“What did I miss? What’s going on?” Jon Stewart said, on Larry Wilmore’s final The Nightly Show after getting caught trying to walk off with the bottle of champagne John Oliver’s Last Week Tonight sent over.
Wilmore told him Comedy Central had canceled the late-night program.
“What did you do? Piss off Peter Thiel? Does revenge know no bounds?” Stewart snarked,.
FYI, billionaire PayPal co-founder Thiel reportedly bankrolled Hulk Hogan’s invasion-of-privacy lawsuit against Gawker, which previously had identified Thiel as gay, according to press reports. Hogan was awarded a $140M judgment against Gawker. Thiel also made headlines recently when he told RNC delegates, and TV viewers, “I am proud to be gay; I am proud to be a Republican.”
“I have been in situations, in what we call television, where my name has been on the show and they have locked the door and told me, ‘Get your shit and get out’,” Stewart told Wilmore tonight. “And a very wise man said to me, ‘Do not confuse cancellation with failure.’ And I took that to heart.”
That wise man was David Letterman.
“So I will say this,” Stewart continued. “What you, my friend, were tasked to do, you have done, and done beautifully. You gave voice to under-served voices in the media arena. It was a show that was raw, and poignant, and funny, and smart, and all those things. And you did it from scratch.”
“You started a conversation that was not on television when you began. And you worked with a group of people you invited to that conversation to collaborate with you, to sharpen that conversation. And what you don’t realize is that you walk out of this room, and that conversation doesn’t end. That’s beautiful thing. And so, in closing, I want to say to you, this” ‘You did it my…
No you can’t say that…word!” Wilmore interrupted.
“…my mishpocheh,” Stewart concluded.