On the eve of the Iraq War, in March 2003, we did a segment where we went to Carell reporting from Baghdad and I said, “Oh you know, the bombing has begun.” And Steve just does this little burn: “Oh.” And the whole bit was, “You didn’t know that? None of the other reporters had told you that?” The next thing is Carell with a suitcase, and then the next thing is him in a cab, and he ultimately ends up in the studio. There are very few lines. It’s just Carell. He has an ability in silence that’s unmatched.
In addition to the policy of the war itself, the show’s maybe greater dissatisfaction, especially in the lead-up to the war, was how it was covered or not covered by the media—a now familiar story of how unquestioning the coverage was, not just at Fox, but everywhere.
It was appalling to see the administration misleading people so blatantly and ham-handedly, and with so little resistance. Bush, in the 2003 State of the Union, is talking about Iraq buying yellowcake, and this is being swallowed by senators and the media and by people I knew. At The Daily Show, it wasn’t like, “Okay—we’re gonna bring down the Bush Administration today!” But there was definitely a sense that we can’t just let them say that stuff and not comment on it. And among the guys like me who were, at the time, ordering the Daily Show office supplies, I didn’t care how many pens I had to stock, I was gonna do my part!
Normally the election cycle dictated where your mind was. But now the Iraq War was an ongoing world event, and it was shaping everything about where the show was going. You were dealing with a president who was saying, “This is the cataclysmic battle between good and evil. It’s catastrophic. This will define who we are as a nation, as a people, as a world. So don’t worry about it. Go shopping. I got it.”
You had all these contradictions, and the show always did best when it existed in the space between what was presented as public policy and the strategizing that went into creating it. That was the defining thread of the show, that sense that we were being sold something.
The election in 2000 was the first crack in my kind of loss of innocence, and the invasion of Iraq was the complete dissolution of my faith in the country. It was just devastating to me.
Ben’s a great writer, really funny, a great structuralist, a great ear for style. I think that came from editing the Onion. Massively talented guy who could work both verbally and visually.
Ben’s Onion skills helped the show a lot. How is a field piece in the news really made? How is a headline really reported? What do their graphics really look like? How can we mimic the form of these things as much as possible, so that there are more ways to do a joke than just telling a joke, and so we can really comment more on how the news does things? He focused on “This is how a specific network does a specific thing.” Like Fox News: Everything’s a news alert. Nothing is ever just a story. How do we do something with that rather than just a broad joke about those Fox guys, they’re crazy, they’re assholes?
Where Kilborn’s show had parodied news media phoniness, Stewart’s show was rapidly becoming a commentary on the phoniness and shortcomings of the news media and politicians, wrapped in a parody newscast.
The war was a new test. Could The Daily Show be indignant—and funny—without being self-righteous? In April 2003, the war, the show’s new way of thinking about politics, and the people Stewart had been putting in place came together to create a giant step forward in The Daily Show’s storytelling methods.
“Bush v. Bush,” that was a big moment for the evolution of the show.
Sometime early in 2003, President Bush was giving a speech about bringing democracy to Iraq and building up a new country from the ashes of the Hussein regime. Somebody—probably Jon, because he’s got the head for this—said, “Well, Bush is saying this now, but he said something very opposite that just a few years ago, when he was running for president.”
I thought, “Oh, I wonder if there are other such things where there’s that juxtaposition. It would be interesting if we could go back and get those tapes from 2000. Can we do that?”
We were hearing and seeing Bush Administration people say things that directly countermanded things that they or their surrogates had said before. If we, as basically stoner comedy people, could remember it, how was it possible that the actual media couldn’t remember it, or didn’t care, or didn’t think it was important? People were so caught up in this cycle of new news that they had completely lost the fact that these politicians are all over the place.
At the time, all we kept were tapes of major moments like the presidential debates, convention speeches.
And we had Adam Chodikoff to remember it all.
Eric was my officemate. He got put on it, too, and a tape producer, Ari Fishman. Chods was involved, because he’s the king of savant memory. We started compiling a bunch of research, mostly through Nexis, in ways we take for granted today.
