As allegations surface that New York Democratic Rep. Anthony Weiner sent an ill-advised crotch photo from his Twitter account, the opportunity is ripe for late-night comics to poke fun at him. On Tuesday night, Comedy Central’s host of “The Daily Show” didn’t disappoint.
There had been some question as to whether Stewart, who has a long-standing friendship with Weiner, would want to touch this one. He didn’t pull any punches and went right after it.
“You know – that’s the picture right there,” Stewart said. “I have to tell you, this Twitter is something else. You know in the old days a congressman had to chisel images of his penis on limestone or sit for days for a penis portraiture. And then have a runner take the picture to whichever damsel they wanted to horrify.”
Stewart explained why such a story would be appealing for his program.
“Here is my dilemma – one, we news based comedy story looking at a story about a snap shot that appears to be an ample helping of penis — allegedly posted by a congressman whose same in a synonym for penis. For a program like this the phrase sweet spot brings to mind. If we were to have a wheelhouse, this wheelhouse would be where this story would receive its mail, get its call. This would be this story’s billing address. That would be in the ‘let’s do this story’ category.”
However, he explained what might be perceived as a conflict of interest and clarified what exactly his relationship was with the New York congressman.
“Now, the cons of this story is that this is my friend Anthony — not this but this,” Stewart said. “This guy is a friend of mine and contrary to The New York Times reporting we were never roommates but 25 years ago he and some friend of mine from college had a house down at Dewey Beach, Del. Think Jersey Shores meets ‘Yentl.’ And when I wasn’t bar tending or clearing plates of half-eaten Mexican food off of tables, I would head down for freeloaders weekend. ‘Jonny doesn’t chip in,’ they would call me affectionately or so I convinced myself.”
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He added that despite this being a “slam dunk,” he hoped it wasn’t true.
“Anyway, as a comedian this is a slam dunk,” Stewart said. “’Weiner’ name, weiner picture – where’s my check? But, as a friend of his, I really hope this story is not true. I really do. I would feel terrible if this were true, as a friend of his. And I do have my doubts about its veracity, having nothing to do with the circumstantial back-and-forth about this, my thoughts stem from this: No way. No [bleep] way. Seriously. No way! No way! In real life my memory is this cat had a lot more Anthony and a lot less Weiner. This is not what I remember.”
Nonetheless, the Comedy Central host did employ a joke at Weiner’s expense.
“You know, I’ll be honest with you the only thing that Anthony and this gentleman here appear to have in common is that they both lean hard to the extreme left,” Stewart said. “Boom! Boom!”
Stewart noted that some blogs, including Soup, Daily Kos and Gawker had done analysis on the story superior to that of CNN, but also a shot an Andrew Breitbart interview on CNN, which according to Stewart deserved some more research beforehand.