If you take Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert out of the equation, then the answer to the above question is probably yes. Over on the the AV Club, ahead of Jimmy Fallon’s third-year anniversary, Steven Hyden has come around to what I’ve been saying elsewhere since Fallon became the only network talk show host to come out of the Leno/Conan controversy unscathed.

Fallon’s transformation from widely derided lightweight—a man assumed to have secret knowledge of where Lorne Michaels keeps the bodies buried in order to continue getting such good jobs—to heir apparent to the King Of Late Night crown is complete and shocking. Jimmy Fallon is now so likeable that it’s actually a cliché to point out how likeable he is. Not only has he become the opposite of what he used to be, he’s made thinking otherwise seem mean-spirited. He is the puppy-basket of late-night talk-show hosts.

Hyden continues on to say that Fallon “has the brightest future of any late-night host.” I don’t disagree. As someone who grew up on Dave, disliked Fallon on “SNL” and hated his short-lived movie career, it took me a while to warm up to him, but now if I bother to watch any of the late night network talk shows at all, it’s always Fallon.

Here’s the thing: If Dave and Leno are cut from the same cloth as Johnny Carson, most of the rest of them are clearly molded after Dave — Conan’s more eggheaded, Ferguson is more acerbic, and Kimmell is more meat-headed, but they all seem to have a similar self-deprecating, mainstream “edgy” approach. Their shows are all nearly identical. They simply put their own spin and personality on the same format that has been in the works for 50 years: Monologue, segment, personal anecdote, interviews, musical guest, credits.

While Fallon has borrowed a lot of those elements, he’s put a strangely refreshing post-irony spin on them. He’s amiable and awkwardly charming in the way that the way the others are not. He tries new things, some of which fail, some of which succeed. But he’s not trotting out the same gimmicks to the point of tiresomeness. The guy plays board games with his guests for God’s sake.

What’s most refreshing, however, is his lack of irony. He’s not sarcastic. He’s not mean-spirited. He doesn’t put others down, and as much as I love Letterman, his brand of crankiness does not jibe with our current cultural landscape. I don’t want a bitter old coot railing about the problems of a monkey on a rock. At that time of night, I want a guy who looks like he’s having a good time, and Fallon’s good-natured, goofball spirit is infectious. He is, as Hyden describes him, “the puppy-basket of late-night talk-show hosts.”

It doesn’t hurt, either, that he has the best house band on TV in The Roots. Moreover, nothing on network late night TV has topped this in the last five years (except maybe Stephen Colbert’s rendition of “Friday,” also on Fallon’s show).

(Source: AV Club)

A small refresher: Last week, Stephen Colbert announced his intention to create an exploratory committee in order to run for the President of South Carolina. By law, if someone become a candidate for office, he or she must relinquish any control he has of a Super Pac, one of those independent organizations that raises money on behalf of a candidate but can’t actually coordinate with the candidate. It’s a not so subtle way of getting around campaign finance laws. As a result, Colbert had to relinquish control of his Super Pac, Americans For A Better Tomorrow, Tomorrow. He gave it to Jon Stewart, who renamed it, The Definitely Not Coordinated With Stephen Colbert Super PAC.

What is Jon Stewart doing with all of that Super Pac money, besides eating chewed food from Mario Batali’s mouth? He’s releasing commercials in South Carolina, one of which alleges that Mitt Romney is a serial killer.

“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.”

Here’s the ad, narrated by the Trinity Killer himself, John Lithgow.

Now, if Colbert and Stewart could run ads like these in congressional elections all over the country, they might actually piss off our representatives enough to affect real, actual campaign finance reform.

Meanwhile, I think we should get involved, too. Think of it: The Warming Glow Super Pac dedicated to the election of Danger Guerrero as President, who will promise a Wawa on every street corner, Tastykakes in every pantry, and to institute a Nationwide Corgi Friday.

Guerrero/Annie’s Boobs 2012!

Jon Stewart and the team at “The Daily Show” are never better than when they’re mocking the moronic programming on 24-hour news channels. The show has taken a sledgehammer to all of the networks, from the mindless rabble-rousing on “Fox and Friends,” to whatever the hell MSNBC is doing with their schedule (“Tonight on MSNBC, a hard-hitting report by Rachel Maddow on our unsafe, overcrowded prison system. Then at 11 on ‘Lockdown: Violence Prison,’ someone gets shivved! MAYBE IN THE FACE!”). But last night they took it to a new level in a takedown of CNN’s new morning show “Early Start” — specifically, an idiotic segment where the hosts try to prank call celebrities at 5 a.m.

There’s not much I can add to this that isn’t articulated better in the clip. The whole thing is just so awkward and terrible and fantastic. I know Stewart can rub some people wrong way sometimes, but he’s doing the Lord’s work here. A segment this dumb (on a NEWS NETWORK) deserves to be mocked in the harshest manner possible, if only because you can’t physically grab a television show by the collar and scream right into its face like it’s an unruly drunk. Something to work on, scientists.

via Jimmy Traina

After yesterday’s ratings post, which revealed that “Community” is the sixth least watched TV show on the Big Four networks, that “Harry’s Law” is more popular than “Parks and Recreation,” and that “NCIS” is America’s most watched TV show, the collective American intelligence needed a win.

