RELATED: Lowe’s Boycott Of TLC Muslim Reality Show Leaves Jon Stewart Flabbergasted

Mandvi described the film — about an Indian-American Muslim family — as being semi-autobiographical and “a little bit Karate Kid, a little bit Eat Drink Man Woman.

He says he’s proud of his work on The Daily Show (pratfalls notwithstanding), and even revealed a fascinating tidbit about host Jon Stewart: “The man smells like paprika.” Hm. I’d have guessed coffee and hairspray.

Have a look, via CNN:

RELATED: Lawrence O’Donnell Demolishes ‘Lying Vulgarian’ Trump’s Endorsement Of Romney

Realizing Trump was merely endorsing Mitt Romney, Stewart groused “Oh, that’s it? Just an endorsement of the current front-runner and presumed nominee? Never saw Trump as a Romney guy. Always saw Trump as the kind of guy whose ostentatious lifestyle was driven by a slight, a guy like Romney gave him years ago, you know what I mean, like that prick thinks can keep me out of the country club, I’ll build my own and it will have a statue with Perrier coming out of Athena’s nipples in it!”

Suddenly, after playing many of Romney’s choice quotes on capitalism, Stewart realized the two were both meant for each other. “This guy, he likes firing people! He loves corporations, the only thing I’m not crazy about is the whole same wife for 42 years thing, but you know, I can overlook it! (This shows) Americans that if two Ivy League-educated successful business tycoons from wealthy families can find common ground, even when one is a billionaire and the other only a multi, multi, multimillionaire, maybe there’s hope this country isn’t so divided after all!”

Watch Stewart’s segment below via Comedy Central:

RELATED: Mitt Romney Tells Soledad O’Brien: ‘I’m Not Concerned About The Very Poor’

Stewart first played the clip of his exact quote, and his explanation that the very poor have “nets” to catch them. “The reason the net is there is that they’re not okay,” Stewart explained. “It’s like a doctor saying ‘I’m not concerned about the very healthy… or the very sick because, you know, morphine.”

Stewart then played the rest of the clip, where Soledad O’Brien challenges Romney’s claim and asks for a clarification, because it sounded “odd.” This left Stewart flabbergasted, since a TV anchor actually asked an explanation from a politician. “It’s like a flower blooming in the desert!” He beamed. “Quick! Someone pick that up and take it away from CNN before a giant holographic screen falls and crushes her!”

He then went back to the explanation from Romney, which seemed to not help at all. Stewart took the time to explain. “Being in a net is bad, whether you’re a butterfly, or a fish, or a trapeze artist, or a poor person,” he concluded. “If you’re in a net, something has gone terribly, terribly wrong.” He then went on to play the rest of Romney’s explanation, where he notes that “it’s not good, being poor.”

“They’ve got the play tennis on public courts!” Stewart joked. “I can’t imagine the thread count on their linens!”

The segment ends with the two classes, “Very Rich” and “Very Poor,” singing about how they are nothing alike. And by “these two classes,” they mean correspondents Jason Jones and John Oliver.

The video via Comedy Central below:

“Mitt Romney is all over them like white on Mitt Romney,” Stewart cracked.

The late-night comedian pondered how the Republican frontrunner would get their attention.

Stewart then played footage of Romney serenading the elderly residents in patriotic song.

“My mom and dad put us in their car and took us around to the national parks,” Romney told the retirees. “They wanted us to see the beauty of the land. Came here and saw Cypress Gardens and the oceans. Went west and saw the canyon and canyons actually, rivers and mountains and fell in love with the land in America. There’s a song that captures that for me. O, beautiful for spacious skies for amber waves of grain, for purple mountains majesty across the fruited plain. Can you sing that song? I love that song. You know that song?”

RELATED: American I-Dull: Mitt Romney Sings America The Beautiful For Florida Crowd

“It was then — that everyone in the crowd at The Villages pressed their life alert button at the same time,” Stewart joked. “And faked a stroke, ‘he’s singing and I can’t get out!’”

Watch the segment below via Comedy Central:

Part 1:

Part 2:

RELATED: Jon Stewart On Newt’s Moon Base: He Wants To Leave The Earth ‘For A Younger Planet’

Before the South Carolina primary, Stewart noted, Romney was set to win Florida in a landslide, “a Romslide, if you will.” Then Gingrich pulled what Stewart called some “dick-foo” in the South Carolina debate, attacking Romney so hard that it won him the primary and boosted him to frontrunner status– “Gingrich in a landslide! A… Gingride?”

The slight chance of victory went to Gingrich’s head almost immediately, however, as he began to talk in speeches about the end of his second term already. Stewart mocked this, making fake promises for Gingrich, culminating with: “By my seventh term, I will have trained cats to do the jobs that immigrants do!”

But it was not to last– Romney saw the victory tactic and turned it around on Gingrich, and it was “No more Mr. Nice Mormon” during last Thursday’s debate. As with all Mortal Kombat fights, this one ends with the growl of, “Finish Him.”

