By Hosting Bill O'Reilly, Jon Stewart Undermined His Own Principles

I waited until I watched Jon Stewart’s interview with Bill O’Reilly to weigh in because I wanted to give Jon Stewart the benefit of the doubt and believe there was a legitimate reason for having the disgraced former Fox News anchor on The Daily Show, the biggest platform he’s had since being fired for a series of sexual harassment scandals.

The interview is available here, but there’s nothing to justify Stewart’s decision to invite his longtime political foil back. I understand why he did it: Stewart likely wanted to have a civil(ish) conversation with a political rival in the wake of the attempted assassination of Trump to demonstrate that it is possible to be civil(ish) with someone with whom one disagrees. I am okay with that.

What I’m not okay with is allowing Bill O’Reilly to promote his book and redeem himself with The Daily Show audience. These were not harmless sexual harassment allegations. Fox News had to pay $13 million to settle five sexual harassment lawsuits, and he paid $32 million to another woman to settle a lawsuit in which he was accused of initiating a “non-consensual sexual relationship” with her.

It’s ironic that Stewart would have O’Reilly on his program the same day I watched and reviewed the documentary about Louis C.K., Sorry/Not Sorry. Stewart makes several appearances in it. He doesn’t defend Louis C.K.—in fact, he was quick to condemn Louis C.K. after the NYTimes story broke—but at one point, he concedes that had he known about the allegations before the story broke (and he claims he did not), he couldn’t say for sure that he wouldn’t have worked with him. “I can’t honestly answer that, and it makes me feel shitty.”

Michael Schur, who had hired Louis C.K. on Parks and Rec, had a much better answer. He thought it wasn’t his problem until the story broke and he realized that “the fact that I thought it wasn’t my problem was the problem. That’s exactly the problem. Everyone was treating this like it wasn’t their problem. And it takes years of investigative journalism and the courage of dozens of women to step forward at the risk of their own sanity, health, safety, and careers to make it not a problem anymore. Well, shit. Like, that is my problem.”

Jon Stewart messed up by inviting Bill O’Reilly on. He exacerbated the mistake by having Bill O’Reilly on his podcast. To what end? Stewart has always been the first to criticize the incentive structure of media, the way it pushes conflict and divisiveness to generate revenue. But what is the reasoning behind inviting Bill O’Reilly onto The Daily Show? If this was just about having a civil conversation with someone with whom he disagrees politically, there are plenty of options out there who have not committed so much sexual harassment that $45 million had to be paid to cover it up. There’s Mitt Romney, Adam Kinzinger, Lindsay Graham, Liz Cheney, Larry Hogan, and I’m sure there are at least a few MAGA people who haven’t committed sexual harassment either. Stewart chose O’Reilly because it would attract a bigger audience. He fell into the very trap he so often criticizes.

It sucks. I’m bummed about it. It’s disappointing as hell.

But I’m not going to “cancel” him over it. I’m not going to stop writing about Jon Stewart, and I’m not going to add it as a caveat every time we mention him. “Oh, he made a great point in last night’s episode. Too bad he also invited Bill O’Reilly onto his show.” For the most part, Jon Stewart is very good at what he does. And it’s okay to disagree with this choice—and even condemn it—without forever writing the man off.

A couple of folks have mentioned something Jon Stewart said in a 2020 interview about Bill O’Reilly to characterize Stewart’s decision to have him on as hypocritical.

“The question was always, Why would you talk to [Bill O’Reilly]? Why do you have him on the show if you can’t destroy him? If you want to talk about the worst legacy of The Daily Show it was probably that.”

Some folks interpret that line to mean Stewart believed just four years ago that having O’Reilly on was the “worst legacy” of the show. That’s not what Stewart was saying, as the next section in that interview makes clear:

That everyone you spoke to who you disagreed with had to be Jim Cramer’d? That’s right. That’s the part of it that I probably most regret. Those moments when you had a tendency, even subconsciously, to feel like, ”We have to live up to the evisceration expectation.” We tried not to give something more spice than it deserved, but you were aware of, say, what went viral. Resisting that gravitational force is really hard.

The “worst legacy” of The Daily Show, according to Stewart, is that he often felt like they had to “eviscerate” people with whom they disagreed to feed an audience that craved evisceration. In other words, The Daily Show contributed—more than most, I suspect—to dunking culture. So, while having O’Reilly on his show doesn’t not square with his statement in that interview, Stewart can certainly thank himself, in part, for the level of evisceration leveled at him by The Daily Show fans yesterday for platforming the abusive creep. Karma is an asshole. And so is Bill O’Reilly.