Jon Stewart v. Jon Leibowitz

As my posts in this blog show, I am a big fan of Jon Stewart's The Daily Show. Ron Rosenbaum writes that it is high time Jon Stewart changed his name back to its original:

I want you to change your name. Back to Leibowitz. Stewart is just so 20^th-century, a relic of that dark age when Jews in show biz changed their names because they feared "real Americans" wouldn't accept the originals.

In the same piece, Rosenbaum wonders "whether Dylan would have become Dylan—despite all that talent—if he'd remained Zimmerman."

I think Rosenbaum has a great point when he writes:

Now, you have every right to wonder why I'm singling you out like this. I think it has something to do with what I like most about your show, which is that you, like the best satirists, focus on making fun of those who put up a false front. Not that Stewart is false in any malign sense of the word. (It was your middle name—well, Stuart was!) But that it's a kind of mask, and you spend most of your time making fun of the pretentious masks that politicians, celebrities, and big shots adopt.

You're all three now—a politician, a celebrity, and a big shot—in the sense that you have remarkable influence politically. In fact, pols and political writers often establish their identities in their appearances on your show because you have a way of exposing their authentic selves however inauthentic the "authenticity" is. They either pass or fail the Jon Stewart authenticity test. And now we learn from a new poll that you're the new Cronkite, the nation's most trusted news source. All the more reason not to use a name that doesn't completely pass the Jon Stewart authenticity test, does it right?