So, here’s the thing Bush said recently. What could we look for him saying that would be in opposition to that from, say, 1999, 2000? When he’d been out on the campaign trail, he was more or less an isolationist—even in 2001, once he was actually president but not going into this war yet. Over the course of a solid couple weeks we started to put together a bulletin board, with index cards to write all this stuff out, like something out of Homeland.
I had a stack of cards, six inches high, of all these things Bush had said and what might’ve juxtaposed well against that, and when it was from. There were yellow cards, and blue cards, and red cards, and green cards. It was important to have a lot of different color cards.
The older tape we found turned out to be from Bush debate performances in the 2000 campaign. We thought, “Oh, maybe we can frame this thing as a debate, if we can get the right pieces of tape that are shot the right way. We could set it up where Jon moderates a debate between Bush then and Bush now.”
We had two mountains of VHS tapes. It took about two weeks to assemble.
We got it down to about six or seven exchanges, and it became a piece that was more about its construction and concept than it was about the jokes. Putting the piece together in the right way was the joke of it. Then Jon figured out how he was going to perform it, taking on that debate moderator persona.
We put the segment out there in April 2003, “Bush v. Bush.” And I think everyone felt it: “That was a cool fucking thing.”
Jon Stewart: [at anchor desk] Now, since the beginning of all this weapons of mass-destruction, regime-change, pockets-of-resistance, targets-of-opportunity business, it’s been difficult to have an honest discussion about the direction President Bush has taken this country. In fact, when you combine the new mandate that criticizing the commander in chief is off-limits in wartime with last year’s official disbanding of the Democratic Party—well, we’re left at an all-time low in the good old-fashioned honest debate category. Well, I know you’re thinking, “Jon, every time I want to have a calm, honest discussion about these kinds of issues, I’m shouted down and harassed by the Dixie Chicks and their ilk.”
Well, tonight it all changes.
We’re going to have an honest, open debate between the president of the United States, and the one man we believe has the insight and the cojones to stand up to him. But first, joining us tonight, George Bush, forty-third president of the United States. Welcome, Mr. President.
President George W. Bush: [in video clip, standing behind a podium for a White House press conference] “Good evening, I’m pleased to take your questions tonight.”
Jon Stewart: Well, thank you very much sir, I’m pleased to ask them. Taking the other side, joining us from the year 2000, Texas governor and presidential candidate George W. Bush.
Governor George W. Bush: [in video clip, in front of the Statue of Liberty] “Good evening.”
Jon Stewart: Mr. President, you won the coin toss, the first question will go to you. Why is the United States of America using its power to change governments in foreign countries?
President Bush: “We must stand up for our security and for the permanent rights and the hopes of mankind. The United States of America will make that stand.”
Jon Stewart: Well, certainly that represents a bold new doctrine in foreign policy, Mr. President. Governor Bush, do you agree with that?
Governor Bush: “Yeah, I’m not so sure the role of the United States is to go around the world and say, ‘This is the way it’s gotta be!’”
Jon Stewart: Hmmm. All right. Well, that’s interesting. That’s a difference of opinion, and certainly that’s what this country is about. Mr. President, let me just get specific, why are we in Iraq?
President Bush: “We will be changing the regime of Iraq for the good of the Iraqi people.”
Jon Stewart: Well, Governor, then I’d like to hear your response on that.
Governor Bush: “If we’re an arrogant nation, they’ll resent us. I think one way for us to end up being viewed as the ugly American is for us to go around the world saying, ‘We do it this way. So should you.’”
Jon Stewart: Well, that’s an excellent point. I don’t think you can argue with that. Mr. President, is the idea to just build a new country that we like better?
President Bush: “We will tear down the apparatus of terror. And we will help you to build a new Iraq that is prosperous and free.”
Governor Bush: “I don’t think our troops should be used for what is called nation building.”
Jon Stewart: [as a split screen shows a smirking Governor Bush staring at a peeved President Bush] Well, that’s fair enough, Governor. You’re entitled to that. But then, Governor, answer this: How do you propose we nation-build? Would you use diplomacy?
Governor Bush: “Let me say this to you: I wouldn’t use force. I wouldn’t use force.”
Jon Stewart: Mr. President, clearly you’re skeptical of the governor. Governor, in your time in Texas, what have you done to demonstrate your willingness to be tough?
