Stewart's political ideology had nothing to do with Carlson's argument IIRC.

Stewart: You guys claim to be doing X and you're not.
Carlson: Well, you could be X also and you're not.
Stewart: That's because we're Y and have never publicly claimed to be anything else but Y.

In this case, X = intelligent, changelling political discussion while Y = fake news and light-hearted interviews.

Stewart accused Crossfire out being out of integrity with its stated purpose. Carlson's counter accused Stewart of being hypocritical. Stewart's responses to this were rather poorly stated IMHO.

i think stewart nailed it when he said something to the effect of his show was a show that followed puppets making pranik phone calls.

Stewart also likes to dip his toes in the ring of political discourse, but then quickly jumps back out and Ric Flair-styled kneeling and head shaking with claims of "but we're not real commentary…we're on Comedy Central…you can't take us seriously".

Yes, it's true, but he also hides behind that curtain to keep from being questioned or prodded the same way that his show prods figures and media outlets.

wait, he either prods or he doesnt......

this thread has now seen both complaints leveled

Stewart mocks, pokes fun and provides commentary through his segments, but plays nice in the interviews.

It wasn't so much by intent, but there are too damn many people using "The Daily Show" as their de facto news source. Stewart eats that shit up. Gives him credibility. Makes him money.

Whenever anyone calls him on it though, he quickly retreats.

I guess I am seeing it from a different viewpoint. Everytime I have read an interview with Jon Stewart, where he is asked to respond to O'Reilly or Koppel's criticism that he is doing a disservice to real news or considering himself to be a legit journalist. He always seems to be real humble and basically say the real journalists should spend more time on journalism than criticizing him. The only reason I give the man some due credit for his show is that he has won two Peabody awards for his shows Election coverage. I think he is proud of his show and his viewership, and I have never seen him shy away from people calling him on it. I believe he told Rolling Stone during an interview that his audience had a more intelligent audience than the O'Reilly factor.
Here is a link to a story on it:
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/6117542