Someone wrote somewhere: push the panic button when Obama loses Jon Stewart.  LBJ knew he lost the confidence of this nation to fight the Vietnam War when Walter Cronkite essentially called it an unwinnable quagmire.

Jon Stewart wondered aloud whether Obama is ten steps ahead of us or if health care is kicking his butt.

According to random and anecdotal polls, Jon Stewart is today’s most trusted name in news.  (Psssst, CNN: stop claiming that honor — you are a weak also-ran at best.)

Here is the crazy part:  wait for it, wait for it, here it comes . . .

He does fake news for Comedy Central. 

That should tell us and the politicians that we are living and thinking in an alternate universe.  The jokesters are the prophets and the leaders are their very own caricatures.

Jon Stewart is just a comedian, but the times make a person.  For now, the times demand that he keeps politicians and talking heads honest within a corrupted system (but only if he is funny, because otherwise no one will watch).

He should get the Presidential Medal of Honesty and Comedy (a quasi military honor known in the military argot as PRE-MED-HAC, which Stewart probably was before he failed Organic Chemistry).

But he should get this high honor only on a president’s last day in office, so it doesn’t interfere with his lampooning.