Jon Stewart, most trusted name in news.. seriously!

Apparently, when Walter Cronkite croaked, TIME took a poll to find out who is America's most trusted TV news personality. As if the relic newscaster's departure from earth changed anything at all. I mean, the guy was no Michael Jackson. There's no brand new, high stakes competition a la the Cold War arms race among TV news broadcasters now that Walter Cronkite finally died.

It has shit to do with him! I'd say it's an unnecessarily sappy angle for a simple poll but whatever. What the poll revealed, however, was quite surprising.

America's most trusted news person is a comedian. He's Jon Stewart, 46, host of Comedy Central's The Daily Show.

That's right, Stewart received a majority of the vote with 44 percent. Brian Williams got 29 percent; Charlie Gibson, 19 percent; and somehow Katie Couric is even on the board with seven percent.

Also a writer and co-producer of The Daily Show, Stewart himself has repeatedly referred to the show as "fake news." Accordingly, dingbats who don't know any better think those of us who watch The Daily Show are, well, idiots.

You may recall when Bill O'Reilly interviewed Jon Stewart in true asshole fashion on The O'Reilly Factor, calling The Daily Show a "dopey show" whose viewers are "stoned slackers" and "dopey kids." It was September 17, 2004, Bush's second term hung in the balance, and O'Reilly was scared shitless (and rightly so) of Stewart's growing impact and the impending threat he represented--namely, getting young people interested in the absurdity that is American politics and punditry.

Of course the facts show that The Daily Show's viewers are indeed younger, smarter, more educated, more informed about politics, and more affluent than O'Reilly's bitter, old-fangled, gun-loving, moth-eaten hate brigade.

Personally, I knew Stewart had the goods--especially during hardcore wartime--but I guess I'm just surprised that it's not such a secret. Not anymore anyway.

When Americans were asked in a 2007 poll by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press to name the journalist they most admired, Mr. Stewart, the fake news anchor, came in at No. 4, tied with the real news anchors Brian Williams and Tom Brokaw of NBC, Dan Rather of CBS and Anderson Cooper of CNN. And a study this year from the center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism concluded that “ ‘The Daily Show’ is clearly impacting American dialogue” and “getting people to think critically about the public square.”

...

As the (The Daily Show's) co-executive producer Rory Albanese noted, juxtapositions of video clips and sound bites are one of the show’s favorite strategies. It might be the juxtaposition of Senator Barack Obama speaking to a crowd of 200,000 in Berlin while Mr. McCain campaigns in a Pennsylvania grocery store. Or it could be a juxtaposition of a politician taking two sides of the same argument. One famous segment featured Mr. Stewart as the moderator of a debate between then-Governor Bush of Texas in 2000, who warned that the United States would end up “being viewed as the ugly American” if it went around the world “saying we do it this way — so should you,” and President Bush of 2003, who extolled the importance of exporting democracy to Iraq.

Often a video clip or news event is so absurd that Mr. Stewart says nothing, simply rubs his eyes, does a Carsonesque double take or crinkles his face into an expression of dismay. “When in doubt, I can stare blankly,” he said. “The rubber face. There’s only so many ways you can stare incredulously at the camera and tilt an eyebrow, but that’s your old standby: What would Buster Keaton do?” --New York Times, August 15, 2009

Anyone who denies Jon Stewart his proper credit should be stuffed in a suitcase and dumped off an Alaskan cruise liner.