when jon stewart took over the reins of the daily show in 1999, i was a sopho­more in high school. i fol­lowed his show throughout my time in col­lege and he became one of my biggest influ­ences. he is one of the few voices in main­stream amer­ican media who con­sist­ently points out the bull­shit and con­tra­dic­tions of estab­lished news organ­iz­a­tions — prob­ably the single biggest reason why he res­on­ates with my demo­graphic of cyn­ical 18 – 35 year olds. there is no way jon stewart’s daily show is hurting demo­cracy because it frames its issues in a way that calls into ques­tion the integ­rity of main­stream media — nobody else on tele­vi­sion does this. at the same time, i do believe he also caters to a seg­ment of the pop­u­la­tion who actu­ally believe not giving a shit is a valid polit­ical opinion — which is bad. but bottom line is simple: people who watch and enjoy jon stewart are gen­er­ally know­ledge­able, oth­er­wise the jokes would not make any sense — you do need some back­ground know­ledge and con­text to actu­ally under­stand why his show is so clev­erly written and fucking hilarious.