The segment via Comedy Central below:

RELATED: Neil deGrasse Tyson Sympathizes With Newt Gingrich’s Moon Mission

Stewart lambasted Gingrich for proposing such an idea and at the same time, suggesting that nobody takes Ron Paul seriously.

“You’re right, Mr. Moon Base, they won’t take Ron Paul seriously. And that’s why I’m going to make Ron Paul my first ambassador to Moonlandia! He’s out there! So what exactly are we supposed to do with this moon base?!”

Stewart then played a clip of Gingrich jokingly suggesting he’d make it a state, which flummoxed Stewart, but soon he had it all figured out.

“I see what’s going on here, this isn’t about making new states. Newt Gingrich did that global warming ad with Nancy Pelosi realizing that the Earth is very sick–and now he wants to leave it for a younger planet!”

Watch the segment below via Comedy Central:

RELATED: Pain Capital: Jon Stewart Destroys Mitt Romney Over His Tax Returns

Stewart began at the beginning: the opening of the speech that celebrated the death of Bin Laden. “You open with ‘I killed Bin Laden’?” Stewart asked, incredulous. “Does Rick Springfield open with ‘Jessie’s Girl’?”

After a few words about how wonderful Rick Springfield concerts are, he noted that the President promised quite a number tax credits to various people. “He’s like tax credit Oprah!” Stewart joked. “You get a tax credit! And you get a tax credit!” And then there was the spilt milk joke. “As someone who does comedy for a living: been there,” Stewart told Obama. “And the worst part isn’t the crowd’s reaction: it’s the wife’s.”

There was plenty more to go over: how chatting about Israel attracted the camera to Sen. Chuck Schumer, the crowd’s excitement at a potential new war, and Mitch Daniels as “Señor Crankypants.”

The segment via Comedy Central below:

Stewart then played archival footage of the former Massachusetts Governor saying, “I don’t intend to release tax returns.”

“Miiiiiiitttt!” Stewart scolded, and showed him finally coming around to releasing his tax returns immediately after much dithering.

“I’m never going to do it…I’ll do it in April!” Stewart razzed. “Here they are! Until last night romney released the uicken.

RELATED: Republican Debate Audience Boos Mitt Romney Over Releasing Tax Returns

After finding out Romney’s combined income came out to $56,986 a day, Stewart exploded in an incredulous rage.

“That’s almost–that’s almost $57,000 a day!” Stewart exclaimed. “Here is the most amazing part: the guy doesn’t even have a job! That is f*cking interest! That is the kind of money that might lead a man to make stupidly extravagant out-of-touch impulse bets!”

Stewart then aired Romney’s infamous $10,000 bet to Rick Perry.

“How in the world do you — Mitt Romney justify making more in one day than the median American family makes in a year while paying an effective tax rate of the guy who scans your shoes at the airport!” Stewart asked.

Watch the segment below via Comedy Central

Part 1:

Part 2:

RELATED: Jon Stewart Dissects Gingrich Open Marriage Scandal: Open Your Legs, America

Stewart began his report highlighting the major leap in support over the past week for Gingrich. “Gingrich smoked Romney by 12 points. That’s like winning by four overtime field goals!” (This was Stewart having an outburst about the Giants winning last night). How did he turn it around? Well, Stewart launched into a convoluted explanation of the women in Gingrich’s life– the first and second wives, the first and second lovers, the third wife who may be the First Lady?– that went nowhere. Instead, he went to “the moment where values’ voters supposed disgust… is knocked out.” And he played this clip.

“As close to despicable as it can get?!” he shouted, after a lot of angry stuttering at the camera over Gingrich daring to challenge John King for bringing up his insanely complex marriage life in from of a family values crowd. “I think you have a pretty good imagination for despicability!” He then played King’s response– something about it not being his fault, etc.– and only pursued his anger further, and the fact that Gingrich could get away with his immoralities during the “Clinton penis scavenger hunt” and “King shanked [the question].”

Then there was the whole Freddie Mac deal, as if Stewart’s blood pressure wasn’t high enough. Gingrich claimed he had a “small business” of some sort (“your small business involves selling access to Washington!”) and was an “outsider” (“You’re such an insider… that when Washington gets its prostate checked, it tickles you!”). He wondered if the rise of Gingrich made Republicans happy, only to have a ready-made montage (how do they do that?) of Republicans bickering over the top two candidates.

Stewart had a solution: “I think I can settle this intra-party squabble: you’re all right. They’re all terrible.”

The segment via Comedy Central below:

“Is it fair to the process? Yes, the process is a mess, but he’s doing it in a way that it feels as if he’s trying to influence it with his own agenda, that may be anti-Republican. And we in the media are covering it as a schtick and a satire, but it’s like, ‘Well wait a minute here…’ he’s also trying to do his best to marginalize the candidates, and we’re participating in that marginalization.”

