When you’ve lost David Brooks . . .

The great Tom Junod whips Stewarts candy-ass, drops the people’s elbow, and then–just for good measure–puts him through a table, Dudley style. Sample awesome:

They are not all young, however, and the oldest among them seem genuinely surprised when this gavone in a black Daily Show T-shirt comes out to the sidewalk and begins, like, yelling at them — when he tells them they’ll have to submit to a TSA-like screening before they go inside, that if they get caught using their cell phones, their cell phones will be taken away, and that they won’t be able to use the bathroom once they’re in the studio. “I guess they have to screen for conservatives,” says one guy who’s come all the way from California, trim and gray-haired, wearing a T-shirt and chinos. . . .

They are quiet and docile as they are corralled into manageable little groups, which is why it’s weird that they keep getting hectored about their cell phones and their bladders until the studio doors finally open and a thick-necked woman with short hair and big red-framed eyeglasses that look like a souvenir from her work as an extra with The Rocky Horror Picture Show emerges with one last warning. “All right,” she says, “this is a comedy show, so we want to keep it light. But if we catch youfucking up, we will take your shit. All right? If we catch you using your cell phones, we will take them away. This is private property. So if we catch you taking a picture of the studio, even on the way out, we will take your camera and delete your photos. Got that? All right, now go in and have a great time…”

And they do, they do. They file in very quietly, into the pulsating blue studio that’s a reasonable facsimile of the studios over at Fox News, and nobody says how strange it is that the spiel you hear before you’re allowed to see Jon Stewart just happens to be exactly the same spiel you hear before you’re allowed to walk through the barbed-wire gates of —

Well, Gitmo.

But Junod is just getting warmed up.

Tonight, ladies and gentlemen, we are happy to have as our guest Jon Stewart. We all know Jon — he’s the comedian and media critic who for the last ten years has pretty much decided who’s a dick and who’s a douchebag in our politics and in our culture, all without ever himself coming across as a dick or a d —

Wait a second (hand to imaginary earpiece) — excuse me, folks. What’s that? What about the Chris Wallace interview?

Well, what about it? Okay, so a few months ago, Stewart went to Fox News and gave an interviewto the Fredo of the twenty-four-hour news cycle, Chris Wallace. Of course he did. That’s why welove him — that’s why he’s been able to transform himself from late-night comedian to liberal conscience. He does what nobody else does. He goes into the lion’s den and does that thing — that Jon Stewart truth-to-power thing. He manages to be the voice of reason while still being funny, manages to be sharply critical while still being affable, manages to be…

Wait. He wasn’t funny? He wasn’t affable? He kind of spoke power to truth when Wallace dared to point out that Stewart seems to crave political influence? He sort of pulled rank on Wallace, and was smug and condescending without bothering to be funny at all? He even started saying, “Are you suggesting that you and I are the same?…” in the same tone he would have used if Wallace had gotten a little schmutz on Stewart’s shirt?

O-kay. Well, Stewart had his reasons, I’m sure. After all, he’s really not the same as Wallace, is he? I mean, Stewart’s the coolest guy in the room, any room, by definition, while Chris Wallace wouldn’t look cool next to the guys in hats riding little cars at a Shriner’s Convention. He’s the very embodiment of the self-important yet dim-witted — or is that dim-witted yet self-important? — media creature whom Stewart has made a living schooling over the last tumultuous decade. So if Jon Stewart can’t be smug and contemptuous and superior with Chris Wallace, who can he be smug and contemptuous and superior with? It’s not like he came right out and said he’s better than Chris Wallace…

Oh. Wait. He sorta did? He said, “What I do is much harder than what you do”? But just last year didn’t he tell Rachel Maddow that what he did was less honorable than what she did? Ah, well, a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little talk-show hosts. It’s not like he started comparing himself to, like, Mark Twain or someone like that…

No! He did that too?

Look, I’m not going to spoil this for you–this is just the first tenth of the Junod piece. And the crowd is already chanting HOLY SHIT! HOLY SHIT! It just keeps going, and going, and by the end, I think it’s safe to say that Stewart has been completely, and totally, vivisected.

Santino sends a link to a great AV Club interview with Hank Azaria, which contains this fantastic nugget about Heat:

AVC: How was Pacino to work with? 

HA: Pacino was awesome. Michael Mann does like to shoot a lot of takes—if you’re going to shoot it once, you’re going to shoot it about 25 times—and Al really likes to play around. But I was so young and naïve then that I was silly enough to ask Michael Mann if, when Al was improvising, I could sort of improvise back and start riffing. And Michael Mann thought about it for a minute, then said, “Nah, just say what’s on the page.” I mean, now, of course, as a more experienced actor, I would just not ask. It’s easier to ask forgiveness than permission, you know? I’d just start riffing right back at Al. But I asked Michael and he said no, so I’d be doing the same exact thing on every take while Al was improvising all these brilliant things. It probably frustrated Al, looking back on it. It was probably annoying to him.

