How to watch 'The Daily Show' with Jon Stewart, and what we should be hoping for

Bill Goodykoontz, Arizona Republic

Updated Fri, February 9, 2024 at 7:15 PM UTC

4 min read

The news was certainly a shock: Jon Stewart is coming back to host “The Daily Show,” if on a limited basis.

Democracy is saved! This is exactly what we have needed since 2015, when Stewart stepped down! Donald Trump is no match for Stewart’s rapier-like wit! And so on. That’s a general roundup of reactions to the news, which Comedy Central announced on Wednesday, Jan. 24. He starts on Feb. 12, and will appear only on Mondays, and only through the election.

Eh, I hope all that praise proves true — we certainly need it to be true — but I’m only cautiously optimistic. Keep in mind what Stewart used to say the first time around: “The Daily Show” is first and foremost a comedy show. He wasn’t trying to save the world. He was trying to make it laugh. It’ll be interesting to see what that looks like now — and who has an appetite for it.

How old is Jon Stewart? Is he still 'the voice of our generation'?

In a statement, Chris McCarthy, the president and CEO of Showtime/MTV Entertainment Studios, said, “Jon Stewart is the voice of our generation.”

Is he, though? And whose generation?

Stewart, 61, certainly was, taking a scalpel to politicians and, don’t forget, the media that covered them, during his first run as host, which began in 1999. It’s hard to overestimate his impact on popular culture then, if not necessarily the electorate. (Remember the funereal mood during the live show after the 2004 election?) Stewart’s version of the show also gave rise to the careers of Stephen Colbert, John Oliver and Steve Carell, among others.

But things have changed — a lot — since the last time Stewart sat in the host’s chair. Will he change, as well?

“We are honored to have (Stewart) return to Comedy Central's 'The Daily Show' to help us all make sense of the insanity and division roiling the country as we enter the election season,” McCarthy continued in the statement. “In our age of staggering hypocrisy and performative politics, Jon is the perfect person to puncture the empty rhetoric and provide much-needed clarity with his brilliant wit.”

'The Daily Show' doesn't work without traditional media

There’s no question about Stewart’s brilliant wit. He once described Arizona as “the meth lab of democracy,” after all. That’s aged pretty well, actually, maybe more true now than ever. Just imagine Stewart’s take on Kari Lake’s latest drama. That’s the kind of thing Stewart excels at — shining a light on rank absurdity, while putting it in the greater context of what it means to people beyond the laughs.

And beyond the laughs these days, it’s not pretty. Think of it as the "Saturday Night Live" dilemma. So much of what's going on in real-life politics already plays like parody.

Be that as it may, it’s not just that Trump and his minions in the Republican Party are openly threatening democracy. It’s that fewer people seem inclined to care, or at least watch, read and listen to stories about the threats. Pair that with the blows struck by corporations gutting media companies when we need their coverage most and it’s a dangerous combination.

One of the claims Stewart used to push back against was the notion that younger people got their news, particularly political news, from “The Daily Show.” He couldn’t do his show, he’d say, if more-traditional media outlets weren’t covering the stories he riffed on. No stories, no riffs.

I don’t doubt that Stewart and his staff can come up with things to make fun of. (May I suggest an Arizona bureau?) While Stewart’s work on his Apple TV+ show “The Problem with Jon Stewart” wasn’t very funny, it wasn’t meant to be. I don’t doubt that it’ll take him a little while to round back into shape, but if anyone can do it, he can. Well, he and Oliver and Colbert.

What I wonder is whether “The Daily Show” will again become the place where younger viewers engage with news. Better from Stewart than the Fox News primetime lineup, for sure. Better from Stewart than from Truth Social or directly from Trump rallies. Certainly better from Stewart than nowhere at all.

It’s that last, not engaging with news at all, that Stewart will have to overcome. I hope it works out, for Stewart and for the rest of us. He's not going to swing the election one way or the other, but maybe he can at least draw more attention to what's going on out there. For now, though, it’s a wait-and-see proposition.

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