Todd said that the “mainstream media” (his quotes) has a responsibility to exercise some caution and question what Colbert’s agenda is. “Is it to educate the public about the dangers of money in politics and what’s going on?” He asked, “or is it simply to marginalize the Republican party? I think if I were a Republican candidate, I’d be concerned about that.”

While expressing admiration for how Colbert has exposed a lot of the idiocy involved with the marriage of politics and money, and saying he enjoys his show, Todd went after both Colbert and Jon Stewart for mocking members of the media, then backing off and saying “we’re just comedians” when the members of the media call them out on it. “Actually, no you’re not [comedians] anymore,” Todd said. “You are mocking what we’re doing, and you want a place in this, then you are also going to be held accountable for how you cover and how you do your job.”

Watch the clip below, courtesy of Winthrop University’s YouTube channel.

(H/T: Huffington Post)

RELATED: Gingrich Rips John King/CNN For Opening Debate With ‘Open Marriage’ Question

Stewart then played a clip of ABC News’ Brian Ross‘s visit to The View, where he discussed when Marianne was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, Gingrich asked her for a divorce.

“First wife cancer, second wife multiple sclerosis, can Newt Gingrich be reclassified as a pollutant?” Stewart snarked. “Of course, the guy is like the dioxin of husbands!”

“I think i’m going to be sick…and then Newt will leave me!” he jokingly added.

Watch Stewart tackle Gingrich’s “open marriage” controversy below via Comedy Central:

Part 1:

Part 2:

RELATED: As Major Companies Plan Blackout Protest, Where Has The Mainstream Media Been On Coverage Of SOPA?

“What is this, 2009?” a frustrated Stewart asked when faced with today’s black page of Wikipedia in trying to log on. Without Wikipedia, Stewart was forced to look at “a notoriously unreliable source– the news.” There, he found out that SOPA would not actually take websites down, but just block access to them. As he put it, this was akin to “coming up with a plan to prevent teen pregnancy that fills penises with cement.”

He then looked at the Congressional dialogue and found many members of Congress were in need of clarification of what the bill does and, in their hour of need, called upon the “nerds” to help them. The sheer number of times the word “nerd” was thrown about was somewhat shocking to Stewart, but he still got the message from the Congressmen– that people who pirate clips and use other people’s work are “parasites.” “I see a greedy freeloading stooge to lacks the capacity to create his original content… and rationalizes it by claiming fair use… it makes me sick,” Stewart joked, while various copyrighted clips, along with old clips of Stewart using copyrighted clips on the show, played alongside him. His staff attempted a final copyright punchline by following up his line asking the audience to imagine a world without piracy with the song “Imagine,” bu Stewart panicked. “Even as a joke, we don’t have John Lennon copyright money!”

He then turned to the alleged victim– Daily Show correspondent Jessica Williams, dressed as some sort of 1920s orphan/cartoon runaway because she uploaded a video of herself dancing to Beyoncé on Youtube. Williams wasn’t done in by Beyoncé, however– it was the episode of Newhart playing on the television in the background that got her on copyright infringement.

The segment via Comedy Central:

Part 1:

Part 2:

RELATED: New Colbert SuperPAC Ad Encourages SC To Vote For ‘Herman Cain’ (Stephen Colbert)

That previous line is uttered as a clown wind surfs on the screen– an allusion to the now-famous 2004 anti-John Kerry “windsurfing” ad– and Jackson continues his attack with more and more damning evidence, like “Why is the T in his name silent? What else is he hiding– letting murderers out of jail?” Jackson notes that Colbert was not “running attack ads against him just so we’ll think they’re not coordinating,” but still explodes in a rage unseen since the film classic, Snakes on a Plane– in fact, it’s a variation of the most famous line in that film. The ad concludes endorsing Herman Cain, and warning that American can’t afford a president like Colbert (with an old clip of Colbert telling Conan O’Brien, “I just think that Rosa Parks was overrated.”

The “attack” ad below:

RELATED: Republican Debate Audience Applauds Waterboarding…And Not Waterboarding

Stewart singled out the raucous cheers that followed Rick Perry’s exclamation that “South Carolina is at war with this federal government and this administration!”

“Whoo! whoo! War against the government led by South Carolina!” snarked Stewart. “That always has a good ending, right? Wow! So a faint hint of civil war. What didn’t the audience like?”

Stewart then played footage of Ron Paul being booed for saying the country should “consider a golden rule in foreign policy: don’t do to other nations, what we don’t want to happen to us.”

“Let the record show on January 16, 2012, the good people of South Carolina booed the golden rule!” Stewart proclaimed.

The late-night comic then observed one candidate both won the debate and provided a fitting tribute to the late Martin Luther King:

JUAN WILLIAMS: Speaker Gingrich, you recently said black Americans should demand jobs not food stamps. Can’t you see that this is viewed at a minimum as insulting to all Americans but particularly to black Americans?

