So until the pundits are subjected to some scrutiny for their fact free gaffes, leave Jon Stewart alone. </LeaveBritneyAlone>

You can see the video, and I don’t think it’s great. It shows off his not-infrequent forays into “a pox on both their houses” land, but there is a difference between saying, “Not up to his normal standards,” and:

I won’t say that Stewart has the same obligation to be accurate the journalists have—in fact, if he had brought up the coin only to make a lot of silly jokes about whose face would be on it, that would have been okay. (A missed opportunity, but nothing more.) But instead he grossly misled his audience.

At its best the Daily Show is about satirizing the actual reality of American governance in an honest way. Stewart has built up a lot of credibility over the years. A great many people trust him implicitly, believing that while his main objective is to be funny, he also won’t under any circumstances BS them. Yesterday, he betrayed that trust.

Shame on you, Jon Stewart. You’re better than this.

It’s one thing to say, “It’s not his best,” and it’s another to treat it as one of the 4 horsemen of the apocalypse.

Ryan Cooper, please get a life.