Jon Stewart - His post 9/11 remarks on Sept.20th, 2001

I really like Jon Stewart. I watched him in his early days on television, when he took over the Arsenio Hall show, and I knew even then he was something different.

Everyone knows Jon Stewart now, and the "Daily Show" attracts a large audience every night. He's partially responsible for younger people becoming interested in politics, and that's a good thing. We need that today. He's intelligent, and very funny.

Most people don't remember his first night back on the Daily Show, after 9/11, however. I think it's one of the best things he ever did. It took a lot of courage, and I think we all remember how impossible it seemed to all of us at that time that we might ever laugh again. Those were terrible times, and Stewart could have done what a lot of people on TV did then, and just make some passing easy remarks.

He didn't.

What he did that night, on Sept 20th, 2001, was remarkable. Like all of us, he was shaken by what we had all gone through. In the best tradition of American rhetoric, he came on screen that night and spoke from his heart. I think it ranks as one of the best speeches on 9/11, and what being an American meant at that moment in time. It's far better than most of the ones given by the politicians, and it's done without a script.

You don't see that type of moment often on television anymore, or in real life for that matter.

I'd like to share that clip with you now, and ask you to place yourself back to that time. Remember what it was like. Think of the enormous pressure that must have been on his shoulders. Think of what must have been going on as he faced his audience, and watch how that moment unfolds.