NEWT GINGRICH: No, I don’t see that. (cheers and applause)

“Hooray!” Stewart zinged. “Yes, hooray for your inability to comprehend when you’ve insulted black people! We, too, find it difficult!”

“And so it was on that Martin Luther King Day, Newt Gingrich shared his vision of an America where people will be judged not by the color of their skin but by him, Newt Gingrich.”

Watch Stewart lambaste the GOP debate audience and Newt Gingrich below via Comedy Central:

RELATED: New Colbert SuperPAC Ad Encourages SC To Vote For ‘Herman Cain’ (Stephen Colbert)

Stewart took to his desk in a bejeweled tiara, only adding as explanation “I’ve come into a bit of money,” then showing the moment that he received control of the SuperPAC, and then added, “I don’t know what to do with the money– Stephen Colbert, by the law, cannot coordinate with me.” “I’m just out here like a cartoon hobo who just won the lottery,” he added, so he spent money on the tiara and things like air-writing numbers into the air that should look like they spell “BOOBS” in China.

“There’s no way Stephen Colbert wanted Jon Stewart to blow his money on all this crap,” he joked, adding that even if he did, he could only publicly say so. On that note, he went and bought himself the fanciest omelet ever, courtesy of Mario Batali. And he paid extra for the most disgusting way to digest it possible.

The segment via Comedy Central below:

Maggie Haberman understood the satirical message of Colbert’s intentions, but expressed some concern that people unfamiliar with his work might mistake the intentions of his character as completely sincere, as well as missing the satirical nature of the new ad the Colbert Super PAC has bought airtime for in South Carolina.

RELATED: Public Policy Polling: Colbert Has Edge Over Obama With South Carolina Independents

Kurtz then played a clip of Colbert’s appearance on This Week today, but instead of focusing on one of the bits where Colbert (in character) talked about the effect of the Supreme Court ruling on campaign finance and making a serious point or two, he played the clip of Colbert mockingly disavowing himself from Jon Stewart. (Kurtz explained this was because George Stephanopoulos was referencing an interview he conducted with Ailes a while back.) Glynnis MacNicol argued that the reason the media has now given a laser-like focus to Colbert is because of how he gets across serious points in entertaining ways that make it easier for audiences to absorb information.

Kurtz, however, appeared to take Colbert’s actions more seriously than anyone else. He pointed out that the Super PAC has tens of thousands of donors, and wondered what kind of an impact the media could have in covering Colbert leading up to the South Carolina primary. Nia-Malika Henderson took the less serious route, saying she found Colbert’s actions “just funny” and predicting his impact on the race will be minimal at best.

Watch the video below, courtesy of CNN:

RELATED: Stephen Colbert’s SuperPAC Releases Its First Campaign Video: Episode IV: A New Hope

Stephanopoulos began by bringing up the biggest issue Colbert will have getting on the ballot in South Carolina. Namely, getting on the ballot in South Carolina. Since write-ins are not allowed and the filing deadline was months ago, Colbert’s chances of getting on the actual ballot are slim. But he joked that would not stop him, because if NASA could get on the moon and put cheese into the pizza crust, anything is truly possible. But he was definitely discouraged by the Republican party barring write-in campaigns, saying “that doesn’t sound like freedom to me.”

If his GOP candidacy falters, would Colbert consider a third-party run? Colbert didn’t speculate that much, continuously reminding Stephanopoulos that he is still in the exploratory phase of his campaign. However, he didn’t rule out the possibility that he may abandon his campaign if he sees a better candidate on the horizon, provided, of course, they kiss his ring.

Then the conversation switched to the organization formerly known as Colbert Super PAC, and Stephanopoulos played a segment of the advertisement being run by the PAC in South Carolina, attacking Mitt Romney for being a “serial killer” with respect to corporations. Colbert satirically distanced himself from the ad, reminding Stephanopoulous that Stewart was now running the PAC and candidates are not legally supposed to coordinate with Super PACs. And then, in a complete parody of Newt Gingrich, Colbert stated if information in the ad was inaccurate, it should be edited out for the sake of fairness. (Also, Colbert pointed out what a lot of us may have missed upon first viewing the ad: the narrator of the “serial killer” ad was John Lithgow, who famously played the “Trinity Killer” on Dexter. Coincidence?)

RELATED: Stephen Colbert Tempts OWS Protesters Into Selling Out With His SuperPAC Money

After fielding some questions from Facebook, Stephanopoulos reminded the Republican candidate that his former Super PAC is now being helmed by a man whom Roger Ailes claims is a hater of all things conservative. Colbert referred to Ailes as a friend, before agreeing with those sentiments and insisting that Jon Stewart being the new leader of the Super PAC would make it easier for him to disown anything the PAC does from now on.

Watch the full interview below, courtesy of ABC:

RELATED: Stephen Colbert Salutes Romney’s Position On Corporate Personhood: ‘Dr. Martin Luther, Inc.’

