An open letter to Jon Stewart

Does Jon Stewart read Max's World? And if so, is he cherry-picking the best jokes from here to toss into his show? The evidence, it would appear, is overwhelming.

To wit: while interviewing Curb Your Enthusiasm's Jeff Garlin on The Daily Show this evening, Jon made a joke about a what-if Cubs-Red Sox World Series that sounded suspiciously like my blog entry from October 16th, 2003. At first, I laughed it off as the sort of humorous (if obvious) observation anyone would make about the 2003 playoffs. But once the laughter had died down I got curious, and I started digging. What I found was a disturbing pattern of plagiarism and creative bankruptcy that Mr. Stewart has turned into a career. See for yourself:

Jon Stewart is the host of Comedy Central's The Daily Show, a spoof of television news shows. Remind anyone of HBO's groundbreaking 80's series Not Necessarily the News?

Jon Stewart had a cameo role as "Enhancement Smoker" in the 1998 stoner comedy "Half Baked", whose story is an obviously uncredited rewrite of "How Green was My Valley".

Jon Stewart was in "Big Daddy", which was a rip-off of "Sophie's Choice".

Jon Stewart's nebbishy, short Jewish intellectual shtick was done to much better effect by, you guessed it, comedian/actor Richard Pryor.

And the list goes on and on. Jon, I'm not asking you to repudiate your entire career. Who can forget your work on MTV's "You Wrote It, You Watch It", or your star turn as a man with a bad haircut in "Death to Smoochy"? I only ask for the credit due to me as an artist. And for a small fee I'll even keep quiet about "Playing by Heart". You know what I mean.