Jon Stewart, Darling of the Right-Wing Media

Though Jon Stewart professes to be an equal-opportunity comedian, conservative pundits have long accused him of carrying a flag for the left. But in the last two weeks, the Daily Show host has gone after MSNBC and the White House with a series of sharp jabs. Stewart cut Rachel Maddow, Keith Olbermann, and Chris Matthews down to size and still had a few barbs left over for President Obama's irrepressible use of a teleprompter.

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Stewart's shots at the left have put him in an unfamiliar position: conservative poster boy. In an sharp, informative piece by the Washington Post's Howard Kurtz, conservative columnist William Kristol said Stewart's inner neoconservative was coming to the fore.

"Jon has always been a crypto-neocon," he e-mails. "Could he be coming out of the closet? . . . A neoconservative is a liberal mugged by reality."

Joining the Stewart-Right lovefest was conservative blog Hot Air, which has repeatedly harangued Obama for his teleprompter use. Leading Hot Air blogger Allahpundit embedded the Daily Show clip in a post last week deriding the President, approvingly quoting Stewart in the title.