The new ad, courtesy of Americans For A Better Tomorrow, Tomorrow, is titled “Attack In B Minor For Strings.” It was released online late last night, along with a press release by Stewart, the Super PAC’s “President For Life For Now.”

“Mitt Romney claims to be pro-corporations,” said Jon Stewart, President of The Definitely Not Coordinated With Stephen Colbert Super PAC. “But would you let him date your daughter’s corporation? Americans have been clamoring for a comprehensive study of this crucial issue, so we splurged for the full sixty-second commercial. We think South Carolinians will agree – they deserve a leader who shares their state’s values, and perhaps even their state’s initials.”

The new spot begins airing today in a major ad buy that will blanket South Carolina from Charleston all the way to North Charleston.

The ad is narrated by actor John Lithgow, proudly labeling corporations as “America’s greatest institution.” But as both Mitt Romney and the Citizens United Supreme Court ruling have declared, corporations are legally people and have the same rights. And yet, as the ad claims, when Romney was in charge of Bain Capital, he split up companies and “got rid of what he couldn’t use.”

RELATED: Stephen Colbert Is Now Offering $500K To Sponsor South Carolina’s GOP Primary (With A Few Conditions)

But if corporations are people, and Mitt Romney carved up corporations while at Bain, then by the candidate’s own logic, the ad declares, he is a “serial killer.” The ad encourages South Carolinians to vote for anyone except “Mitt the Ripper.”

Watch the ad below, courtesy of Comedy Central:

RELATED: Bill O’Reilly And Bernie Goldberg Tear Into NBC For Handling Of Romney/KKK Story

“There are few media personalities that have any influence anymore,” O’Reilly noted, making the point that an elite of television hosts have a great deal of control over what information the public gets, even with the internet’s diffusing influence. Ben Stein agreed with the general premise that “the audience has been more dispersed because of the internet,” but still say the thread of liberal thought in the fact that a great deal of the public “believe every word Jon Stewart says, that’s the gospel about everything.”

Columnist Linda Stasi countered that she did not believe the personal politics of the comics made a difference, given statistics showing that President Obama was the target of jokes far more often than many Republicans, but Stein did not agree, arguing that “the cool kids are all Democrats and leftists” which makes the ideology generally appealing.

O’Reilly rattled off the names of most of the network late night hosts– Jay Leno, David Letterman, Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel– suggesting they all at least lean liberal. “Who is a conservative late night guy?” he asked Stasi, who replied that the number of jokes about President Obama was overwhelmingly higher than that of any other Republican candidate. O’Reilly insisted, however, that this did not answer the question of why there were so many on the left in the popular culture, and let Stein have the last word on the matter: “the jokes about Obama are affectionate; the jokes about Mitt are mean.”

The segment via Fox News below:

RELATED: The Five’s Bob Beckel And Eric Bolling Go Off On Bill Maher For Tebow Christmas Tweet

Having to know and care about a young football player who is either good or bad, depending on what you read, was something of a shock when Tebow began to headline what feels like at least one segment an hour on most cable news channels, or popping up in headlines across blogs typically tailored to political media tastes. While the media’s Captains Obvious collectively began to ask things like “Why do we care about Tim Tebow’s religion?” I will readily admit I was still trying to figure out whether he was a freshman Tea Party Congressman or a controversial author, or maybe a Kardashian of some sort. By the time it became clear– whether I wanted it to be or not– who Tebow was and why sports fans got so excited about him from osmosis, it was still a complete mystery why he appeared to have taken over both Fox News and Bill Maher‘s Twitter account simultaneously, and why people kept abruptly kneeling to pray in videos and photos all over the place.

RELATED: Fox News’ Andy Levy On Bill Maher’s Tebow ‘Joke’: ‘Who Cares?’

But he had. Suddenly, Fox News was all over the harrowing tale of how some obnoxious teenagers were suspended from high school for “Tebowing” en masse instead of not crowding the hallway. The aforementioned Maher apparently spent his vacation time climbing up onto trees and Tebowing himself, perhaps to prove that God would not smite him for doing so after “joking” on Christmas Eve about Tebow’s defeat. Rick Perry declared himself the “Tim Tebow of the Iowa caucuses;” others argued that it was maybe Rep. Ron Paul, or Rep. Michele Bachmann (here is a chart to one can use to determine whether one is the “Tim Tebow of” something). “It’s hard to not see a bit of Sarah Palin in Tebow,” The Nation‘s David Zirin wrote on one of the many occasions he has gone after the quarterback. On another, he argued:

The right-wing strain of evangelical Christianity to which his family subscribes bleeds seamlessly into politics. Tebow proudly appeared, during the Super Bowl, in an anti-abortion commercial sponsored by Focus on the Family. FOF is an organization that believes in gay reparative therapy, ending women’s reproductive health, and organizing the far-right fringe of American politics.

