Jon Stewart Bids Farewell to ‘The Daily Show’

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Jon Stewart
American late night TV has seen a huge amount of upset over the past couple of years.

But as we enter the every increasingly absurd circus that will be the 2016 presidential race, his self-righteous acerbic wit seems perhaps more apropos than ever before.

To this end, the Stewart faithful have gone to Change.org — where such sorts go, to make with the change — with the following petition:

A petition to make Jon Stewart a presidential debate moderator is currently the fastest growing on Change.org.
The petition, which asks the Commission on Presidential Debates to consider Jon Stewart as a moderator for one of the three major 2016 presidential debates, has garnered more than 81,400 signatures*.
Most of the petition’s signatures were added in just the last day. Yesterday morning, the petition stood at 6,000 signatures. Since then it’s seen signatures increase by more than 1200%.
Stewart was awarded the Peabody Award – which recognizes distinguished and meritorious public service by American radio and television stations – for The Daily Show’s “Indecision” coverage of the 2000 and 2004 presidential races.
Mariel Waters, the petition starter, cites those awards as one of the reasons Stewart is qualified to moderate a debate, along with his experience interviewing “15 heads of state, 22 members of the United States Cabinet, 32 members of the United States Senate, 7 members of the United States House of Representatives, and scores of other political leaders from this country and around the world” on The Daily Show.
Want Jon Stewart to moderate a presidential debate? Show your support here.
Waters told a New Jersey radio station that the idea for her petition came from to two Change.org petitions she saw in 2012 that called on Stewart to moderate a presidential debate. While those petitions didn’t win, she notes another presidential debate moderator petition that did win in 2012.
During the last presidential election cycle, three high school students – Emma Axelrod, Sammi Siegel, and Elena Tsemberis – started a petition asking for a woman to moderate a presidential debate after learning that a woman hadn’t moderated a U.S. general election presidential debate since 1992.
After generating more than 180,000 signatures across two petitions, the girls achieved victory when the Commission on Presidential Debates announced that Candy Crowley would moderate the second presidential debate.
Think someone else should be moderating the debates? Start your own petition now.
*This article was published on August 20, 2015 at 7 AM. The signature count was more than 112,000 signatures as of August 20 at 6 PM.

We hope it fairs better than the “Bring Back Hot Mustard and Chipotle” sauce back petition, or the one pleading to add Foxy to Smash Bros.

Personally we think Stewart is not a legitimate journalist, but that said it makes him no less qualified to moderate one of these circuses. So, they have our symbolic signatures.