Minority of One, No More! I had an odd feeling when I wrote this last month. Why am I the only one who finds Jon Stewart unfunny? I mean, honestly: Ever since he took over for the much-funnier Craig Kilborn, he's been the new Mary Jane of political wisecrackery -- and Kilborn has gone on to . . . hell, he's probably sacking groceries at the Piggly Wiggly.

Anyway, comes now Lee Siegel, in TNR, who agrees with me that Stewart is insufferable

Lenny Bruce had a field day with Eisenhower, but no one would ever have identified him as a mainstream liberal. Nixon put comedy on steroids, but none of the comics who took him as their target, from George Carlin to Robert Klein, actually got indignant about his policies the way a smug Bill Maher gets indignant about Bush's policies. Indignation is to comedy what turning the lights on is to a party. Indignation implies earnest thoughts about a better world; but those comics of yore were wholly, unrelievedly negative--that's what made them so refreshing . . . So it's not just bizarre but disappointing to see Jon Stewart blazing the same trail.

I've made the same point about earnestness as a laugh-killer. I disagree, though, about the Daily Show format, which Siegel describes as

showing clips from the news in order to mock the conventional coverage of the news and get to the bottom of what's really going on in the world . . . too dependent on the thing it derided -- the comic equivalent of covering an old song

I think that's unfair to the format, and too kind to Stewart. As I've mentioned, his writers are pretty good, and the format is tried and true -- Dennis Miller rode it to a fistful of Emmys, having copped it from the "Weekend Update" he anchored at SNL. The problem is that "Weekend Update" was -- as Siegel hints -- using the format of the news as a springboard for the "Jane, you ignorant slut" moment. It didn't take the content seriously enough to be particularly political. It was social, not political, humor. The effect was doubled when politicians would show up to meet their SNL doppelganger: Bush and Dana Carvey; Janet Reno and Will Farrell; Bob Dole and Norm MacDonald. The pol didn't show up to get slobbered on by the host. He or she showed up ready for a beating.

My original complaint about Stewart was that "he can't seem to decide if he wants to be sophisticated or silly." I haven't seen the show in weeks, but I've no doubt it is only getting worse. Frankly, I can take a comedian who is occasionally too silly, too stupid -- as long as he or she makes me laugh along the way. It's the phony sophistication I can't stand, the attempt to "add to the national dialogue" or some equally bankrupt and unexamined high virtue. (Then there's the traditional mutual starf*cker love fest between liberal pols and celebs that makes the whole thing even more obscene.)

I haven't seen the Dennis Miller CNBC show. I love Miller, but I fear he's gone into the same unfunny territory.