1990s American Satirical Tv Shows

"From Comedy Central's World News Headquarters in New York...this is the Daily Show with Jon Stewart!"

"A second term we can all agree on."

"Trevor Noah — Host (2015–2022)"

"Jon Stewart — Host (1999–2015, 2024)"

"Craig Kilborn — Host (1996–1998)"

"Samantha Bee — Correspondent (2003–present)"

"Steve Carell — Correspondent (1999–2005)"

"Stephen Colbert — Correspondent (1997–2005)"

"Rob Corddry — Correspondent (2002–2006)"

"Ed Helms — Correspondent (2002–present)"

"Mo Rocca — Correspondent"

"Vance DeGeneres — Correspondent"

"Rob Riggle — Correspondent"

"Brian Unger — Correspondent"

"Stacey Grenrock–Woods — Correspondent"

"Beth Littleford — Correspondent"

"Bob Wiltfong — Correspondent (2004–present)"

"Lewis Black — Contributor, 'Back in Black' (1996–present)"

"Frank DeCaro — Contributor, 'Out at the Movies' (1996–2003)"

"Dave Attell — Contributor, 'The Ugly American' (1999–2002)"

"Michael Blieden — Contributor (1996–1999)"

"John Bloom — Contributor, 'God Stuff' (1996–1998) (as Joe Bob Briggs)"

"A. Whitney Brown — Correspondent (1996–1998)"

"Rich Brown — Contributor, 'Public Excess' (1999–2000)"

"Demetri Martin — Contributor, 'Trendspotting' (2005–present)"

"John Oliver — Correspondent (2006–2013)"

"Wyatt Cenac — Correspondent (2008— present)"

"Ronny Chieng — Correspondent (2015–present)"

"Judging solely by the amount of media attention it got, you'd think The Daily Show, when the vaunted Jon Stewart was host, was the most-watched show of the 21st Century. You'd be wrong. It rarely made the top 100 rated shows of the week. Yes, you heard that right. The Daily Show, even with Jon Stewart as host, routinely garnered fewer viewers than reruns of Family Guy on the Cartoon Network. Yet when Stuart spoke, the media listened, even though the people didn't."

"I think Stewart’s show demonstrated the decline and vacuity of contemporary comedy. I cannot stand that smug, snarky, superior tone. I hated the fact that young people were getting their news through that filter of sophomoric snark… I find nothing incisive in his work. As for his influence, if he helped produce the hackneyed polarization of moral liberals versus evil conservatives, then he’s partly at fault for the political stalemate in the United States."

"The hardest thing about doing The Daily Show is the fact that it's daily. It really is, it's the hardest thing about it. And Jon and I would always talk, and we would be like "Man, if only there was a way you could just do, like, a day of the show. And then, like, now-- I literally messaged him and I was like "You son of a bitch, you figured it out! You figured it out, God-dammit, Godspeed, Jon Stewart!""

"Third rate reporters giving the first degree the second news happens."

"The Jews celebrate Passover by eating unpalatable food to remind them what will happen to their people if they ever leave New York City. The traditional meal often includes gefilte fish. For those of you who don't know what gefilte fish is, it strongly resembles a ball of tuna fish that has been passed nasally. It's not good. During Passover, the angel of death passed over the Jews—an event that, up until the late 1950s, was re-enacted every year by Ivy League colleges and suburban country clubs."

"Big election tomorrow! But y'know, I was thinking this weekend, as I was running the New York Marathon, um, how much like an election it is. This 22.6 mile, grueling race through all five boroughs—many, many cultures—and, uh, much like our own elections, always won by either a Kenyan or a Moroccan."

"What we've been telling [young people] for the last ten years, I think, is: "Buy Coke." [...] But I do think that the message of this country has been over the past ten years, it's been—not just Play, but Buy. And Consume. And it has been Consume, and I think in the corporate oligarchy that we've established that is—that was what we were dealing with. We were dealing with trying to raise a generation of people who would like to buy our products. [...] Can I tell you something though? Spending time at colleges and spending time with these people—I never thought that this was an apathetic generation, and I never thought that this was a group of people that would not answer a call to arms. And I personally feel extremely hopeful about that because of the experiences I've had with them. They're a smart group and there's a hell of a lot of 'em."

