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Jon Stewart

Our favorite Jon Stewart rants

Jayme Deerwester
USA TODAY
Jon Stewart prepares to eat his words when it comes to Chicago deep-dish pizza.

There are a half-dozen late-night hosts, all of them funny, but let's face it: none of them delivers a rant like Jon Stewart, who announced he would leave the show at the end of his contract later this year.

Some were serious, some were incredulous and at least one was about pizza, but with almost all of them, Stewart managed to make viewers laugh and think.

Michael Brown/Eric Garner verdicts: We can't breathe

Responding to a quote by former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani about tearing down respect for a justice system that dates to 11th-century England: "So does witch-burning."

Indecision 2000

"You weren't elected."

Killing in the name of religion (2011)

"The Ft. Hood shooter printed up 'Soldier of Allah' business cards. The Norway shooter printed up an Army of Christ manifesto. I guess the only connection is that both psychos, for some reason, spent the day at Kinkos."

Foreclosure crisis (2010)

"Remember when the banks came to us and said, 'If you don't give us $700 billion, everything you love and hold dear in this world will turn to Tang, the orange juice substitute once drunk by astronauts.' JP Morgan got $25 billion, Bank of America got $45 billion, GMAC got $16 billion — everybody was getting billions of dollars. And in return for in this in-no-way-ransom money, the American people would now be the proud owner of these bales of (expletive). I'm sorry, troubled assets."

Mess O'Potamia: Abu Ghraib prison abuse (2004)

Reacting to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld declining to describe the situation at the Iraqi prison as torture: "I'm also not a lawyer, and I don't know if you're human, but as a fake newsperson, I can tell you what we've been reading about and seeing photos of in the newspaper ... it's torture."

Hurricane Katrina (2005)

"This is inarguably a failure of leadership at the top level of the government. Remember when Bill Clinton ... uh ... went out with Monica Lewinsky? That was inarguably a failure of judgment at the top. Democrats had to come out and risk losing credibility if they did not condemn Bill Clinton for this behavior. I believe Republicans are in the same position right now, and I will say this: Hurricane Katrina is George Bush's Monica Lewinsky. The only difference is this: hundreds of thousands of people weren't stranded in Monica Lewinsky's vagina."

Financial meltdown (2009)

"How weird is our world when Jim Cramer is on TV baking pies and Martha Stewart is the one who went to jail for securities fraud?"

Dropping verbal napalm on 'Crossfire'

While he delivered it on a show that was not his own, it's worth including because he delivered the veteran debate series its death blow:

"Maybe it explains a lot that news organizations look to Comedy Central for their cues on integrity. ... I'm here to confront you because we need help from the media and they're hurting us. You are doing theater when you should be doing debate. It's not honest. What you do is partisan hackery."

And since all the other ones are kind of downers, we give you:

The New York vs. Chicago pizza rant

"Deep-dish pizza is not only not better than New York pizza, it's not pizza. It's a casserole. It's a cornbread biscuit which you've melted cheese on and then — in defiance of God and man and all things holy, you poured uncooked marinara sauce upon! Atop! ... This is not pizza! This is tomato soup in a bread bowl! It's an above-ground marinara swimming pool full of rats! Let me tell you something: I want to know that when I get drunk and pass out on my pizza, that I'm not going to drown."

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