Jon Stewart called Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace "insane" in a live interview during which the two discussed media bias.
The comment came after Wallace suggested that Stewart's 'Daily Show' joke about the similarity in technique for Sarah Palin's One Nation bus tour was like one for a herpes drug, he was really making a political statement.
"You really think that's a political comment? You're insane," said Stewart. "Here's the difference between you and I. I'm a comedian first."
"My comedy is informed by an ideological background; there's no question about that. But the thing that you will never understand is that Hollywood, yeah, they're liberal, but that's not their primary motivating force. I'm not an activist. I am a comedian."
"Do I want my voice heard?," Stewart said later. "Absolutely, that's why I got into comedy. Am I an activist, in your mind? A partisan ideological activist? No."
"You can't understand, because of the world that you live in, that there is not a designed ideological agenda on my part to affect partisan change because that's the soup you swim in. And I appreciate that, I understand it."
"It reminds me of in ideological regimes, they can't understand that there is free media other places because they receive marching orders."
"The embarrassment is that I'm given credibility in this world because of the disappointment that the public has in what the news media does."
"I don't think our viewers are the least bit disappointed with us," Wallace responded. "I think our viewers think, finally, they're getting somebody who tells the other side of the story."
"Who are the most consistently misinformed media viewers?" Stewart shot back. "The most consistently misinformed? Fox, Fox viewers, consistently, every poll."
See the interview, which made for some great television, in its entirety below.
The comment we mentioned comes about 6 minutes in:
Jon Stewart called Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace "insane" in a live interview during which the two discussed media bias.
