God damn, I think it's just really sad that we've put all this onus on a comedian. "His claims to be objective fell flat", what claims?! He's always been a liberal comedian with a hefty bias. He's not some news man who needs to be objective, he's a comedian! And I don't think he can be blamed for a generation of mindless, non-critical thinking liberals. He was funny, and often held a mirror up to hypocrisy while saying, "This shit is messed up" which is pretty par for the course for a comedian. That his audience didn't go further isn't a mark on him, and that others expected him to make his audience go further is more a mark on the general state of our media.And Mr. Stewart, who signed off from “The Daily Show” on Thursday, was more qualified than anybody to puncture this particular pretension. He trained his liberal-leaning audience to mock hypocrisy, incoherence and stupidity, and could have nudged them to see the planks in their own eyes, too. Instead, he cultivated their intellectual smugness by personifying it.
I agree. To whatever extent he embraced and played to his audience, as a profit-motivated individual/brand he can't be blamed. However, I think Stewart left true 'comedian' territory a long time ago. In some ways he's closer to a standard-bearer or a figurehead or what have you, to a certain type of person.
Yeah. My immediate thought is, if you were to look for a modern-day equivalent, there isn't one per se but Stewart and Colbert are along the same lines. EDIT: The modern-day equivalent is probably something more like the editorial board of the Times.