Governor Bush: “Well, I’ve been standing up to big Hollywood, big trial lawyers. What was the question? It was about emergencies, wasn’t it?”
Jon Stewart: No, no it wasn’t. Getting back to Iraq, Mr. President, you’re as familiar with the governor’s record in Texas as anybody. Are you willing, Mr. President, to trust Governor Bush with our foreign policy?
President Bush: “I’m not willing to take that chance again, Jon.”
Jon Stewart: Strong words from two very different men.
“Bush v. Bush” is a Rosetta Stone piece, the first time we put together pieces of tape to show that kind of hypocrisy. And it was the beginning of using our institutional memory as a major asset to the show. You could get people in a room and someone notices this thing, and somebody else is going to remember, “Wait, didn’t he say…” We began to understand that collaboration and finding contradictions is a big part of what we can do.
We applied that process to all these other politicians, to media outlets, to pundits. And then the technology, coincidentally, was evolving to help enable us to do more and more of that.
It felt like we were crazy. How could we be the only people who were recognizing this ridiculous disparity? It became one of the signature things for the show to find these quotes and have people contradicting their own words, but in the early stages it felt pretty novel to do something like that so vividly with one person.
It’s funny, because The Daily Show became famous for using video clips, but in those days it used to be: “President Bush is speaking—are we recording that?” “No, I forgot. Fuck it. Hopefully they’ll re-air it somewhere.”
There were companies, like Multivision, that recorded everything. We would pray that they had the clip, wait for them to dub it off, and send myself or another intern or a PA to pick up the tape, run back, hopefully in time for rehearsal.
It was [production manager] Pam DePace who said, “You know, this thing TiVo—we should get one for the show.”
Within no time there were sixteen TiVos running at all times.
It wasn’t hard to acquire one image that became a recurring part of The Daily Show’s war coverage for the next two years: Bush, in May 2003, standing on the deck of an aircraft carrier in front of a giant banner reading MISSION ACCOMPLISHED. Stewart used that clip to great effect as the Iraq invasion devolved into an extended occupation, to help make the point that much of the mainstream media had lost interest.
“What could it be? All that fanfare!” he asked after a montage of blaring “breaking news” alerts. “They finally found those weapons of mass destruction we’ve heard so much about?” No—the breathless hype was devoted to the indictment of Martha Stewart on insider trading charges. The clip that sealed the bitter joke was a commentator on Fox News saying, “After terrorism, this is the number two priority for the Justice Department.” Stewart rubbed his eyes in exaggerated but sincerely pained disbelief.
That piece was a small but prime example of how The Daily Show was gradually becoming, in Stewart’s phrase, “more essayistic.” Instead of a series of rapid-fire headlines and jokes, segments were starting to focus on a single topic or event for four or five minutes. Lewis Black could still veer, splenetically and refreshingly, from, say, the Loch Ness monster to P. Diddy, but the show’s tighter focus was apparent in “Back in Black” as well.
Lewis Black: These are dark days for President Bush. The State of the Union controversy won’t go away. Iraq is getting more and more expensive and more and more deadly. And he has the worst record of job creation since Herbert Hoover. So it’s no wonder Bush’s approval has plummeted all the way down to… 59 percent! Fifty-nine percent? Who’s judging this guy, Paula Abdul?… When Ari Fleischer marked his final day as press secretary last week, a soldier sprayed him with a fire hose. Now, they say it was a playful prank. But I like to think they were hosing the bullshit off of him! Jon?
I decided I needed the show because it’s a two-minute ad that reminds people every few weeks that “Yeah, there’s Lewis Black.” I talked it out with my shrink and I realized, “Okay, so they have no interest in my standup. Now they’re going to pay me to be an actor.” Once I got to that, I was set. So I acted for two years. They gave me the script and I did it like “Lewis Black” would do it, you know?
I’ve known for a long time the reason I didn’t get further than I could have gotten was because I had an attitude problem. By the time I didn’t have an attitude problem, nobody believed me anymore.
