RUSH: This is interesting. Tuesday afternoon on CNN International’s show called Amanpour — that’s the last name of Christiane, who’s just lost her staff, by the way. She’s still the mysterious CNN trench coat foreign correspondent. She has a program on CNN International. They interviewed Jon Stewart of The Daily Show. But he didn’t have his 30 writers with him, therefore he was pretty much word naked. A guy that has 30 writers write what he says every day, you don’t have them with you, and it can be panic city.
So it’s interesting because it shows how different people are on television when their writers aren’t around, their teleprompter’s not around. First thing, here is the exchange that ended up with Stewart having to apologize for a supposed joke about not voting. And all of this happened when he didn’t have a script. Here’s the first of two bites.
AMANPOUR: Did you vote?
STEWART: No.
AMANPOUR: No?
STEWART: No. I just moved. I don’t even know where my thing is now.
AMANPOUR: What do you mean?
STEWART: I moved to a different state.
RUSH: That’s Election Day. This is Jon Stewart who, in the eyes of the media, is Walter Cronkite for the under-15 crowd. Well, the Walter Cronkite for the under-30 crowd. This guy is their hero. I mean, this guy is their guiding light. Jon Stewart, why, he is it. He’s got all the answers. Jon Stewart tells you what to think. Jon Stewart’s cool and hip, and here he is admitting on CNN International all over the world, he didn’t vote on Election Day. He doesn’t even know where his thing is, ’cause he just moved.
Democrats were upset about this. Democrats were demonstrably upset. What do you mean, didn’t vote? You’re Jon Stewart. You’re the guy that fills the low-information voters’ heads full of junk. You’re the guy we depend on to misdirect the low-information voters, and when you’re telling them you didn’t vote, it’s gonna look cool not to vote. We’re Democrats. We can’t have people thinking it’s cool not to vote. So this required an apology ’cause the Democrats were very upset about this.
STEWART: I did vote today. I did know where my booth was. I was being flip, and it kind of took off, and, you know what, I want to apologize, because I shouldn’t have been flip about that because I think I wasn’t clear enough that I was kidding and it sent a message that I didn’t think voting was important or that I didn’t think it was a big issue. And I do, and I did vote, and I was being flip, and I shouldn’t have done that. That was stupid. So I apologize, and — yeah.
RUSH: That was later Tuesday on his own show on the Comedy Central network, The Daily Show. He did vote. But he said up there, “No, I just moved. I don’t even know where my thing is now. I just moved to a different state.” Yeah, I did, I voted. An enterprising journalist can find out. They can’t find out how you voted, but they can find out if you did. Yeah, that’s not hard to do. Did you know that, Dawn? People can find out if you vote or not? It’s easy, anybody can. You don’t need to be an enterprising journalist or journalista.
But this is what happens when you don’t have your writers with you. This is what happens when you have 30 people that tell you what to say and they’re not with you when you go on Christiane Amanpour’s show.
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