The mockery of Tebow’s larger-than-life status on shows like SNL is natural and of a different breed than the attacks or exploitative praise coming from pundits. This is America and we have no sacred cows, with the exceptions of, maybe, Julia Roberts and Jon Stewart. That is why Hustler v. Falwell exists. And the more people believe in you– and people really believe in Tim Tebow– the larger the target on your back. But it is the artificial politicization of the player that appears on both sides of the political aisle to be hysterical and unfair. Tebow is a cultural icon, a pop confection– a symbol of the American “culture wars,” some may argue. But a political figure he is not.

NEXT PAGE: No, The Focus On The Family Ad Was Not Political

RELATED: Gingrich Would Tell The NAACP To ‘Demand Paychecks And Not Be Satisfied With Food Stamps’

After playing many of Gingrich’s inflammatory statements about the African-American community, Cenac appeared on the program to address Gingrich himself.

“What do you make of these latest remarks by Newt Gingrich?” Stewart asked Cenac.

“Jon, let’s just say it — that is some racist bullsh*t!” Cenac exclaimed. “I mean — it is 2012! What took him so long?”

“Wait!” Stewart interjected. “Are you upset he hasn’t made racist remarks sooner?”

“I don’t know if his remarks were racist,” Cenac snarked. “That’s just Newt being condescending and dickish or as he calls it, talking!”

Watch Stewart’s blistering takedown of Newt Gingrich below via Comedy Central:

Part 1:

Part 2:

RELATED: Jon Stewart: GOP Is Trying ‘Every Chocolate In The Box’ Before Settling On Mitt Romney

Stewart noted that Romney slammed President Obama by saying all of his campaign pledges were “lofty promises made by a hopeful candidate.”

“Yeah, what a jerk that Obama was!” Stewart snarked. “Oh, I’m going to do this and I’m going to do that. A**hole! Empty suit standing on a platform in New Hampshire making lofty promises he knew he couldn’t possibly fulfill — I’m sorry, Mitt. I interrupted you. Continue!”

Stewart played various clips of Romney promising the world, with “capping and balancing the federal budget,” “making the federal government simpler, smaller and smarter” and “insisting on a military so powerful no one would ever think of challenging it.”

“See, people, my promises are realistic! A tiny government, a balanced budget and a giant invincible army! Ladies and gentlemen, I give you new Sparta!”

Later in the segment, Stewart criticized Lawrence O’Donnell for saying Ron Paul didn’t matter and Huntsman was “the real 2nd.” “No! You can’t!” Stewart boomed. “You’re not allowed to take Ron Paul out of this! That’s just physics! And you know, if you add two zeros to the end of Huntsman’s totals, he would have been in first by hundreds of thousands of votes, an unprecedented victory! Why is no one talking about this? Because it didn’t happen!”

Stewart moved on to talking about Huntsman which he surmised he had to since it was a limited time offer to do so, and ribbed the former Utah Governor for saying 3rd place was a ticket to ride. “A ticket to ride– home, in coach!”

He then played footage of confetti raining down on Huntsman, which Stewart reacted to in A League Of Their Own-style shock. “There’s no confetti for third place!”

The Daily Show host then told Huntsman to meet him at Camera “You Came In Third”. “I know it’s hard for you, but it’s over.” Later putting it to him in a language he would understand — Mandarin.

Watch Stewart’s analysis of the New Hampshire primary below via Comedy Central:

RELATED: CNN’s Early Start Dials Wrong Number, Wakes Up Confused Man And Tells Him It’s The FBI

“What could possibly got wrong?” Stewart joked, playing the clip of hosts Ashleigh Banfield and Zoraida Sambolin talking to Kerry Kennedy for their morning segment. “You don’t cold call a Kennedy at 5 AM!” Stewart shouted, “do you know how many unexpected tragedies this family has suffered?” Stewart continued noting that “the Kennedys almost never get good news from CNN at 5 in the morning,” and then turned to Banfield asking a serious question about JFK. “I get it,” Stewart noted, “you want to have some morning show fun and do some hard news, but not at the same time!” Stewart then went into a hilarious mockery of a morning zoo show attempting to do hard news… complete with fart noises.

RELATED: CNN’s Ashleigh Banfield Addresses Daily Show‘s Criticism: ‘I Need Thicker Skin’

He then took a look at another segment of the program– an attempt to call comedian Chuck Nice, where instead they call a completely random person by mistake. They then tell the man that they are not CNN, but the FBI. “It’s bad enough you gotta a wrong number some poor schmuck who doesn’t speak English at 5 in the morning,” Stewart noted, “but then you gotta tell him you’re the FBI? You know where that guy was thirty seconds after hanging up? Shimmying down his fire escape.”

The segment via Comedy Central below:

Limbaugh went so far that some commentators are describing this as the “nuclear bomb” been dropped on Gingrich.

Recently, Gingrich has been criticizing Romney’s Bain Capital past, making comments that some have seen as a knock on the free market. Rush Limbaugh certainly agreed.

