The Problem With Jon Stewart

Matt Roush says...

He may be more casually dressed than in his Daily Show heyday, and he’s noticeably grayer—“Very few people would be happy looking like an anti-smoking poster,” he quips with his customary self-deprecation—but Jon Stewart is fired up and brimming with passion for social causes in his much-anticipated return to TV. There is humor and wit as you’d expect, as he brainstorms with his admirably diverse writing/producing team, but he’s dead serious when exposing fault lines in society. His first subject: the shameful treatment of U.S. military veterans who were exposed to toxic and cancerous smoke around “burn pits” used to dispose of waste (including human) generated on military bases overseas. “We support our troops unless they actually need support,” Stewart declares, revealing how difficult it is for veterans to receive proper benefits for treatment. “They are holding the veterans to a standard of proof far beyond the one our own government used to send them to war in the first place.” Stewart’s impassioned advocacy leads to a confrontational interview with Secretary of Veterans Affairs Denis McDonough, and for a while you might mistake this for 60 Minutes. And that is not a problem.

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