Here it is your moment of zen

When Jon Stewart took as over as host of The Daily Show in 1999, displacing then-host Craig Kilborn, the show was little more than a modestly amusing satire program modeled loosely after SNL’s “Weekend Update” sketch: good-natured celebrity-bashing, a healthy dose of political lampooning.

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Today, the show is a potent cultural institution, boasting one of the largest viewerships in modern history for a cable program.

The Daily Show‘s influence over voter perceptions has been well documented — a 2006 study by East Carolina State found that Daily Show viewers, while considerably cynical of the electoral system, demonstrated a higher degree of interest in politics as a whole.

Of course, Stewart, who now serves as managing editor of the program, dismisses such stats as irrelevant, arguing that the sole purpose of the program is entertainment, and as such, it has no obligation to be “fair” in the same way that real news programs do.

By its own logic, The Daily Show has insulated itself from attacks of journalistic bias by virtue of the fact that it is a comedy sho

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