"I keep seeing, over these past couple of weeks, people trying to make cultural pronouncements about what these terrible events will mean for our culture. The one I keep seeing is that Irony has passed. That it is The Death of Irony. Graydon Carter, the editor of Vanity Fair—one of the foremost, by the way, magazine authorities on irony. I don't know if you've seen their Young Hollywood issue, but they don't mean it. Uh, but I was thinking... maybe we should wait to make pronouncements about what will happen to us culturally until the fire [at Ground Zero] is completely put out—don't you think? I mean, it's still smoking down there. Maybe we shouldn't necessarily decide what's the rest of History of Man going to be. No? And why did Irony have to die? Why couldn't puns have died? Or would that have been too devastating for Mr. Al Yankovic? No, no... apparently, only the kind of humor I'm fond of is dead. Thanks, Graydon."

"If, god forbid, some coordinated terrorist attack leads to the deaths of the first seven people in line to succeed the President—the Vice President, Speaker of the House, the President pro tem of the Senate, the Secretaries of State, Treasury, and Defense, and the Attorney General—if, god forbid, that were to happen, would you really want the guy who took over to be the one who was in charge of their security? And that's tonight's "Nnnggehhh...!""

"Yes, Yes. All rise for the honorable Justice Chick with Dick!"

"So to all those naked prisoners out there: Unpile!"

"So, to sum up, it'll take two thirds of both houses and three quarters of the states to approve an amendment saying that two straight parents are better than one straight parent, which is still better than two gay parents, which is equal to a guy screwing a turtle."

"On a personal note, I'm a comedian who makes fun of what I believe to be the absurdities of our government. Tomorrow when you go to the polls, make my life difficult. Make the next four years really hard, so that every morning all we can do is come in and go, "Madonna is doing some Kaballah thing, you wanna do that?" I'd like that. I'm tired."

"The show in general we feel like is a privilege. Even the idea that we can sit in the back of the country and make wise cracks... which is really what we do. We sit in the back and throw spitballs—but never forgetting that it is a luxury in this country that allows us to do that. That is, a country that allows for open satire, and I know that sounds basic and it sounds like it goes without saying. But that’s really what this whole situation is about. It’s the difference between closed and open. The difference between free and... burdened. And we don’t take that for granted here, by any stretch of the imagination."

"And our show has changed. I don’t doubt that. And what it has become I don’t know."

"I just wanted to tell you why I grieve—but why I don’t despair."

"One of my first memories was of Martin Luther King being shot. I was five and if you wonder if this feeling will pass... [choked up]... When I was five and he was shot, here's what I remember about it: I was in school in Trenton and they turned the lights off and we got to sit under our desks... and we thought that was really cool. And they gave us cottage cheese, which was a cold lunch because there were riots, but we didn’t know that. We just thought, "My God! We get to sit under our desks and eat cottage cheese!" And that’s what I remember about it. And that was a tremendous test of this country's fabric and this country has had many tests before that and after that."

"The reason I don’t despair is that... this attack happened. It's not a dream. But the aftermath of it, the recovery, is a dream realized. And that is Martin Luther King's dream."

"Whatever barriers we put up are gone. Even if it's just momentary. We are judging people by not the color of their skin, but the content of their character. You know, all this talk about "These guys are criminal masterminds. They've gotten together and their extraordinary guile and their wit and their skill..." It's, it's—it's a lie. Any fool can blow something up. Any fool can destroy. But to see these guys, these firefighters and these policemen and people from all over the country, literally with buckets, rebuilding... that’s extraordinary. And that's why we have already won... they can't... it's light. It's democracy. They can't shut that down."

"The view... from my apartment... was the World Trade Center... And now it's gone. And they attacked it. This symbol of... of American ingenuity and strength... and labor and imagination and commerce and it's gone. But you know what the view is now? The Statue of Liberty. The view from the south of Manhattan is the Statue of Liberty. You can’t beat that."

"Like, the Afghanistan war, man did I dig that. I'd like to go again."

"Please stop calling people "Hitler" when you disagree with them. It demeans you, it demeans your opponent, and, to be honest, it demeans Hitler. That guy worked too many years, too hard, to be that evil, to have any Tom, Dick, and Harry come along and say, "hey, you're bein' Hitler." No, you know who was Hitler? Hitler!"