The tragic and the ludicrous took turns in 2003: the explosion of the space shuttle Columbia, the massive East Coast blackout, the election of California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, the too-good-to-be-true rescue of Army private Jessica Lynch. As Bush deepened the country’s involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan, and Saddam Hussein was captured, The Daily Show was entering one of its strongest stretches, but still in need of different dimensions in the cast and the writing staff.
I spent three and a half years as writer, four years as head writer, three and a half years as EP, and for me personally, the meat of that sandwich, the head writer job, those four years from 2003 to 2007 were just spectacular. We had an amazing staff. Tim Carvell—that was an easy call, to hire him. That was the funniest packet I’ve ever seen. I was very happy about Rachel Axler because she was a judgment call for me, but she’s a playwright, which appeals to me, and she’s great.
The show was really cooking on all cylinders, and that was the Iraq War period.
The real news shows had Christiane Amanpour and Ashleigh Banfield in the war zone, donning headscarves or dyeing their hair to blend in with the locals. Littleford and Walls had left The Daily Show; Grenrock Woods was living in Los Angeles and appearing infrequently. Rachael Harris and Lauren Weedman departed after brief runs. The Daily Show needed a strong female correspondent who would be a regular in the lineup.
We went out and did an open call, basically, in Toronto. We did a night in the clubs where we went and saw a bunch of people, and then we did a day of auditions. We had all the top Toronto comedy people call people they thought were good, and we did a day in some horrible casting agency or hotel room.
I had been doing sketch comedy in Toronto for a long time in an all-female sketch troupe called the Atomic Fireballs. Which meant performing in the back of a bar, rolling around on the floor in vomit for no pay, basically. Catherine O’Hara was a hero to me. Carol Burnett, of course. But by 2003 I felt I needed to have a more structured life, and I was leaving show business. I was working at an ad agency in the printing department.
Then my agent at the time called me and she said, “There’s a show, they’re having auditions on a Saturday.” Going in for an audition on a Saturday usually meant that it was really janky and it was just a nonprofessional organization. She says, “So some show, it’s called The Jon Daly Show or something like that. I don’t really know anything about it.” And I said, “Hold on a second. Are you talking about The Daily Show?” She says, “I guess so. I don’t watch it. I don’t have a clue.”
It was my favorite show.
I trained for the audition like I was training for an Olympic event. Started eating salmon every day. I’m not kidding. I exercised, went for runs. Learned the scripts they sent backward and forward. After the audition I felt I’d left it on the floor, I did what I intended to do. Now I’ll retire from acting and pursue something else. This was a really nice end point to my career.
My understanding is that they had a really hard time finding women, for various reasons that I don’t really actually know. It generally is probably the show’s hatred of women.
I went back to the ad agency job. A few weeks later I was at my desk and I answered the phone. It’s my agent, and she says, “You’re not going to believe this, but they’ve just hired you.” I left the ad agency with an absolute insane paper clusterfuck, which they’re probably still trying to unwind. There were definitely billboards that did not go up because of me.
Jason [Jones, her husband] and I moved to New York on July Fourth. Yeah, it was very symbolic.
I can’t stress enough, when we came from Canada we knew nothing. We had a U-Haul full of stuff and thought, “It’s normal to spend eighty dollars on a motel room.” But eighty dollars in New York City means there’s going to be a murder down the hall from you, maybe two. You’re going to hear gunfire, and someone might go through all of your personal stuff. Our motel was at the mouth of the Holland Tunnel, on Tonnelle Avenue in Jersey City. It was just terrifying. Jason says, “It’ll be fine.” And it was quite the opposite. I slept in my clothes.
Sam came in with a pretty impressive skill set as a performer, but I think it probably took a while for her to kind of find her groove.
Plus The Daily Show hates women, so there was that ax to bear.
The Daily Show is a very independent-study type of workplace, because it is operating at such a fast pace. Nobody really has time to hold your hand. I didn’t know that there was a complimentary lunch for months. I brought my own lunch. Eventually I started seeing people with plates of food. And they were like, “Jesus Christ, why don’t you ask questions?” I said, “You know why? Because I’m really happy here. I don’t also need a lunch on top of this.” Oh my God, what a dork.
