Stage

Superbly sardonic

By ERIC DEGGANS
Published January 21, 2007

If Jon Stewart weren't an amazingly gifted comedian, he would be the most depressing guy in the world to spend time with.

My evidence: the devastatingly funny, yet relentlessly critical hourlong show he brought to the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center Saturday.

Facing a mostly devoted throng of 2,243 during the first of two shows that evening, the Daily Show host took on organized religion, the Bush administration, gay marriage, race relations and a guy caught having sex with a pinata - all filtered through the sardonic worldview that powers his hit cable TV show.

For example, his take on Miami: "It's where Cubans go to live, and Jews go to die. ... A lot of cities you go to, you don't get to hear what people think of Castro for no apparent reason."

His view on Saturday's Children's Gasparilla parade: "Why would you want to teach 10-year-olds about Mardi Gras?" And Iraq: "Here's how you know you're in a war that may not have been necessary. ... When Germany doesn't want to fight. When the Michael Jordan of war doesn't want to get involved, you know you've got a problem."

Wearing a gray T-shirt and khaki pants, Stewart cut a different figure than the suit-wearing anchor-guy fans see on the Daily Show (no wonder he laughed off a recent New York Daily News story naming him among the city's 10 most fashionable men).

Armed only with a couple of water bottles and a microphone, he kept the crowd rolling with an extended riff on the Bush administration, comparing the president's speaking style to "a fifth-grader delivering a report on a book he hasn't read."

But the litany of Bush jokes - "He isn't stupid ... he just thinks we're stupid," Stewart said - proved too much for one audience member, who was ejected after screaming the f-word at the comic.

"What exactly did you think you were coming to see?" said Stewart, referencing the nightly deluge of Bush jokes he presents on the Daily Show. "F--- you for doing the thing you do every night on television?"

If anything, the confrontation highlighted Stewart's central point: life is mind-bogglingly absurd, so you might as well laugh along.

As evidence, he cited Bush's insistence that Vice President Dick Cheney remains a trusted adviser. "How do you stay a trusted adviser, when you've never been right?" Stewart said. "I've been fired from jobs for being late." He suggested the administration is so disingenuous with language that torture might be better described as "freedom tickling."

Democrats didn't escape his withering wit, either. "They look at Barack Obama and say 'You've been in the Senate for two years and you seem nice. ... Please, lead us.' "

The audience rewarded Stewart with two standing ovations - one at the show's beginning and one at the end - and the kind of rapt attention usually reserved for church services and football games.

Returning for a final bow, Stewart explained how he knew the world would be all right after the horror of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center, just 11 blocks from his home.

He stepped out of his apartment one day, and discovered a homeless man fondling himself on his front stoop.

Depressing? Maybe. But awfully funny, too.

[Last modified January 21, 2007, 05:56:26]