Jon Stewart rips ‘meat bag’ Sean Hannity for whining about ‘cancel culture’

Jon Stewart returned to The Daily Show on Monday evening to lay into the conservative media ecosystem in a tour de force rant about so-called cancel culture and censorship hypocrisy, reserving particular animosity for Fox News host Sean Hannity, whom he unforgettably branded “a meat bag support system for a forehead vein”.

The liberal comedy icon has returned to the Comedy Central show that made his name in time for the 2024 election year and dedicated his latest monologue to what he described as “an entire industry devoted to complaining about not being allowed to say the things they say all the time.”

He continued: “The idea that there is an all-pervasive, all-powerful threat to free speech called ‘cancel culture’ has become a central tenet of modern conservatism.

“They celebrate their being silenced at conferences. They celebrate their being silenced on podcasts and streaming outlets. They celebrate their being silenced with over 700 book titles about being cancelled.

“Why are there so many of these f***ing books?! Unless you don’t know, nobody reads anymore…”

Mr Stewart went on to display a vast collection of real books written by conservative media figures, from The War on Woke by Alan Dershowitz to Woke, Inc by Vivek Ramaswamy.

“Conservatives have an entire industry devoted to complaining about not being allowed to say the things they say all the time! Their victimhood is the entire brand!” he observed.

The anchor made his point by showing a montage of Fox hosts including Dana Perino, Jesse Watters and Laura Ingraham complaining about being prevented from using particular phrases because of alleged sensitivity concerns, only to then brazenly use them anyway at a later date.

“They’re so full of s*** that Sean Hannity can say, with a square head, ‘I’m not the kind of guy who gets outraged.’ Sean Hannity!” Mr Stewart joked.

“He’s basically just a meat bag support system for a forehead vein!”

He continued: “Look, it is absolutely true that in our modern, social media-driven society, our interactions are incentivised and monetised for outrage and it is f***ing exhausting for everyone.

“[But] we are not censored or silenced. We are surrounded by and inundated with more speech than has ever existed in the history of communication and it is all weaponised by professional outrage hunters of all stripes scouring the globe for graduation speech snippets, offhand comments during promotional tours, out of context comedy bits, lame marketing ideas, or any words and phrases they believe they can latch onto to generate, monetize clicks.

“Outrage is the engine of our modern media economy.”

He concluded by observing that there is one meaningful force for cancellation in modern American culture and its name is former president Donald Trump.

Mr Stewart gave as his example Liz Cheney, the ex-Wyoming Republican congresswoman who has effectively been excommunicated from her party after voicing her opposition to Mr Trump and his MAGA movement and by leading the House inquiry into January 6, as clear a case of cancellation as you could ask for.