Your Moment of Zen

Back in the late 1990s, between The Jon Stewart Show and The Daily Show, Stewart recalled one appearance on Live with Regis and Kathy when co-host Kathy Gifford made a comment about how the audience were applauding for him, but they didn't know who he was.
Back then, Stewart was a comedian mostly known for small roles in Half-Baked and The Faculty, so when he was approached to host The Daily Show after Craig Kilborn left in 1998, I can understand why he jumped it.
And for the first few years as he was hosting The Daily Show was a retread of what it was during the Kilborn years, a fake news show with comedians as correspondents reporting odd stories about people who adopt raccoons and overfeed them and a story about porno with puppets. You could almost see Stewart's frustration as he was supposed to be the straight person. Then, the 2000 Presidential election came and Stewart found his niche. But it took the events of 9/11 for Stewart to finally put his foot down and say no more.
Watching him tear up in the first show following the attacks, you can sense that Stewart is angry but tired of being the same old late-night TV show host that other people do. While David Letterman, Conan O'Brien and Jay Leno made jokes about the Bush/Cheney Administration and its policies, Stewart and his company peeled back the layers and exposed it with a biting satire not seen before in late-night TV. And satire is hard to do. It's hard to make someone laugh and it's hard to make fun of politics without being too cruel.
The Daily Show was the brainchild of comics Lizz Winstead and Madeleine Smithberg and Winstead left in 1998 and was vocal about how she never really felt Stewart was the appropriate host for the show, but we needed Stewart more than we needed just to laugh. And I think Stewart needed the events of 9/11 and the Bush/Cheney Administration to keep The Daily Show afloat because at the time, any show seemed to get on Comedy Central, which is why Daniel Tosh would make fun of all the canceled shows on Tosh.0.
Stewart was the outlet for many people who weren't just rolling over in the post-9/11 society calling French fries "freedom fries." Stewart called people on both sides of the political debate out. People may think he went hard on Republicans, but he didn't give Democrats an easy pass. That made him different from the personalities on Fox News, he showed no favoritism. That's why The 1/2 Hour News Hour failed on Fox News in 2007.
Also, Stewart was willing to admit when he or the show made a mistake.
But it may have just been timing. With the rise of social media, there was a rise in political ideals. More people are willing to proclaim their liberal, conservative or libertarian views, so maybe it was just providence that Stewart's hosting duties happened when they did. If this was the 1990s, it may have turned people off.
Some people say Stewart changed the face of political satire but I think he just made it easier for people to understand. Satire is a hard tightrope. Sometimes the audience doesn't understand what is being presented. Take Natural Born Killers, which was a satire of how the media and public frenzy made murderers into celebrities. Nihilists and young people actually liked the exploits of Mickey and Mallory but didn't realize how one-dimensional they were. Or take American Psycho, both the movie and the book, which was a satire of 1980s greed and self-indulgence as well as male masculinity.
And despite the laughter, there were times, following the Eric Garner case, the massacre at Emanuel A.M.E. church and the shootings that injured Gabrielle Gifford, former Congresswoman, and others as well as leaving six people, including a 9-year-old dead, Stewart was not afraid to address it seriously and tell people he couldn't just turn to a comedy bit just like nothing happened. That may have been what made people like him. He wasn't like the other newscasters who could talk about disasters and violence and then segue into a happy-happy story in the same breath.
On why he chose to leave The Daily Show, only Stewart knows. Maybe he wanted to spend more time with his family. Maybe he wanted to branch out and do more film directing. The argument that he got sick and tired of Fox News and the hypocrisy of our political debate is valid, but we can't say that it beat Stewart. Sometimes it's best just to walk away. And like he said on his last show, "If you smell something, say something."
Stewart couldn't do it forever. Johnny Carson and David Letterman knew when it was time to retire.
I'm not sure how successful Trevor Noah will be as the next host. The Daily Show, like The Tonight Show, is a franchise and you have things that work and things that don't.
I just want to wish Stewart the best and tell him thanks for the laughter and I look forward to what he will do next.