“I don’t know why the Occupy Wall Street people are protesting Newt. They’re singing from the same hymnal on this. This is right out of the New York Times. Newt is parroting what the New York Times is writing about Romney.

…

Folks, it is clear here what is going on. This is not a campaign for the presidency. That’s not what this is anymore. This is payback time. It drove him nuts, that series of ads that Romney’s Super PAC ran in Iowa, and this is the result of it. That’s why we are where we are. I’m not trying to make excuses. I’m just explaining. I’m not defending anybody. I just think this is very unfortunate. This is not the kind of stuff that you want said by Republicans. Even the Establishment Republicans don’t go after Conservatives this way.”

Ouch.

Limbaugh isn’t the only one who’s seeing a leftist streak in Gingrich’s attacks. This is very similar to a piece Jon Stewart did last night. While Stewart was pointing out this seeming hypocrisy amongst the entire GOP field in their attacks on Romney, he did focus on Gingrich. More importantly, how often are we able to say Rush Limbaugh and Jon Stewart agree on something?

Listen to the clip (only one of a few similar anti-Gingrich rants today) below:

(h/t Daily Rushbo)

RELATED: Watch This Morning’s NBC/Facebook GOP Debate Here

Joking that the endless cycle of debates was so long “they’re out of things to talk about,” Stewart played one of the very important questions asked on Saturday night: “what would you be doing on a Saturday night if you weren’t here?” Only one of the answers was believable to Stewart: Rep. Ron Paul claimed he would be home reading an economics textbook. The others proved to Stewart a “sad truth of running for president: there is no question too trivial to not merit a pandering lie.”

Then there was the response from the press to the debate, which Stewart joked amounted to “When is someone going to kick Mitt Romney in the balls?” The answer: tomorrow morning! When every candidate took their shots at the frontrunner, including Newt Gingrich‘s claim that Romney was blathering on with “pious bologna.” “Your bologna has a first name, and it’s ‘Pious’?” asked Stewart.

Stewart concluded with a look at Romney’s answers, and his attempts to be relatable, like the advice his father gave him as a child: “never get involved in politics if you have to run to pay the mortgage.” “What a relatable story!” joked Stewart, “Only run for office when you’re rich.”

Stewart ended the recap with a semi-rhetorical question for the rest of the Republican field: “How is Mitt Romney kicking all of your asses?”

The clip via Comedy Central below:

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“What did the President do that was so wrong?” Stewart asked, before turning to the news that the Senate was in session, and so Congress’s outrage was confined to the House of Representatives. Stewart noted that, as someone who watches C-SPAN for a living, it was strange to him that he missed the sessions. “It’s not like a shooting star, you don’t just miss it!” Stewart joked. They he played an entire session, while he tried to open an aspirin bottle. Not surprisingly, the bottle was still closed after the 30 seconds or so it took for the Senate to adjourn. He then brought on correspondent John Oliver to describe the appointment process– and the mess therein should anyone try to prove it was illegal in some way, before mocking all of America for abandoning constitutional monarchy.

The segment via Comedy Central below:

However, activist and columnist Dan Savage did offer some fresh insight into Rick Santorum’s presidential prospects, reminding Keith Olbermann that Santorum doesn’t just have an anti-gay agenda, “he has an anti-straight agenda, too.”

“He’s against birth control,” Savage continued, “he’s against abortion, he’s against pornography, he’s against all sorts of things that straight people use and enjoy frequently, almost once a week at least.”

I’m 0-for-3 this week (unless you count reruns of The West Wing as pornography), but Savage’s point is well-taken. Santorum gets a lot of attention for his weirdly-stated, disturbing views on homosexuality, thanks in no small part to Dan Savage’s Google campaign, but his views on heterosexual behavior are arguably farther out of the mainstream. I don’t know many people, conservative or otherwise, who want to wait to get laid until they’re ready to have a baby. Hell, most of us can barely wait through dinner.

Also, conservatives, before you line up behind Santorum’s opposition to sodomy, you really ought to take a closer look at what activities are covered by that label. Let’s put it this way: in Santorum’s America, “Hummers” would be for driving (and overcompensating) only. The only kind of “oral” you’d see would be Roberts.

About that Google campaign, liberals are perhaps justified in their glee over the poetic comeuppance involved, but I agree with Jon Stewart: the bit is wearing thin. It was good for a chuckle, and for a little victim-y campaigning, but the shelf-life is long overdue.

However, Savage revealed a new wrinkle in the Google Santorum bedsheets. ““I’m getting letters from people who think that the neologism came first — [that] this was actually what ‘santorum’ meant and that Santorum was burdened with this unfortunate last name and why didn’t he change his name before he ran for president.”

Okay, that is funny, and an instructive demonstration that is is, in fact, possible to redefine a word.

