A face in the crowd

Is Jon Stewart becoming the most powerful man in cable TV?

Consider. His rant last year on CNN whipped its way around the Web and became known as "the 13 minutes that killed Crossfire." No one can prove that Stewart was responsible for being anything but serendipitous, showing up to plug his book at the same moment the latest set of CNN executives were considering finally burying a hatchet in that wretched circle jerk. (One of them, Jon Klein, did credit Stewart with making "a good point about the noise level of these types of shows, which does nothing to illuminate the issues of the day.")

Now, mere months later, Stewart may have struck again.

We can't prove that the National Abortion Rights Action League pulled its tone-deaf, incendiary ad opposing the Supreme Court nomination of John G. Roberts Jr., based on Stewart's ripping the 30-second spot to shreds last week on "The Daily Show."

Perhaps Sen. Arlen Specter was reacting to this Washington Post story, or blogosphere buzz, when he wrote the letter later in the week to Nancy Keenan, NARAL's president, expressing his outrage at the message (which basically linked a 1991 ruling Roberts had made to a 1998 abortion-clinic bombing and concluded that Roberts endorses the tactics of bombers). Shortly after Specter's letter arrived, Kennan announced she was pulling the ad, and shortly after that, NARAL's communications director resigned.

But I can't believe that Specter's staff wasn't prodded, in part, by Stewart (video's on the "Daily Show" page right now), whose dissection of the NARAL ad was smarter, funnier and, as a result, more devastating than any other critique I saw from last week.

After playing snippets from the ad, and stating the facts above, Stewart concluded:

Seven years later, one of the people he indirectly defended bombed an abortion clinic. Ergo ipso facto,  he supports clinic bombers -- in much the same way as, if you bought the "Thriller" album in 1982 ...

At which point Stewart was interrupted by thunderous applause and laughter that filled his new, cavernous TV studio. It was one of those beautiful moments where the punchline was so exquisitely set up that the comic didn't even need to deliver it.

Annnnnd not long after, the ad died.

So pardon me for wondering if -- for having the guts to say what a lot of smart, well-educated and (hello) demographically desirable Americans are thinking -- Jon Stewart is becoming the media's gut check, its conscience, the one guy on whose bad side you do not want to get.

On a related note, the L.A. Times needs 2,000 words to tell you a lot of stuff about late night you already knew. Because you read it here first.