Actors - Jon Stewart

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	Actors - Jon Stewart

Jon Stewart (born November 28, 1962) is a Jewish American comedian, actor, author, and producer, best known as host of The Daily Show. The popularity of this late-night show has earned Stewart notoriety as "the most trusted name in fake news", a reflection of his purported stature as the "Walter Cronkite" for a younger generation. He has also gained attention as an outspoken critic of established news media sources.

Personal background

Jon Stewart was born Jonathan Stuart Leibowitz in New York City. He attended Lawrence High School, and is pictured on the Hall of Honors there. While growing up in Lawrence Township, New Jersey, he unofficially dropped his last name, Leibowitz, and altered the spelling of his middle name from "Stuart" to "Stewart." Although he often jokes this is because people had difficulty with the pronunciation of Leibowitz or it "sounded too Hollywood" , Stewart has implied that the name change was actually due to a strained relationship with his father, a physicist who left the family in 1971 and with whom Stewart no longer has any contact . He was a member of the school's band as a French Horn player, and has said he was subjected to much anti-Semitic harassment from some of his classmates as he was the only Jewish student. He was also short, and still stands just 5 feet, 7 inches (1.70 meter). He describes his high school self as "very into Eugene Debs and a bit of a leftist."

Stewart attended the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, majoring in psychology, and played on the men's soccer team, scoring 10 goals and 12 assists. An award titled the "Leibo" is now given out annually in honor of Stewart; it is given to the member of the men's soccer team who experiences the most personal growth and provides the most laughs for his teammates. He was a member of the Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity for six months but soon felt that fraternities had no point and moved out. Although he never officially withdrew from the fraternity, he feels no allegiance to Pi Kappa Alpha.

He coached soccer at Gloucester High School in Gloucester, Virginia. In 2006, he received an honorary All-America award from the National Soccer Coaches Association of America.

After graduating from William & Mary in 1984, Stewart held numerous jobs, including contingency planner for the New Jersey Department of Human Services, contract administrator for City University of New York, puppeteer for children with disabilities, and bartender at a local blue-collar bar, the Franklin Corner Tavern.

Stewart married long-time girlfriend Tracey McShane, a veterinary technician, in May 2000, at which time they both legally changed their last names to "Stewart." The couple had their first child, Nathan Thomas Stewart (named after Stewart's grandfather) on July 3, 2004. The couple had their second child, a daughter, Maggie Rose Stewart, on February 4, 2006.

In 2004, Stewart spoke at the commencement ceremonies at his alma mater college, William and Mary, and was presented with an honorary Doctor of Arts degree . Stewart was also the Class Day keynote speaker at Princeton University in 2004.

Professional background

With a reputation for being a funnyman even in school, Jon Stewart moved to New York City in 1986 to try his hand at the comedy club circuit. In 1989, he began hosting Comedy Central's Short Attention Span Theater, and in 1993, due in large part to the support of his friend David Letterman, Stewart started hosting The Jon Stewart Show on MTV, the first talk show on that network. Also in 1993, he was a finalist to replace David Letterman on Late Night, but the position ultimately went to Conan O'Brien. In 1994, Paramount pulled the plug on The Arsenio Hall Show and, with MTV, launched an hour-long syndicated late-night version of The Jon Stewart Show. The show, broadcast in 2:00 or 3:00 AM timeslots by some local stations, was a ratings flop, and it was cancelled in June 1995. Stewart had also previously hosted the unsuccessful You Wrote It, You Watch It on MTV, which invited viewers to send in their stories to be acted out.

Daily Show host

In 1999, Stewart began hosting The Daily Show on Comedy Central when Craig Kilborn left the show. Since that time, he has hosted all airings of the program, save for a scant handful where correspondents such as Stephen Colbert and Rob Corddry have filled in at the anchor desk. In 2005, The Daily Show and Jon Stewart received two Emmy Awards and a Best Comedy Album Grammy Award for the audio book edition of America (The Book).

Stewart also hosted the Grammys twice, in 2001 and 2002. In the middle of the 2001 broadcast, after laying a number of comedic duds, Stewart did what he encourages most public officials to do, and owned up to his bad hosting: he said, "Ladies and gentlemen, I just want to say I feel your scorn and accept it." When Stewart returned to host the next year, his comedy was more successful. Joking about the performance of the song "Lady Marmalade", he said, "Our next performance is from the movie Moulin Rouge!
, a film about a time when the whorehouses were about the music!" When the O Brother, Where Art Thou?
soundtrack won Album of the Year and an immense number of people walked up on stage, Stewart quipped, "I don't know what you may have heard, but you were only supposed to go on stage if you worked on the O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack, not if you heard it."

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Actors - Jon Stewart

Personal background

Professional background

Daily Show host

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