What Samantha did, her run at the show is legendary. But that’s the kind of person we wanted, who knows what this show is, really wants to be here, and has a background that makes her skilled. What we learned is that anyone who’s using The Daily Show as a stepping-stone to get a sitcom, they probably weren’t going to be invested. This isn’t just an acting job.
Stephen, and Rob, and Ed had offices up in the writers’ wing, so I ended up embedding myself with the field producers. That’s where I found my voice, really. And it was just lucky happenstance. I mean, the studio stuff is fine. But I really preferred the independence of the field, and the ability to get my own jokes on the air in a way that just didn’t exist for me in the studio stuff at the time. I got more material of my own on the air than almost anyone because I was in the field. It was the show, but through me.
Not that it started out very well. They really only hire you for twelve weeks at a time, and I thought I was going to get fired immediately.
There was a field producer whose name is Jim Margolis. I love Jim. Like, I love Jim. He is surly, in the best possible way. But I didn’t understand it when I first got here.
Jim had written a pitch for a story. It was a very flimsy story about the TSA, and it was meant for Stephen. But Stephen didn’t really like this one, so it got assigned to me. Jim was so angry, because he hates new people and we had to travel to Sioux Falls, South Dakota, together. He very, very consciously did not sit next to me on the plane. We had to change planes and he totally abandoned me. I was so hurt, so mad that I wasn’t Stephen.
So we shot the piece. Jim yelled at me in front of people many times, because I really didn’t know what I was doing. The piece was fine. It wasn’t good. I would never suggest watching it. Please don’t. But we accomplished it, and I think Jim saw that I wasn’t a complete washout. And then we went out many times together after that.
Sam was so good and so funny. Just fearless.
Mainstream TV journalism sometimes covered the first years of the Iraq War almost as if it were a sporting event. Reporters selected by the Defense Department were allowed to “embed” with troops invading Iraq. The reports, especially on Fox, could devolve into cheerleading. Later, as the invasion soured and reporters dared question the triumphant narrative that U.S. soldiers would be, in the words of Vice President Dick Cheney, “greeted as liberators,” they were denounced as unpatriotic by the president’s operatives. With cognitive dissonance becoming the prevailing national mood, The Daily Show, under cover of satire, went straight at the depressing dynamic.
Jon Stewart: [at anchor desk] For more now on the tricky issue of press freedom at a time of war, we turn now to The Daily Show’s Senior Senior Media Analyst, Mr. Stephen Colbert. You’ve studied [Marshall] McLuhan and many of the media moguls over time. Stephen, what should the media’s role be in covering this war?
Stephen Colbert: Jon, very simply, the media’s role should be the accurate and objective description of the hellacious ass-whomping we’re handing the Iraqis.
Jon Stewart: Now, if I may step in right there. “Hellacious ass-whomping”—that phrase to me sounds subjective.
Stephen Colbert: Are you saying it’s not an ass-whomping, Jon? I suppose you could call it an ass-kicking, or even an ass-handing-to. Unless, of course, you love Hitler.
Jon Stewart: I don’t love Hitler.
Stephen Colbert: Spoken like a true Hitler lover.
Jon Stewart: Stephen, even some American generals have said that the Iraqis have put up a lot more resistance than they expected.
Stephen Colbert: The first rule of journalism, Jon: Know your sources. Sounds like these generals of yours may be a little light in the combat boots, if you know what I’m saying.
Jon Stewart: I don’t think I know what you’re saying.
Stephen Colbert: I’m saying they’re queers, Jon. They’re Hitler-loving queers. [makes Sieg Heil salute that collapses into limp-wristed pansy gesture]
Jon Stewart: I’m perplexed. My feeling is this, though, Stephen—is your position that there is no place for negative words or even thoughts in the media?
Stephen Colbert: Not at all, Jon. Doubts can happen to everyone, including me. But as a responsible journalist, I’ve taken my doubts, fears, moral compass, conscience, and all-pervading skepticism about the very nature of this war and simply placed them in this empty Altoid box. That is where they’ll stay, safe and sound, until Iraq is liberated.
Jon Stewart: Stephen, isn’t the media’s responsibility in wartime to—
Stephen Colbert: That’s my point, Jon! The media has no responsibility in wartime! The government’s on top of it. The media can sit this one out… It was Thomas Jefferson himself who once said, “Everyone imposes his own system as far as his army can reach.”
