I don’t have words for the wonderfulness of this New York Magazine profile/interview of Jon Stewart. I’m not even going to be able to highlight even half of the interesting stuff he’s talking about, so just go here to read the piece in full. Just give yourself some time to read the whole thing, because he talks about every major political figure in America, he talks about ISIS, the media, ebola, Stephen Colbert, John Oliver and his new film Rosewater. And so much more. If you couldn’t tell already, I friggin’ love Jon Stewart. And more than that, I find him facinating. He’s not some untouchable comedy god – he makes mistakes, he owns them, he tries to course-correct. He sounds kind of tired and bitter, but he still gives a sh-t too. Some highlights:

The prospects of Romney 2016: “My favorite thing about Mitt Romney now is, imagine if the second-string quarterback on a football team got to just go around on all the shows and go, “I’d have f–king nailed that pass.” For Romney, it’s, “Ebola? There wouldn’t even be Ebola if I were president. I’m not sure Africa would still exist.” It’s so f–king funny. Then you watch Dick Cheney out there being asked his opinion about isis. It’s like bringing on Conrad Murray to talk about, “So, what do you think they’re doing wrong with these patients?” “I don’t know. Why don’t they try to kill them with propofol? That’s what I did.” Every time Cheney goes on TV, why wouldn’t you just begin and end every interview with, “Now, you f–ked a lot of this up almost every day for eight years. What do you think?”

The prospects of Hillary 2016: “Hillary strikes me as competent. She’s certainly very bright. But she’s a little hawkish for me.”

The risk of making his first film: “But is it a risk at this point in my life? Yes, it’s very different from the forgiving nature of The Daily Show, where you lay a turd on Monday and Tuesday you’re back at it. With the movie, the idea that it’s all sort of building to this one opening weekend, you really do feel like that prom pressure of “I will lose my virginity!” But I get criticized all the time, so that’s not different. The failure would have been not attempting it.”

Whether he was offered Meet the Press: “First of all, NBC didn’t offer anything. They were exploring it in the way of, “Maybe it’s time to do something ridiculous.” There was definitely a meeting. I spent most of it telling them what a crazy idea I thought it was and kind of going through all of the different reasons why I did not think it was appropriate either for me or for them. That venue feels like an Establishment vehicle. They run on access. There’s a certain symbiosis with politicians. I am a part of an Establishment but in a slightly different element. We’ll do certain bits that would be disqualifying in terms of that person ever talking to us again, and I’ll say to other people on the staff, “You know, what’s nice about this show is that when I leave, I’ll leave with no friends but you people.” I think I would be too reactionary to execute something like Meet the Press properly. I mean reactionary in the sense of, “What’s wrong with you!” Nobody wants to be yelled at.”

Why he’s spent the last year diversifying The Daily Show: “I was defensive at first about our writing staff being all white and male, and then I had to examine what were the structural issues, and what’s my own ignorance of some of this. It’s been a long process, and that’s just one metric, but I wanted a wider and deeper pool of people to draw from. Hopefully, I’ve grown and learned as I’ve gotten older. I’ve had some very frank conversations with women on the staff and minorities on the staff about the inherent difficulties, the fact that in their lives they have to make decisions and strategize in a way that I take for granted. I don’t think people recognize how exhausting it is sometimes to be black.

He believes we should have a draft: “I do. I absolutely do. I’ve watched military families suffer in a way that is unconscionable considering the demands that we have placed on them over this ten-year period. When I say there should be a draft, I also think it should be noncompulsory military. There should be a draft where every young person has to do one year of something — military, public works — something so that we all feel invested in the same game, because that’s the part that we’ve lost.”

On Obama: One of my biggest criticisms with Obama is that he ran on rebuilding a corrosive system and just basically tried to put new wallpaper up. And yet he has done some impressive things. Would I have done the health-care system that way? No, but he did, and he got it passed, and millions more people have health care, and it’s hard to imagine that’s a bad thing. My biggest concern is how good we’ve gotten at campaigns and how bad we’ve gotten at government. The entire system is incentivized backwards.

[From New York Magazine]

There’s so much more. He talks about Rand Paul and Ted Cruz and Sam Brownback. He’s not looking forward to a Hillary Clinton campaign. He sort of likes Obama and he thinks Obama is “surrounded by idiots.” He also talks a little bit about how his contract is up next year and he doesn’t know what he’s going to do next. I hope he sticks with The Daily Show, although I have to say… he sounds like he’s worn out. Like, he’s kind of “over” TDS. Which is sad, because he’s built that show into the jewel of Comedy Central.

Photos courtesy of WENN.