On Saturday, The Guardian published a story titled “Jon Stewart: why I quit The Daily Show,” the result of a two interviews between the retiring host and writer Hadley Freeman. In it, Stewart offers a number of clear (if not particularly surprising) reasons for stepping down, including election cycle fatigue, diminishing personal returns from the show and a desire to spend more time with his family.

From The Guardian:

“Honestly, it was a combination of the limitations of my brain and a format that is geared towards following an increasingly redundant process, which is our political process. I was just thinking, ‘Are there other ways to skin this cat?’ And, beyond that, it would be nice to be home when my little elves get home from school, occasionally.”

[...]

If anything, it was the prospect of the upcoming US election that pushed him to leave the show. “I’d covered an election four times, and it didn’t appear that there was going to be anything wildly different about this one,” he says.

“It’s not like I thought the show wasn’t working any more, or that I didn’t know how to do it,” Stewart told the paper. “It was more, ‘Yup, it’s working. But I’m not getting the same satisfaction.’”

However, a portion of the interview conducted before Stewart’s announcement suggests yet another possible reason for Stewart’s departure: the brutal turd-mining operation that is watching cable news.

“Watching these channels all day is incredibly depressing,” Stewart told Freeman in October. “I live in a constant state of depression. I think of us as turd miners. I put on my helmet, I go and mine turds, hopefully I don’t get turd lung disease.”

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