A brief NYT editorial on how comedian Jon Stewart may have been prescient when he went on CNN's Crossfire and seriously dissed it.

An excerpt:

s it turns out, an important moment in the annals of modern culture may have occurred when Jon Stewart of Comedy Central went on CNN's "Crossfire" last October and decided to be serious. He told Paul Begala, on the left, and Tucker Carlson, on the right, that their show, which specializes in encouraging midlevel political types to yell slogans at each other, was "partisan hackery" that was lowering the level of political discourse. At the time, he was widely denounced for failing to be funny.

But the fact that Mr. Stewart, a comedian, is perhaps the most influential political commentator on television is in itself a sign of the times, and it turns out he may be prescient about programming as well. Jonathan Klein, president of CNN, announced last week that he was canceling "Crossfire" and steering CNN back toward actual news.