America will miss Jon Stewart. But it's fair to say we miss him already, because his America is gone. The political climate ? angrier, more bitter, more violently divided ? is radically different from the one he signed up to make fun of. Political satire, as Stewart defined it on The Daily Show, requires him to appear equally tough on the left and the right. But that means he has to pretend there's such a thing as a moderate center.
If his show got more predictable in the past few years ? making the same jokes every night about the same Fox News/Tea Party bullshit ? that's because America did too. And it clearly took a toll on him. He said recently, "Watching these channels all day is incredibly depressing. I live in a constant state of depression."