Jon Stewart Claims That He Wasn’t Responsible For the Cancelation of 'Crossfire'
One of Jon Stewart’s most iconic TV moments happened on a program that wasn’t The Daily Show. Nor was it on The Jon Stewart Show. And we’re definitely not talking about that episode of The Nanny where he makes out with his cousin.
Back in 2004, Stewart appeared on CNN’s Crossfire, the political debate show hosted by former Bill Clinton advisor Paul Begala and acclaimed performance artist Tucker Carlson. The legendary episode, which even has its own Wikipedia page, found Stewart gleefully shitting on the show that hosted him.
“I made a special effort to come on the show today, because I have privately, amongst my friends and also in occasional newspapers and television shows, mentioned this show as being, uh, bad,” Stewart said at the outset. “It's not so much that it's bad, as it's hurting America.”
Don't Miss
And things didn’t get any less harsh as the interview went on. “Right now, you're helping the politicians and the corporations,” he told Begala and Carlson. “You're part of their strategies. You are partisan, what do you call it, hacks.”
When Carlson tried to counter these criticisms by arguing that Stewart had asked then-presidential candidate John Kerry candidate softball questions on The Daily Show, the comedian pointed out, “you're on CNN. The show that leads into me is puppets making crank phone calls.”
In the closing moments of the episode, Carlson complained that Stewart is “more fun” on his show. “You’re as big a dick on your show as you are on any show,” he fired back.
Just a few months later, CNN cancelled the show. Given the timing, a lot of people attributed the decision to Stewart’s highly-publicized takedown. “I believe he clearly came in there wanting to blow the show up. And he did so,” Begala told The New York Times.
Former Daily Show correspondent Rob Corddry once revealed that Stewart told him that his salty mood was partly due to having skipped a meal. “Him not eating breakfast that morning got a show canceled,” an impressed Corddry declared.
But one person who doesn’t think that Jon Stewart got Crossfire canceled is Stewart himself.
“I didn’t get Crossfire canceled,” Stewart plainly stated on a recent episode of The Ezra Klein Show. “Crossfire’s ratings sucked and CNN looked for a way out and that was a convenient flashpoint.” He also admitted that his animus towards Crossfire wasn’t purely based on Carlson’s awfulness. “The person I really didn’t like there was (Robert) Novak, but he just wasn’t on the show that day,” Stewart noted.
The Death to Smoochy star likened Crossfire’s axing to NBC scrapping Megyn Kelly’s morning show after she defended blackface on Halloween. “The truth of the matter is, NBC executives and CNN executives, they aren’t woke or any of those things, they’re desperately trying to hold onto their jobs by generating ad revenue by whatever means necessary,” Stewart argued.
“I’ve been canceled a shit-ton of times,” he continued. “But the only reason I was canceled is like, the network executives were just like, ‘Yeah this show sucks.’ But they didn’t say, like, ‘You’re a bad person and that’s why we're canceling the show.’ That’s what they did to (the Crossfire hosts). The industry, rather than standing up for what was really going on there, which is, you’re not generating enough revenue and interest to justify your large contract, or whatever it is, they turned it into, ‘We’re getting rid of you for a moral failing or lapse.’ And that was wrong.”
Stewart may be right about the truth of the decision, but it’s far more enjoyable to think that he ended a cable news show by not taking 5 minutes to nibble on a muffin.