Here’s the clip, from Current TV’s Countdown:

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Stewart began with some footage of the actual Iowa caucuses, which he couldn’t bring himself to mock because they were so “beautiful.” “It looks like a historical reenactment,” he noted, suggesting that “it would be instructive for it to just play out in real time over the cameras.” Instead, CNN used “weebles,” what Stewart described as “cybernetic, multi-colored featureless dildo people” after he yelled “Why????” at the screen for a good minute. “There are rooms in 99 counties that are filled with real people demonstrating the thing that you are trying to explain!”

He then turned to the candidates, and had some good words for Rick Perry and his “completely unjustified enthusiasm after a fifth place ass-kicking,” mocked the Marcus Bachmann “doggie sunglasses moment,” and sat in awe as Rep. Ron Paul‘s crowd cheered Ludwig von Mises. “It’s like being at a Jimmy Buffet show and being like ‘why is everybody wearing a parrot on their head?’”

The segment via Comedy Central below:

Part 1:

Part 2:

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“When our show left in December, Newt Gingrich was the frontrunner,” Stewart noted– a frontrunner he was adamantly against. Over the break, Stewart realized that the Republican primary felt a bit like the Amish tradition of rumspringa, in which the Amish go out into the real world before returning to the monotony of Amish life. This, Stewart joked, was a “rom”springa of sorts, in which the Republicans had run with many candidates before inevitably getting married to the idea of Romney as nominee. This idea seems to have brought them to Ron Paul for a bit before the racist newsletter scandal, and after that “you have to go back to Romney, there’s nobody else. Unless… please no,” Stewart told Republicans, but it was too late– Rick Santorum was in the lead now.

“Santorum, really? Republicans, you’re going to try every chocolate in the box?” Stewart asked, bringing out a box of chocolates. He picked up the chocolate-covered cherry, started at it with disgust, and said, “this one that you don’t try because you know it sucks, this one is Santorum.” But he bit into it anyway. Essentially, he called Rick Santorum a chocolate-covered piece of fruit. Which sounds incredibly familiar, for some reason. But Romney was the plain, boring chocolate bar in the middle of the box– the last piece you try and the one you claim you wanted the whole time despite ignoring until the last minute.

The segment via Comedy Central below:

RELATED: Thom Hartmann Torches Politifact For Nominating ‘Mediscare’ As ‘Lie Of The Year’

The status of Politifact as an organization with weight in the American political sphere is a bit of a mystery, other than that they have, on many occasions, accurately diagnosed dishonesty in political statements. Many people on the left (our own Tommy Christopher among them) care very much about what Politifact has to say, possibly because Politifact has gone after right-wing targets for most of its past (and, frankly, with Sarah Palin on the loose, who could blame them?) and possibly because the idea of a “neutral fact-checking body” (read: Percy Weasley do-gooder types that self-appoint as arbiters of fairness and justice when no one really asked for their help) is much more amendable to the side of the aisle that can count “legends” of “journalism” like Dan Rather on their team. For many on the right– particularly the more authentic classical liberal wing of the American right– dismissing Politifact is a lot like dismissing the United Nations or Media Matters. Conventional anti-authoritarian wisdom dictates that any entity alleging impartiality and wisdom is likely very partisan and very unwise.

With the caveat that Politifact’s opinion on what are or are not the year’s biggest lies should not be particularly weighty compared to any other website, I humbly submit a list of lies that were more shameless, more indelible, or had a bigger impact on this year’s national discourse than the claim that Republicans wanted to end Medicare– whether or not that claim was true, I will leave to others. Whether or not it is true, these five topics are significantly more worthy of year-end conversation, not to mention yet more warnings that keeping one’s eye on the political ball often means taking the focus away from strict policy.

RELATED: Politifact Editor Lies While Unveiling ‘Lie Of The Year’ That Republicans Voted To End Medicare

5. Martin Bashir: Sarah Palin’s Bus Tour’s Use Of The American Flag Is Illegal

Since his arrival at MSNBC, Martin Bashir began to take on the right with some rather unconventional means– things like having to show his green card on air or taking on hard-hitting rivals one-on-one even if not always coming out on top in said scuffles. This shot he took at Sarah Palin, however, was gratuitous, rather comical, and wrong. Bashir argued that Palin’s liberal use of American flag imagery on her “One Nation” bus– the one carrying her on the One Nation Bus Tour– was illegal. That was, of course, not true, though some did argue that her exploitation of the American flag was distasteful. But even that was a far cry from calling Palin a criminal for wearing her nation’s flag on her sleeve bus.

4. Michael Moore: I Am Not In The 1%

This one is not strictly political, as Michael Moore is not a public official. But given the impact and significance of the Occupy Wall Street movement– they did, after all, make Time “Person of the Year” status– the fact that their most vocal celebrity supporter could not admit that he was working in solidarity with the 99% movement without being a member (at least until Piers Morgan pressed him, and he posted a clarification on his website later on) was a fairly damaging moment for both the Occupiers and Moore’s beloved status among them. It was the sort of moment that proved precisely why Occupy seems to prefer not to have any official spokespeople.

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