Beck: 'I’d Be Doing a Lot of the Same Things' as Stewart

Chris Smith offers up an in-depth look at how Jon Stewart and his staff create The Daily Show, and traces the show's evolution since Stewart took over. Highlights from the New York piece:

• Stewart on a possible Stewart-Colbert parody of Beck’s “Restoring Honor” rally: “Maybe we would do a ‘March of the Reasonable,’ on a date of no particular significance."
• Stewart on Fox News: "It's one reason I admire Fox. They’re great broadcasters. Everything is pointed, purposeful. You follow story lines, you fall in love with characters," he says, adding later, "You have to imagine someone is going to come along in a nonpartisan fashion and create a similarly tenacious organization as Fox."

• Glenn Beck on Stewart: “Jon Stewart is very funny, and if I were in his position, I’d be doing a lot of the same things. In fact, a lot of the jokes I’ve heard before, either from my staff or myself. He takes things out of context (no worse than most of the other mainstream media) and is more interested in being funny than trying to actually understand the key messages in [my] show … But I don’t think he’s looking for a Pulitzer."
• Denis Leary on Stewart: “Jon is exactly the same guy he’s always been, only with money. He knows that the moment he really believes he’s important, the funny goes away and he becomes Bill O’Reilly, except shorter and Jewish.”

To read the full profile, click here. For more Stewart, click here. (More Jon Stewart stories.)