But one thing that did make it into the movie that was extemporaneous was… I don’t know if you remember, but I say something like, “I don’t know why I got mixed up with this stupid broad,” and he says [Does a loud, spot-on Pacino impression.] “’Cause she’s got a great ass!” He just screams it. And that was the line, but Al kind of yelled it for the first time, and he did it so completely out of nowhere that it scared me. So much so that I just went, “Jesus!” Not in character, just as Hank. I got frightened, and I went, “Jesus!” And then Al improvised [As Pacino.] “I’m sorry. Something happens to me when I think about a woman’s ass.” Or whatever it is that he said. And that actually made it into the movie! Michael Mann told me not to improvise, and the one line that I said that wasn’t scripted made it in there because… I don’t know, I guess because it was a good moment. Because I was scared of Al. [Laughs.]

Galley Friend G.R. has a pretty good educated guess in answer to our question from yesterday.

Via the Transom: This is awesome.

Last night was something new in the recent history of presidential debates, I think. I’ve never before seen a debate where the entire field dog-piled on the leader like that. Not in 2008 (on either side), nor 2004 against Dean, nor 2000 against W, or 1996 against Dole or 1992 against Clinton. I don’t know that the big pile-on Perry show means anything; I just don’t think we’ve seen something like it before, where the field doesn’t feel even the slightest need to be fake-pleasant to the leader.

Romney did pretty well, by his standards. But the performance fed into his structural liability as a candidate: Voters don’t quite know what to make of him when he’s sunny and positive. When he goes negative, he’s even more unappealing, because even his attacks are transparently manufactured.

Perry did okay, considering that he had to stand there and take it on the chin for two hours and that the debates are going to be the weakest of his campaign modes. That is, he did okay with one big exception.

I don’t quite get Michelle Bachmann’s strategy of trying to get to the right of Perry by painting him as being somehow inauthentic. Voters might buy that she’s more monolithically conservative than he is, but does she really think she can sell the idea that Perry is a fake–which is what her attacks last night seemed designed to do. I don’t think that dog hunts and, worse, it positions her as a Jacobin who refuses to acknowledge anyone else as a “true” conservative. In the long run, I don’t think that’s where she wants to go.

All of that said, she goaded Perry into one huge mistake, his bizarre, off-putting response that he was “offended” by the insinuation that he could be bought for a mere $5,000 because–hey, didn’t you know?–he raised $30 million.

There’s no way to look at this response that isn’t damning. And her rejoinder about being offended on the part of all the poor, innocent little girls (whose parents couldn’t understand an opt-out) was classic. Memo to RomneyBot 4000: That’s how you go negative.

What Perry should have said was something like this:

“I’ve said I made a mistake. And I’m not afraid to admit it. That’s part of being a leader. Now, I’m glad to know that Michelle has never made any mistakes–and good for her. But maybe if she’d ever been in a position of responsibility where she had to make executive decisions and hard choices, she wouldn’t be so lucky.”

It highlights her weaknesses (that she’s just a backbencher) and it diminishes her, instead of elevating her. Also, it keeps him on the mea culpa line for the HPV issue–which is where he should be, instead of trying to link it up to anti-abortion language.

This isn’t a mortal wound or anything. But it’s a sign of what Perry looks like when things go sideways for him. And its the first moment since he announced where his political instincts have actually been wrong.

Tonight Huntsman managed to be the least likable guy on a stage that included Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum, and Ron Paul. No small feat.

The only thing people dislike more than a smug smart-ass is a smug smart-ass worth $16-$71 million.

The insult-comic gimmick may go over great with Vogue correspondents, but with Republican voters it’s probably not enough to pull Pawlenty numbers.

P.S.: What would have been more bizarrely stilted, his Kurt Cobain name-check, a Korn Kidz shout-out? It’s such a weird reference, not (just) because it was totally ill-suited, but because Nirvana isn’t culturally relevant, but isn’t old enough to be classic, either. He might as well have tossed out Cracker or Harvey Danger or Soundgarden.

Dustin Rowles poses a really interesting question about the movie Creature, which this weekend set the record for smallest per-theater gross of a film opening on at least 1,500 screens. Rowles asks the following: How does a movie with no budget, no stars, no critical momentum, no festival pedigree, no marketing, and, most important, no studio distribution, get onto 1,500 screens today?

I don’t have an answer. But I’d love to get Edward Jay Epstein on the case.