Jon Stewart Trashed By Former Show Writer Wyatt Cenac: ‘He Told Me To F*** Off’
Jon Stewart has led The Daily Show since Craig Kilborn left in 1999, and on August 6, he will be calling it a day. There are a lot of tributes expected over the next two weeks, and President Obama has already gotten in on the action.
But not everyone will be celebrating the host when he signs off, especially former writer and correspondent Wyatt Cenac, whom Stewart allegedly told to “f*** off” over an opinion that Cenac shared after one of Stewart’s more controversial segments.
In 2011, one of the Republican presidential hopefuls was “American Black Conservative” Herman Cain. Cain’s words — and one of the big appeals of Cain for the GOP voting base — was that he wanted bills to be simplified, as opposed to the 2,000-plus page Affordable Care Act.
Cain joked at one campaign stop that he wanted bills to be “no more than three pages” so he could read them “at the dinner table.”
Jon Stewart seized on this, and used it to poke fun at Cain as someone, who “don’t like to read,” Stewart said in an exaggerated black voice.
The segment received lots of criticism from Fox News and Cain himself, but what many people didn’t realize at the time is that Cenac was unhappy with it as well.
As the only black writer on staff, Cenac told Stewart that the voice “sounded like Kingfish” from the much-derided Amos ‘n Andy Show.
This, Cenac told Marc Maron on the WTF Podcast, set Stewart off.
“[Stewart] got incredibly defensive. I remember he was like, ‘What are you trying to say? There’s a tone in your voice.’ I was like, ‘There’s no tone. It bothered me. It sounded like Kingfish.’ And then he got upset. And he stood up and he was just like, ‘F*** off. I’m done with you.’ And he just started screaming that to me. And he screamed it a few times. ‘F*** off! I’m done with you.’ And he stormed out. And I didn’t know if I had been fired.”
Here’s the segment in question.
Jon Stewart helped make The Daily Show culturally relevant, but moderate viewers have complained more in the last couple of years as Stewart has seemingly abandoned criticisms of the left to go after conservatives more aggressively.
Now with Cenac telling all, it’s just one more hiccup on the road to the comedian’s final show.
Do you think Jon Stewart was out of line, if this story is true? Sound off in the comments section.
[Image via Bloomberg]
