After being on vacation for two weeks, "The Daily Show" made a triumphant return Monday night with guest Michelle Obama and a certain bone to pick. Namely, the fact that the media jumped on Jon Stewart in his absence and started calling him a socialist.
First, Fox News Chief Roger Ailes claimed that Stewart "admitted to [him] in a bar" that he is a socialist. Then, a 2000 clip of Stewart in an interview with Larry King, saying, "I think I would say I'm more of a socialist or an independent," surfaced and was used to support Ailes' claim.
Stewart didn't seem to remember this conversation, though. This night where he and Ailes were hanging out in a bar after the Republican National Convention and talking politics over a couple of drinks somehow eluded his memory.
It wasn't until he recreated the scene with some of his coworkers that Stewart was able to "remember" the night.
In a sarcastic paraphrase of Ailes that evening, Stewart joked:
Oh, Jon! Did I ever tell you that I, Roger Ailes, plan to undermine the role of an independent press by constantly whining at any reportage that deviates from a staunch conservative narrative is biased, while at the same time filling the editorial vacuum that that creates by building a Conservative propaganda juggernaut in the guise of a news organization... Jon, I'm gonna call the organization Fox News, and its tagline will be -- you're gonna love this: 'A Fanatically Micro-Managed Media Fiefdom Where My Own Far-Right Agenda And Personal Sense of Victomhood Drive Every Aspect of the Operation... and Balanced.'
Party talk aside, though, Stewart wanted to remind everyone that the word Socialism wasn't a scandalous thing until conservative figures adopted it as a way of knocking Obamacare.
"A program where everyone will be forced to buy health insurance in a competitive marketplace from private, for-profit insurance companies?" he quipped. "It's a Marxist's dream!"