“Aw, being a clown sucks. You get kicked by kids, bit by dogs, and admired by the elderly. Who am I clowning? I have no business being a clown! I've leaving the clowning business to all the other clowns in the clowning business.”
MICHIKO KAKUTANI asked on August 17 2008:
“Is Jon Stewart the Most Trusted Man in America?”
“…In fact, Mr. Stewart regards comedy as a kind of catharsis machine, a therapeutic filter for grappling with upsetting issues. “What’s nice to us about the relentlessness of the show,” he said, “is you know you’re going to get that release no matter what, every night, Monday through Thursday. Like pizza, it may not be the best pizza you’ve ever had, but it’s still pizza, man, and you get to have it every night. It’s a wonderful feeling to have this toxin in your body in the morning, that little cup of sadness, and feel by 7 or 7:30 that night, you’ve released it in sweat equity and can move on to the next day.””
My answer: Jon Stewart is the most trusted American. He is also funny.
India today has a few good commentators, India has some good comedy shows (e.g. Sony’s Comedy Circus where artists like VIP, Kashif Khan, Ali Asgar have shown an early promise of reaching the heights scaled by Johny Walker, Mehmood, Ganpat Patil गणपत पाटील and Om Prakash) but it does not have anyone where both those skills confluence as they do in Jon Stewart.
No one is even close.
It was not always so.
Versatile, multi-talented artist and philanthropist P L Deshpande पु. ल. देशपांडे participated vigorously in the election campaign of 1977 to defeat tyrant Indira Gandhi’s Congress party. Congress leader Y B Chavan derided Deshpande as a clown at election rallies.
After Mrs. Gandhi’s crushing defeat, Pu La said: “Now I go back to being a clown.”
Indeed clowns don’t grow on trees.
Artist: Warren Miller The New Yorker 20 October 1962