A brief history of late-night hosts apologizing

NEW YORK, NY – AUGUST 06: Host Jon Stewart, Rob Riggle and Olivia Munn appear on “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” #JonVoyage on August 6, 2015 in New York City. (Photo by Brad Barket/Getty Images for Comedy Central)

Jon Stewart calls himself out

The Daily Show has a full clip dedicated to compiling all of former host Jon Stewart’s mistakes, corrections, and apologies. Depending on how you look at it, either Stewart had enough missteps to fill a compilation or made so few that they could be packed into one a clip. Whatever the case, it’s a good example of the comedian’s shameless transparency (both Corden’s controversial statements and Letterman’s apology have been removed from the web).

In 2004, Stewart included the name Dante Parker in a list of unarmed black men fatally shot by law enforcement in a segment on his show. However, it turned out that Parker was not shot but tased, and passed away from an overdose of PCP. San Bernardino District Attorney Mike Ramos called the host out on the mistake, prompting a simple and straightforward apology. “…Ramos was right, we were wrong. So I’m sorry about that. We shouldn’t have done that.”

If Stewart wanted to maintain the integrity that allowed him to call out the media’s lack thereof, he had to own up. Interestingly enough, it wasn’t the only thing he had to address. When news broke of then-Congressman Anthony Weiner’s embarrassing sexting scandal, it seemed that Stewart was going easy on his old friend. Was he hypocritically giving his liberal friend a pass after years of ripping conservatives for similar situations? Nah, said Stewart in a mock-press conference, claiming he’s just too lazy to write jokes after 5 (the show tapes at 6, Weiner’s conference was at 4:30). It’s an iffy apology, but he admittedly did include a few jokes and laid into him for weeks after.