Howard Kurtz uses his column today to pass along the wisdom of Jon Stewart, giving me a much-needed snark fix given the Daily Show's absence last night.

If only he'd give Jon a bunch of his column space every day...

washingtonpost.com: No Holds Barred

The Comedy Central satirist, who chatted up Tom Brokaw for his show Monday, delights in making fun of the very media hordes -- or "whores," as he deliberately mispronounced it -- he has now joined at the Democratic convention. His job, he concedes, is to be "the dancing monkey." But he insists the real media -- as opposed to the fake news show that has made him wealthy by skewering the real media -- are so obsessed with entertainment that they've fouled the journalistic atmosphere.

How surreal is this? The professional funnyman is fuming about the sorry state of the news business, while a group of so-called serious reporters are trying to be funny, or at least coax Stewart into being his usual comedic self...

... Jon Stewart sees the cable news networks leading the dumbing-down parade. He says shows like "Crossfire" and "Hardball" and CNN debates between Donna Brazile and Bay Buchanan typify the medium's mindless partisan debates -- kind of like having Coke and Pepsi spokesmen debating beverage supremacy.

"Ann Coulter is rewarded because she just keeps saying the craziest [stuff]," he says.

What the other cable channels need, says Stewart, is a "Roger Ailes of truth," referring to the Fox News chairman who he says injects passion into the network (though Stewart sees it as conservative passion). Anchors and reporters should openly challenge politicians' spin-laden answers rather than being "sucked into the game."

I watched C-SPAN for the convention speeches, then afterwards tried to watch some of the "coverage".

Hardball's Chris Matthews and Howard Fineman were the phoniest, most ghoulishly grinning snide-merchants that I ran across. I could only sit through a few minutes of their way-kooler-than-everybody-here barks and sneers.

Like Little Lord Saletan, they are so above-it-all and 'meta' that I can't even conceive of any politician's speech truly reaching or affecting them, even in an election that offers as stark a choice as this one.

And if no speech can affect them, why should I listen to why any given speech was a failure in their eyes?

Their prefab, cynical storylines bear no relation to what I saw with my own eyes. Anyone who takes politics seriously (I'm looking at you, Joe T.) lowers themselves by lying down with these hyenas and not challenging their juvenile posing.