Barack Obama hasn't just lost the earnest liberals; Jon Stewart's recent barbs show the honeymoon is also over with left-leaning comedy. Stewart is a "pop-culture bellwether," Howard Kurtz writes in the Washington Post, so left and right alike took notice last week when Stewart ripped the president for speaking to schoolkids with a teleprompter.
No matter that there were no kids—only journalists—in the classroom. FoxNation gleefully reported "Jon Stewart mocks Obama's teleprompter dependence." Other liberals have also come under Stewart's fire recently: He gave Keith Olbermann a nasty lashing, saying he had once "toiled in the fields of the factual," but was now "just kind of calling people names." Still, Kurtz notes, Obama is a long way from being Stewart's new Bush: "We've all seen Jon Stewart fire his comic bazooka. With Obama, he's merely using a popgun." (More Jon Stewart stories.)