Enter Jon Stewart:

Fox News’ prime time lineup now averages fewer viewers than Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show. According to TVNewser, Fox News averaged 1.868 million total viewers in prime time compared to 2.3 million for The Daily Show … The reason why Fox News feels so threatened by Jon Stewart is because his program is more popular than anything not named Bill O’Reilly on the network. Not only is Stewart popular, but he is popular with the coveted young demographics that Fox News struggles with. The average Fox News viewer is 65 years old.

The ratings win is not only big in terms of moral victories for common sense, but the demographics also suggest that there are more younger, brighter television viewers than deluded senior citizens demanding that hobos “put some skin in the game.” Then again, to put it in a broader perspective Fox News was the 4th ranked cable network of 2011 (while “The O’Reilly Factor” and “Hannity” were number one and two in cable news, respectively), compared to MSNBC, which was 28th (with CNN trailing behind at 29th), which suggests that there are a lot more deluded senior citizens watching Fox News than there are wackjob Pinko-liberal fascists watching MSNBC.

Either way, it’s a victory for fake news and dick jokes.

(Source: TVNewser)

In the wake of Rick Perry leasing a hunting camp called… ummm… *cough* *cough*head, Wyatt Cenac filed a report for “The Daily Show” (video below) that no white correspondent possibly could have: he pointed out that scores of other American geographical features are named with similar insensitivity to race issues. What I’m trying to say is, he said the N-word a LOT. And not the N-word the way black people say it to each other, but the way white slave owners used to say it: casually, and with a hard “-er.”

The piece made me wide-eyed and slightly uncomfortable until Cenac branched out into my preferred territory: locations named with old-timey racist slurs. And as we all know, old-timey racist slurs are the ONLY racist slurs I’ll tolerate around here.

Hahahahaha, “Squaw Tit Mountain.” Sounds like a Navajo strip club. I bet there’s firewater and slut machines there. “Wait, don’t you mean slot machines?” Nope.

Last night’s “Daily Show” picked up on something I’d never noticed before: CNN anchor Don Lemon has zero patience for the banal banter about human-interest stories that he and other anchors are supposed to engage in. Lemon appears to be one of those old-fashioned “journalists” who are interested in “reporting” “news” — and not, say, going along with a stupid story about how Hogwarts would be more expensive to attend than Harvard:

Female reporter: “…more than $43,000 — and that’s only for one year. Tuition is actually the biggest chunk. Just to send your kid off to become a wizard, it’s gonna price you right out of the ballpark, I’d say.

Lemon: Okay. I say it costs zero, because it doesn’t exist.

The whole report (below) is pretty great, and it almost makes me want to watch CNN. Like, if I had any interest in the world beyond finding new pictures of corgis, Don Lemon would be my news person of choice.

(thanks, Vince)

Louis C.K. is making the late-night talk show rounds to promote the second season of “Louie” on FX, and last night’s stop was “The Daily Show,” where he broke down why farts are funny. Ordinarily, explaining a joke saps it of humor, but Louis does a great job of defending the inherent humor of farts from the people who claim they’re too lowbrow. He doesn’t name names, but he’s clearly talking about people who write for Slate, read the New Yorker, discuss foreign cinema at parties, travel to Europe more than America’s National Parks, and/or have a diploma from Swarthmore. In Louis’s words: “You don’t have to be smart to laugh at farts, but you have to be stupid not to.”

Video below.

NEXT PAGE: Louis C.K. on Kimmel Monday night. It’s just as funny, and Louis offers some solid insights about “Louie.”

There was a lot of media fuss about Sarah Palin and Donald Trump meeting New York City — where they ate slices of pizza with a knife and fork at a chain restaurant in Times Square — but nobody did a better job of capturing New Yorkers’ attitudes about pizza than Jon Stewart, who launched into a pitch-perfect diatribe defending one of Gotham’s longest-standing culinary traditions.

I was hesitant to post this because I’m always afraid of political flame wars on posts like this one, but this is strictly apolitical. Stewart isn’t a liberal going after Republican figureheads; he’s a New Yorker scolding Trump for misrepresenting the city to a tourist. If you’ve ever lived in New York, this clip will hit home; if you’ve never been here, then pay attention because it’d be a damn shame if you thought Famiglia was a real New York slice.

(Props to the Cajun Boy for being all over this, including a gallery of Obama eating pizza with his hands. And if you’re in Brooklyn, go to Franny’s on Flatbush. They’ve got a clam, chilies, and parsley pizza that sounds disgusting but tastes awesome.)

Jon Stewart’s first “Daily Show” after Osama Bin Laden’s death didn’t disappoint. With the first ten minutes of last night’s show, Stewart — accompanied by Photoshops that “Daily Show” staffers must have been working on since the news broke — took great angles on everything from Obama interrupting “The Celebrity Apprentice” to the pronunciation of Abottabad. And, much like he did in his first show after 9/11, he found a way to end his monologue with a sincere celebration of freedom.

Watch the videos below. It’s way better than whatever you’re supposed to be doing at work.

(If you’re pressed for time and can’t watch everything, go with the last two minutes of each video.)

On last night’s “Daily Show,” Jon Stewart addressed the end of Glenn Beck’s show with his own extended impression of Beck. Yes, it’s a caricature that Stewart has used before, but I found it funnier this time — probably because the fear-mongering specter of Beck is on his way out of the media landscape (if only for a little while).

I’ve got the videos below, and it’s pretty entertaining if you enjoy Stewart’s comedy. At the very least, it’s worth it to see Glenn Beck compare hosting his cable news show to Paul Revere’s ride. What a completely accurate metaphor in all ways. I was just thinking how my television blog is similar to the Federalist Papers.