Gay Side of Jon Stewart

Gosh, I've been quiet.

I can't resist sharing this, though. AfterElton is a pro blog produced by the gay cable channel Logo covering gay and bi men in entertainment and the media. They just did a terrific piece featuring clips from "The Daily Show" called "A Look Back at Jon Stewart's Greatest Gay Moments." Gay topics can be a great source for humor, especially pieces on "family values" conservatives getting caught - literally - with their pants down. But what comes through is how Jon Stewart, a straight guy, clearly feels a deeply personal sense of outrage at anti-gay policies and practices. Sometimes he drops the humor entirely and just lets his anger through.

The whole series is worth seeing, but I cannot resist sharing this particular clip. In November 2003 there were news reports of rumors that at some point in the past, one of Prince Charles's male personal aides had been rendering services a little too, umm, personal.

Because of strict English slander laws, we over here were actually getting more information than the British. So Stewart dispatched Stephen Colbert, who had not yet spun off his own show and was still a Daily Show reporter, to see how things looked from over there. The resulting segment, the legendary "Banana episode," was pretty damn funny, if salacious. It also offers the rare pleasure of seeing two consummate television professionals, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, totally losing it.