Though I love the Daily Show, I keep waiting for the Jon Stewart backlash — it’s basically inevitable that media coverage eventually turns nasty when someone gets so much positive press. But it hasn’t happened yet. Even the professionally vicious Wonkette admitted she likes the show:

I keep on wanting to write
something mean about that show, be like, oh, it’s so over; everyone
likes it. But it really is good. And that’s almost disappointing,
that it can be that good all the time.

However, here’s professional contrarian Michael Kinsley in the Post today trying to get the ball rolling with the toughest shot I’ve seen at Stewart so far:

A moment of surprising resonance in the campaign was Jon Stewart’s Oct. 15 appearance on “Crossfire.” Taking just a tad too seriously his recent appointment by acclamation as the Walter Cronkite of our time, Stewart begged the show’s hosts to “stop hurting America” with their divisiveness. I used to work on that show, and I still think the robust, even raucous, and ideologically undisguised hammering of politicians on “Crossfire” is more intellectually honest than more decorous shows where journalists either pretend to neutrality or pontificate as if somebody had voted them into office.

Update: More backlash in a Duke Chronicle column arguing against Stewart as a commencement speaker:

After Stewart appeared on Crossfire in October and lambasted the show’s hosts with facile jabs about their failures as journalists, he was seen as something of a hero among some Duke students. Why? There is nothing courageous about vague accusations about journalists helping “politicians and corporations” when the accuser refuses to accept accountability and deflects criticism with ad hominem attacks on Tucker Carlson’s bowties.