an entire segment on how Fox News reporting the national debt, unemployment, and rising gas prices is all a Republican National Committee conspiracy (video follows with highlights and commentary):

CBS This Morning on Friday boosted left-wing comedian John Oliver's smear on Rick Santorum, and conservatism in general, where he equated the GOP presidential candidate with a hardcore drug like crack cocaine: "America likes its conservatism cut with plenty of baking powder because one hit of the pure stuff, and you'll wake up with Eric Stoltz...having just plunged an adrenaline needle into your heart."

Anchor Charlie Rose praised the offensive crack, which aired on Thursday's Daily Show: "Don't you love John Oliver?" Erica Hill agreed with her co-anchor, and added, "Always gives us a good laugh. We like that." Later that morning, a post on the far-left website Daily Kos praised Oliver's entire rant as "brilliant," as it supposedly "tells the truth about what the GOP really wants to do" [audio available here; video below the jump].

Appearing as a guest on Thursday's The Colbert Report on Comedy Central, ABC's Christiane Amanpour characterized conservatives as several years ago "frog-marching" the U.S. to war with Iraq as she and host Colbert discussed the likelihood Israel will soon attack Iran to prevent the Islamic state from producing nuclear weapons. (Video below)

Late-night comedians historically have relished the opportunity to poke fun at politicians. Sometimes they savage them. In the Obama era, they haven’t been so enthusiastic about any of it. A recent study of political jokes on three late-night shows (Letterman, Leno, and Jimmy Fallon) by the Center for Media and Public Affairs found that Barack Obama’s joke count is “substantially lower than any other president.”

Some of the Obama jokes are actually bipartisan slams. Jimmy Fallon joked that “Lindsay Lohan and Paris Hilton are more mature than President Obama and John Boehner.” This is the classic comedian’s pose, and the safe one, that all the politicians are ridiculous, squabbling poseurs. Still, it’s every bit as much pandering to the public as the politicians are.

Dean Reynolds filed a glowing report on Tuesday's CBS This Morning promoting comedian Stephen Colbert's mock campaign against super PACs. Reynolds led the segment by stating, "Before we say that a comedian could have no serious impact on a presidential campaign, let us remember that six days after a poll came out here showing Stephen Colbert slightly ahead of Jon Huntsman, Jon Huntsman quit the race."

After inflating Colbert's supposed impact, the correspondent continued by claiming that "so far, Colbert's effort is not displaying what you would call a light touch." Reynolds then played a clip from an ad released by the comedian's "Americans for a Better Tomorrow, Tomorrow" super PAC, which blasts GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney as a "serial killer. He's 'Mitt the Ripper.'"

As NewsBusters reported Friday, CNN's Soledad O'Brien had a completely unprofessional interview with "The Obamas" author Jodi Kantor wherein she mercilessly grilled the writer for having the nerve to criticize the first lady in her book.

Kantor struck back on Monday's Daily Show saying, "By her logic we wouldn't write obituaries because we can't talk to the dead people" (video follows with transcribed highlights and commentary):

ABC's George Stephanopoulos on Sunday proved once and for all what a joke he is.

Not only did the This Week host give twice the airtime to faux political candidate Stephen Colbert as Texas governor Rick Perry, he did so after the Comedy Central star called him "a political operative" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Appearing as a guest on Wednesday's The Colbert Report on Comedy Central, ABC's George Stephanopoulos responded to host Stephen Colbert's question of why he - as debate co-moderator last Saturday - asked GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney about whether states have the constitutional power to ban contraceptives, as he argued that the question revolved around the "right to privacy."

He then suggested that a bet with co-moderator Diane Sawyer motivated him to be so persistent in asking Romney followup questions on the subject. After Colbert asked what it felt like when Romney called it a "silly thing" for Stephanopoulos to ask such a hypothetical question, the ABC anchor responded:

On Thursday's The Colbert Report on Comedy Central, citing a recent article by conservative columnist George Will in which he asserted that Republicans "crave fun" in their presidential campaigns, host Stephen Colbert found amusement in GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum's concerns about partial-birth abortion as the Comedy Central host joked about playing a drinking game based on the former Senator's attention to the egregious abortion procedure.

After reading from Will's article, Colbert declared:

Appearing as a guest on Wednesday's The Colbert Report on Comedy Central, New York magazine's John Heilemann - also an MSNBC analyst and formerly of The New Yorker - made a gay joke about GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum as he described the competitive election in Iowa. (Video below)

After host Stephen Colbert, playing the part of committed conservative wanting to pump up Santorum, asked of the Iowa results, "So, Santorum, this is a victory, right? He may have lost, but it's a victory," Heilemann took a shot at the former Pennsylvania Senator in his response:

On Tuesday's The Daily Show on Comedy Central, as he recounted the racist newsletters that were published in the 1990s under the name of GOP presidential candidate Ron Paul, host Jon Stewart mocked other GOP candidates after clips of them attacking Paul for not taking seriously the threat of a nuclear Iran, suggesting that the candidates were not so concerned about racism. (Video below)

Moments later, as he mocked Republican voters for adding former Senator Rick Santorum to the list of candidates they are willing to consider, Stewart took another race-based shot at the Republican Party as he used a box of Whitman's chocolates as a prop and pronounced the brand name as if it were "White Man's."

After showing clips of the candidates criticizing Paul's willingness to allow Iran to obtain nuclear weapons, Stewart cracked:

Fox News's Bill O'Reilly and Comedy Central's Jon Stewart are once again locked in a battle of wits.

Having been told by O'Reilly that he was "going to hell" for remarks he made about the war on Christmas, Stewart said Thursday, "I make my living watching Fox News eight hours a day. I'm already in hell! Boom! Boom! Your move, O'Reilly."

This led The Factor host to marvelously respond Friday, "All right, here's my move. How can you watch eight hours of Fox News every day and still be a pinhead?" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Jon Stewart, on Thursday's Daily Show, repeatedly mocked Rick Perry for his, as he put it, "brain turd" moment at this week's CNBC debate. However, Perry wasn't the only GOP candidate Stewart made fun of. Everyone from Perry to Santorum took a hit. The only candidate Stewart didn't mock was Mitt Romney, whom the Daily Show host declared to be the winner of the whole race. "It's over! Indecision 2012 Mercy Rule Edition. Because in presidential primaries, as in little league, if one team is up 10-0 in the third you call it a day an you head over to Friendly's for some Fribbles and some food poisoning."
                                             
Stewart initially teased his audience with the Perry clip by calling it: "Rick Perry's now infamous ABC Wide World of Sports agony-of-defeat-worthy brain turd." Then he went on to savage the other GOP contenders on his November 10 show. (video after the jump)

Those prestigious publishers at Simon & Schuster selected All Saints Day to unleash the book world's latest attempt at mocking Christianity. It’s called "The Last Testament, by God."

The author is David Javerbaum, a top writer for 11 years for "The Daily Show" on Comedy Central, perhaps America's leading religion-hating TV network. Is it any surprise that the critics are loving it?