I was surprised that Jon Stewart’s “Daily Show” had a staff person call show sponsors to ask permission to make fun of them:
There was a certain person who was in charge of if the show wanted to make fun of a corporate sponsor or someone under the umbrella of one of the corporate sponsors, this person who worked for the Daily Show would call that company and try to convince them it’s cool to be made fun of. It’s okay to be made fun of on the Daily Show. The clear implication was if that company says no, it’s not getting on there. So imagine the level of corporations that are somehow tied to Viacom, Comcast, all of those, every entity. If they don’t want to be made fun of on the Daily Show, then they’re not going to be. Well, then the Daily Show can’t critique half of what owns this country.