Jon Stewart: Stephen, Stalin said that. That was Stalin. Jefferson said he’d rather have a free press and no government than a government and no free press.
Stephen Colbert: Well, what do you expect from a slave-banging, Hitler-loving queer?
At the time we were the only game in town for making fun of and critiquing this thing everyone was watching, the war. “Mess O’Potamia” started the roll that didn’t stop—maybe because the war lasted such a long time and defined a whole era of politics and media, which were our two sweet spots. That’s when the show took off.
Who thought of “Mess O’Potamia”? It was always hard to attach provenance at The Daily Show, because so many things came up within a room. D.J. had such an unbelievable gift, almost an insane genius kind of way for wordplay. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was him. But it also sounds very much like something Jon would come up with.
The war was something incredibly visceral, and it was the first time where I had a sense of we, as a nation, had turned down an incredibly dangerous and wrong path and had committed fully to it. So there was a purposefulness to the show. It gave you a sense of drive. You just felt like screaming.
We forget now what it was like in the middle of the Bush Administration, to even do jokes about them.
When we were first doing jokes about the war, the country was scared and wanted to believe that what had happened on September 11 had sobered our politics and our media. And what it did was it lent a weight and a consequence to criticism and dissent. Dissent was now seen as not just snarky, but unpatriotic. We had never gotten death threats before.
There was a demanded uniformity of opinion in what you could write or what you could say about the war. There was a reasonable and expected honoring and elevation of the sacrifice of the troops, but that turned into a shillelagh to hit anybody who dissented. We were a dumb little show, and we could still get under the radar at that time.
Steve Bodow said it to me best, which is, “I don’t think we’re anti-Bush, I think we’re anti-bullshit.” And there was just so much of it spread around to shore up what were transparently poor decisions. If there was an attitude at The Daily Show, it was that we were willing to say things that would get you in trouble by naming what was bullshit.
The Daily Show’s critiques of the Iraq War and the Bush Administration quickly made it a favorite of the left and of liberal Democrats. “Throughout the war, Mr. Stewart has turned his parodistic TV news show into a cultural force significantly larger than any mere satire of media idiocies,” columnist Frank Rich wrote in the New York Times. “It does not take genius to make Geraldo look like a clown. (You can just show the actual video, as Mr. Stewart is wont to do.) But it does take a certain kind of brilliance to mine the comic absurdities in a continuing news story featuring such sobering phenomena as a grotesque tyrant, the wholesale loss of human life and a president even his political opponents are afraid to take on.”
Bush’s public approval rating had soared to 74 percent just after the start of the Iraq War, but as the invasion bogged down his numbers plummeted to near 50 percent. Democrats believed they had a real chance to win back the White House, and, in another change from 2000, they viewed The Daily Show as a vital campaign stop.
I got a call from Senator John Edwards, before all the shit in his personal life, when he was still a future presidential candidate, saying that he wants to announce his candidacy for president on Jon’s show. This is 2003. I got that call at home, by the way, in an age where you just didn’t get business calls at home. He had somebody track me down.
We weren’t sure what to make of it. It was odd to be a player in the political realm. It sort of happened without us noticing it.
I remember the first time Hillary Clinton was coming on. It was a huge get for The Daily Show. We were sitting in Ben Karlin’s office that afternoon, reading an “Even Stephven” script, and all of a sudden the lights went out. August 14, 2003. The blackout. I was sitting next to Colbert. He was terrified.
Really terrified. But Stephen is such a gadget dude—he went and got his hand-crank radio. He’d given them to all of us for Christmas after September 11.
Presidential candidates were eager to appear as guests. Polls claimed that TV viewers trusted Stewart as a news source just as much as NBC’s Tom Brokaw and CBS’s Dan Rather. Critics complained more loudly that The Daily Show had a partisan agenda. And in 2003 The Daily Show began a streak in which it would win at least one Emmy Award, and usually two, for thirteen straight years.
All that acclaim and static was impossible to tune out completely. But Stewart and the staff, to a remarkable degree, stayed focused on the task of creating 160 or so shows each year. The pace and the grind required putting on blinders, but the approach and the internal culture flowed from Stewart’s attitude.
