Rhetorical Analysis On The Daily Show

Last August I remembered how much I truly despised returning to school at summer’s end when I was a kid. I remembered how I would look at the calendar hanging on the wall and watch helplessly as the remaining days marched past, the knowledge that the good ones were persistently running out, until one fateful morning I would wake up and there would be a yellow school bus with my name on it coming up the road. No, I wasn’t returning to school, but it’s the closest feeling I could compare to how I felt August 6th, Jon Stewart’s final day as host of the Daily Show.

When former Daily Show correspondent and current Nightly Show host Larry Whilmore announced to his audience that Jon was leaving the Daily Show, I nearly broke my remote changing channels,

I had never thought of comedy and satire being effective political commentary until I saw Stewart. He wasn’t just making jokes and cracking funny, he used comedy (and the occasional rant) to sculpt a new way to view the situation. He used absurdity to liberate the narrative from the biases of the traditional media, laying all the cards on the table. He was the smart ass sitting in the back of the class delivering sharp insights cleverly disguised as wisecracks. He was the one pointing at the Emperor and laughing at the absence of clothes while the rest of the world nodded along obediently, complimenting the Emperor on his fashion

His opening monologue for the Daily Show’s first episode following the 9/11 terrorist attacks on New York is considered one of his best moments and his recent commentary following the Charleston shootings on America’s institionalized racism and rampant gun culture, a raw and unfiltered emotional dialogue with his audience, was perhaps the most poignant and honest moment of television I have seen in recent