“Stewart comes at religion with buckets of derision, but I do not find him offensive, nor should anyone who enjoys comedy. Like so many of the best comedians, he is an equal-opportunity hater. Sometimes it’s atheists he cannot stand, as in his bit about the beams in a shape of the cross that survived the Ground Zero wreckage, which the American Atheists did not want displayed. Sometimes it’s the Catholic church, which last November proved a useful point of comparison for the football culture at Penn State: “I get that it’s probably hard for you to believe that this guy you think is infallible, and this program you think is sacred, could hide such heinous activities, but there is some precedent for that,” Stewart said, referring to coach Joe Paterno and the sex-abuse scandal. “Yeah, and just like with the Catholic Church, no one is trying to take away your religion, in this case football. They’re just trying to bring some accountability to a pope, and some of his cardinals.” In both cases, it was the culture of certainty that Stewart was mocking, not the belief system itself. It was the human tendency toward hubris.”

Jon Stewart, Religion Teacher Extraordinaire | Religion & Politics
High-res washingtonexaminer:  I like The Daily Show, so sometimes if I’m home late at night, I’ll catch snippets of that. I think Jon Stewart’s brilliant. It’s amazing to me the degree to which he’s able to cut through a bunch of the nonsense – for young people in particular, where I think he ends up having more credibility than a lot of more conventional news programs do. - President Obama to Rolling Stone magazine

washingtonexaminer:

 I like The Daily Show, so sometimes if I’m home late at night, I’ll catch snippets of that. I think Jon Stewart’s brilliant. It’s amazing to me the degree to which he’s able to cut through a bunch of the nonsense – for young people in particular, where I think he ends up having more credibility than a lot of more conventional news programs do.

- President Obama to Rolling Stone magazine

High-res rollingstone: Jon Stewart has interviewed Bruce Springsteen for the cover story in the next issue of Rolling Stone, on newsstands March 16th. As host of The Daily Show, Stewart has talked to Springsteen publicly, but within the tight confines of brief segments. In this interview, the men get the space to speak at length about the Springsteen’s new album, Wrecking Ball, as well as their common ground as popular entertainers with a serious interest in politics. “It’s not at all surreal,” Stewart says with heavy sarcasm, referring to his friendship with the legendary rocker. “It’s very hard to reconcile sitting and fishing in a little pond in New Jersey with a guy that you spent many years hitchhiking the New Jersey I-95 corridor to see in Philadelphia back in the day. The only band I think I’ve seen more than Bruce Springsteen is the Springsteen tribute band Backstreets. I try not to let him know how pathetic I truly am.”

rollingstone:

Jon Stewart has interviewed Bruce Springsteen for the cover story in the next issue of Rolling Stone, on newsstands March 16th. As host of The Daily Show, Stewart has talked to Springsteen publicly, but within the tight confines of brief segments. In this interview, the men get the space to speak at length about the Springsteen’s new album, Wrecking Ball, as well as their common ground as popular entertainers with a serious interest in politics.

“It’s not at all surreal,” Stewart says with heavy sarcasm, referring to his friendship with the legendary rocker. “It’s very hard to reconcile sitting and fishing in a little pond in New Jersey with a guy that you spent many years hitchhiking the New Jersey I-95 corridor to see in Philadelphia back in the day. The only band I think I’ve seen more than Bruce Springsteen is the Springsteen tribute band Backstreets. I try not to let him know how pathetic I truly am.”

(via popculturebrain)