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On the day that followed the midterm elections, President Obama took to the podium in the White House East Room and remarked on results that saw the GOP regain control of the House of Representatives. A humbled leader said “it feels bad” and repeatedly remarked on how he heard the frustrated people who spoke with their vote. The pundit class seemed to hear a different tone, and in the day and a half that followed, the oft-repeated meme was that the president “didn’t get it,” an absurdly meaningless oversimplification that deserves the derision it received from Jon Stewart last night.

Maybe it was the buildup to Election Day, or hype about the Rally To Restore Sanity, or the simple fact that neither David Letterman nor Jay Leno runs a very youth-friendly show. In any case, the ratings for October are in—and for the first time ever, The Daily Show ranks #1 among viewers between the ages of 18 and 49, beating every one of its network competitors.

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Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace visited the set of The Daily Show last night, and host Jon Stewart exhibit an entertaining mix of mutual respect and tough love with this guest. “You guys are seriously the best” and “you guys know how to produce television” was mixed with “congratulations on retaking control of the House of Representatives” and some rather sharp criticism over FNC’s uniquely powerful brand of “opiniotainment”. The following interview is wildly entertaining, in large part because Wallace and Stewart clearly like and respect each other.

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Jon Stewart recapped the 2010 midterm elections last night on The Daily Show showing both highlights and lowlights from Tuesday nights results and media analysis. Lot of smart and funny material in the following clip, but maybe the best bit came after a montage of hyperbolic metaphors made by Fox News analysts describing the GOP victory: starting with a “wave,” growing to “tidal wave” then to a “tsunami” and ending with an”earthquake.” Mr. Stewart summed up by noting that all of these metaphors “killed thousands of people.”

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Ever since Will.I.Am did his best Princess Leia impression on CNN, the cable news networks have basically done the Daily Show writers’ jobs for them with their over-reliance on ridiculous technology during election night coverage. Therefore, it was unsurprising that the show got a lot of mileage out of their own “high tech” equipment. After mocking some of the more bizarre uses of CG visuals from earlier in the evening, the show trumped them all with an amazing “Holo-Suit.” Sure, it was actually just John Oliver in a chromakey body suit but, really, is that any less illuminating than a member of the Black Eyed Peas?

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Just two days after hosting the “Rally to Restore Sanity,” a seemingly tired Jon Stewart returned to hosting The Daily Show, and recapped some of the more absurd political stories in advance of today’s midterm elections. The segment culminated in the outrage expressed by some over Barack Obama’s “driving the economy car into a ditch” metaphor that led some pundits (almost all on Fox News) to hear racial overtones to the president’s comment of “the GOP can sit in back.”

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Keith Olbermann has already made it clear that he took some issue with the message of Jon Stewart’s Restoring Sanity/Fear rally on Saturday. And while the fact that he has suspended the most dynamic segment of his show, “Worst Persons in the World,” may send a mixed message, in discussing the rally he made it clear that he will not tolerate his network being compared to Fox News.

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Say it ain’t so, Keith! Say it ain’t so!

Countdown host Keith Olbermann, in a fit of (toned-down) pique at Jon Stewart’s false equivalence of MSNBC with Fox News, announced tonight that he is “suspending” the “Worst Persons in the World” segment, with an eye toward killing it. To many of the show’s viewers, this is the best part of the show, and equating its elimination with taking the high road misses the point entirely. Don’t kill “Worst Persons,” just be the better person.

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Long time fans of Countdown may have been disappointed to learn tonight that one of the franchise segments “Worst Persons” is no longer – at least for the time being. Why? Well as host Keith Olbermann explains in the segment below, its original reason for being (Tucker Carlson?) no longer seems relevant. Oh, and it’s probably more than just a coincidence that Jon Stewart held up Olbermann as an example of the divisive nature of cable news (among many others) during the Rally to Restore Sanity.

Saturday’s Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear was barely even over when some conservatives on Twitter began clamoring for stories about offensive signs at the rally, which only seems fair given the attention paid to offensive Tea Party signs. However, like comparing Restore Sanity’s Funniest Signs with the funny (for a different reason) Tea Party signs, it only seems fair.

Still, there were a few signs that drew outrage (faux and otherwise), and one that would have if I’d been able to get a sh

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Back in September when Jon Stewart first announced his Rally to Restore Sanity Glenn Beck did not, shall we say, welcome the plan. Actually he accused Stewart of trying to “activate” America’s youth. Eventually he appeared to calm down about the whole rally craze, and has barely uttered a word about it since early last month. Until tonight.

Thanks largely to the Tea Party phenomenon, protest signs are now fodder for news stories, with left and right scanning each other’s rallies for the offensive sign that damns their rivals as racists/America-haters. Saturday’s Jon Stewart/Stephen Colbert Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear, however, set a different bar. At a rally by two world class satirists, placard-makers were under heavy pressure to deliver the funny. Here are the heroes who heard that trumpet’s call.

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Had you been watching Hannity, you would have seen host Sean Hannity and his panel discuss Jon Stewart’s “Rally to Restore Sanity,” but focusing on the inclusion of Cat Stevens/Yusuf Islam as a participant in a comedy bit over Trains of all sorts (Peace, Crazy and Love as it were.) Hannity (and panel) all expressed predictable outrage over Yusuf’s inclusion, given his alleged support of the fatwa against author Salmon Rushdie for his tome Satanic Verses.

If the country were to hold a fake presidential election at the moment between Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, Stewart would be the runaway victor.

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It seems media darling Jon Stewart’s criticism of the media during yesterday’s rally has hit some nerves. This afternoon Chris Matthews sounded rather nonplussed over the idea that the media was to blame for the state of the country. Or that they should tone it down. Guest Arianna Huffington — who has lately designated herself protector of Stewart’s Sanity, in much the same way HuffPo functioned as Obama’s champion in 2007/08 — was quick to jump to Stewart’s defense.

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Not surprisingly, and despite the “corrupt bastards”, yesterday’s Rally to Restore Sanity was a big topic of discussion on this morning’s Sunday shows. What does it all mean. On This Week George Will agreed there was nothing wrong with “a day out for civility and reason”…unless!

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There were over 200,000 people at yesterday’s Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear, and a whole lot of them had signs. Tommy Christopher covered the beat from the perspective of someone who arrived earlier and was much closer to the front; I covered the late-to-the-party-gee-it’s-crowded-can-you-hear-anything?-they-clearly-weren’t-expecting-this-many-people shift, who came equally bedecked and be-placarded, because apparently that’s how you take your country back. There were bears, puns, twins, Hitler mustaches but ironic Hitler mustaches,

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Covering the Jon Stewart/Stephen Colbert Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear on Saturday was an exhausting, frustrating experience. The crowd size made navigation a real challenge, and the press accommodations didn’t really offer anything you couldn’t see on C-Span.

Even so, I managed to get some great pictures, and I ran into a few interesting characters, including Slate’s Dave Weigel. See his take on the rally, and a brief interview with Darth Vader, after the jump.

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While most of the mainstream media went into overdrive yesterday to cover Jon Stewart’s much-anticipated Rally to Restore Sanity MSNBC host Keith Olbermann was less than impressed. Apparently Stewart’s criticism of the cablesphere in particular rubbed Olbermann the wrong way.

Not sure if you’ve heard, but yesterday Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert put together a rather significant event at the National Mall. And now that the “Rally to Restore Sanity” is done, the breathless game of guesstimating the crowd size — and comparisons to the crowd size of previous rallies to restore stuff has begun. Yes, the question people are asking is, who’s is bigger? Glenn Beck’s or Jon Stewart’s?