People said the show had an important voice in the discussion, that we were influential. I think they overestimate the tangible qualities of that place at the table.
We felt like we did a successful show on television, but you’re actually not aware that people are paying attention to it. I will say this. There were moments we’d do a bit, and someone would come in and go, “Man, that thing was all over Facebook last night.” You knew if you hit the Israel question or if you hit the war stuff, we’d get more phone calls. We’d get more letters. Threats would increase.
But the reality of the day-to-day was a bunch of people talking about things they cared about and turning it into comedy, having nothing to do with the outside reaction. I think our isolation helped with that. Location-wise, being where we were on Eleventh Avenue, you don’t feel like you are in any business other than making the show. There was more difference in our world when they brought a sandwich shop to the area or not.
I’m not diminishing people’s love of it, but we never walked around that building saying, “We’re doing it, guys! Truth to power!” We were just coming in every day and like, “What’s a fun thing to talk about on the show tonight?”
Athletes are allowed to be, “I’m the best, what’s up?” Rappers, every one of their songs is like, “Who makes more money than me, bitch?” There’s a weird thing in the entertainment business where you’re not allowed to have that attitude, particularly in comedy. Comedy always seems to come from Borscht Belt roots: underdog, Jewish, nebbish, uhhh, I’m wheezy. A lot of Jon’s shtick is, “I’m four foot two with asthma.” Not really—he’s actually a great athlete.
There’s just a really tiny pile of backstage dirt for the amount of time that we were there. I was actually always amazed by that. I think it came from one of Jon’s best qualities, his ability to stay grounded. He had his moments, but in sixteen and a half years, to actually see a guy get visibly and audibly pissed off at the crew, or the staff—you know, I worked for Bill Maher for half a year and saw it more often than that.
Jon was not very tolerant of people being toxic in the workplace. There was a fair amount of party drinking, but the worst that happened would be, one particular person would take his penis out and put it on a table. The drug stories are pretty lame. The sex stories are pretty lame.
Did I fuck everyone? Sure. Do I have multiple kids in multiple states from multiple head writers? Possibly. Yeah.
Colbert often fantasized about lighting shit on fire and running down the halls, whacking stuff with baseball bats, just to spice up the office vibe.
Our work ethic and the SNL work ethic were very different. For a long time the SNL philosophy was, “People have got to loosen up and get crazy and that’s when the crazy ideas come out.” Our feeling was, “It’s so hard to make this show. Why would we make it more difficult by staying up late and doing drugs?”
The worst scandal is probably just that dogs were pooping in the office all the time. In the SNL book it’s Belushi who is pooping in the office.
We had the regulars and we had the satellite crew. Very much like Warhol’s Factory, for dogs. Everyday regulars, probably five or six, but it could swell to ten to twelve.
The free-ranging dogs kept things light and homey. So did Stewart’s dancing, which was likely to break out at any time.
“Dancing” is a generous term, I would say, but there was a lot of heart in it, along with Jon’s singing. It’s dad dancing. He would dance around in meetings quite a bit, and there was this period of time that he would blast “Empire State of Mind” on the office PA system and make everyone stand up and dance at their cubicle. He just so clearly enjoyed being at work and doing what we were doing and the people that he was doing it with.
I like getting everyone to do stuff together. We have a soccer team. I started Daily Show softball with Matt O’Brien. I love planning parties. We started doing summer fun day. That was Ben’s idea. The first one, we got the staff on a bus, took them out to the North Fork of Long Island, did a wine tasting in the morning, and we went to this mansion that had a private beach and had a clambake. We threw a Daily Show prom in the audience holding area. That was our holiday party one year.
Fundamentally Jon’s a mensch, and he constructed the place to be run mensch-ily, with respect, as much as you can do that in a place where there has to be authority and decisions.
Jon was fun, but a lot of people would have gotten the Daily Show slot and then immediately turned into, “I’m the best thing there ever was, and I don’t need to do any work!” Jon was never that guy.
Jon’s a heroin addict, though. He injected us all with heroin. It’s like Minority Report here. You can have that.