I don’t watch cable news because I don’t appreciate the absurdly high yelling-to-actual-violence ratio (if you talking heads are gonna shout each other down, at least finish the argument with a knife). But I’ve seen enough clips to get a feel for Glenn Beck, Fox News’s version of a “kind of but not really serious but actually kind of serious” Stephen Colbert. Whether his audience takes him at face value or not, Beck’s anti-intellectual fear-mongering hysteria adds nothing substantive to the nation’s political discourse.

All of that is a way of introducing Jon Stewart’s sudden, unannounced Glenn Beck impression during last night’s “Daily Show” that went on for eight and half minutes. As good as it is, I don’t think I laughed once. I found it more sad than funny. Then I read a list of cats with fraudulent diplomas and pretended the cats were wearing wigs when they received them, and then I felt a lot better.

All right, I don’t like to get into politics, because the the subject matter is complex and confusing and unsexy. And I know that I’m a week behind the issues here. But… did I miss something? Rape is still bad, right? And gang rape is even worse than regular rape, yes? I’m not making that up, am I?

Thirty senators voted against an amendment to keep the government from hiring companies that prevent their employees from suing if they get raped. Not a big, complex bill — an amendment. THIRTY SENATORS. For rape. Three-tenths of America’s upper legislature. Is this really 2009? Did I wake up in a Arab state? In the year 1735? And if so, how am I using the Internet? HOLY HELL. Honey, break out my dick-punchin’ gloves. We’re going to Washington.
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Yesterday I lobbied for “Keep f-cking that chicken” to enter the American lexicon as a casual, throwaway phrase, and Jon Stewart definitely reads Warming Glow and reiterated my point on last night’s “Daily Show” (Note: Jon Stewart almost certainly does not read Warming Glow).

But still, I hope we’re all on the same page here on the subject of having sex with chickens. You just gotta keep at it, people. I know times are tight, but you just have to reapply lube and keep f-cking that chicken. Tenderize those breasts. Fry those thighs. Give it the ol’ cock-a-diddle-dong. Keep f-ckin’ that chicken.

Every year it gets harder to have a proper 9/11 tribute. Our memories of the tragedy fade, and we become more distanced from the emotion and the absence of irony that followed the terrorist attacks. Today marks eight years since all of our lives changed, and it’s too easy to forget who we were before and how we ended up here — “here,” in my case, being New York City by way of Iraq, a windmill of a war born from the attacks that still goes on today.

So every year I re-watch Jon Stewart’s opening on the first “Daily Show” after 9/11. Some people might find it too overwrought and blubbering, but to me it feels sincere. It represents how I felt back then and what I love about America, and the last two minutes or so always get me choked up. If you wanna make fun of me for that, well, you hate America and the terrorists have already won.

(Need more 9/11 reminiscing? Here’s my memory of it.)

Brian Williams is by far and away the best regular guest on “The Daily Show.”  Williams makes the news all boring on NBC with his gravitas, but he’s actually got a very dry sense of humor and an acerbic wit.  On last night’s show, Jon Stewart grilled him about the journalistic ethics — or lack thereof — in trying to land an interview with South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford.  It made for some terrific exchanges, but none better than this:

Stewart: Walter Cronkite was a giant in the industry.  Is that a man you looked up to?  Is that a man who…
Williams: The guy I wanted to be when I was a kid.
Stewart: Really?
Williams: It was like Carrot Top to you.
Stewart: [pause] So, how does it feel to fall so short?

Best thing on TV last night, hands down.  And that’s saying a lot, because “Dating in the Dark” was excellent.  So congratulations, Brian Williams and Jon Stewart.  You bested the show about people making out in a dark room.

Babies make people boring.   Matthew McConaughey was on Leno last night, and it was all “Levi this” and “Levi that” and stories about changing diapers and the faces that 8-month-olds make.  It was a grinding bore.  Man, there was a time when McConaughey still cared about livin’ — L-I-V-I-N — a time when he wasn’t afraid to get higher than a Winehouse kite, then go on “The Daily Show” and act out goats having sex.

This clip, amazingly, is from January 2001.  Crazy.  I don’t think the Internet was even around back then.  Or at least it wasn’t on people’s phones.  What happened?  Why did everyone stop getting high and telling goat sex stories on TV?  I blame the terrorists.  After 9/11, goat snowballing just seemed so frivolous.