Thank you, Jon Stewart: You had a big stage in a broken world — and you used it to say something important
Dear Jon:
I started college in 2005. Everything was exploding then. Hurricane Katrina had just bludgeoned my home state. The shadow of 9/11 loomed large. The war drums were beating. Fox News had found its bearings. The dreariness of the Bush-Cheney years was suffocating. Political dysfunction was pervasive. Things were in a bad way.
And there you were, every night, telling it like it was. You were a gadfly to the greedy profiteers and the propagandists and the unaccountable. To people like me, you were a reprieve, an anchor in a cultural whirlwind.
I know you’re not a newsman – you made sure to remind us of that. Perhaps you were something different. If nothing else, you were the bullshit-slayer of your time, our Carlin and our Cronkite. The truth is that newsmen – real newsmen – don’t exist anymore; corporate media is too compromised for that. Our institutions have failed us and we all know it. You filled that void somehow.
You emerged at a time when a voice like yours was desperately needed. Everything about our age invites cynicism. Our discourse is so toxic, so empty, and you managed to navigate it with wit and humor and authenticity. I remember your monologue after 9/11. I remember thinking that something changed that night. You sensed the gravity of the moment, but you also appeared to recognize your responsibility.
