Jon Stewart public intellectual

A U.S. bioethicist is calling political satirist Jon Stewart a public intellectual, who is seriously committed to ideas and discourse. Kayhan Parsi, an associate professor in the Neiswanger Institute for Bioethics & Health Policy of Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine, said Stewart "has emerged as our voice of sanity in a sea of insanity in a new media age with its ephemeral nature and lack of substance." "He is our greatest public intellectual," Parsi said in a statement. "This is no joke." Parsi said public intellectuals might be an academic, although journalists, policymakers and even politicians can play the role. Stewart and his colleague Stephen Colbert invite a variety of writers, artists and intellectuals to discuss their work on Stewart's "The Daily Show," and Colbert's "The Colbert Report" both on Comedy Central. "In an era with a great amount of strident self-righteousness, Stewart cuts through the absurdities of what passes for political discourse," Parsi said. "Although bioethics topics do not figure prominently in the Stewart oeuvre of satire ... the issues that are part and parcel of bioethics such as healthcare reform have merited a significant amount of attention." Stewart and Colbert "have created a space where serious writers can discuss their works in front of a fairly large audience." "Today, the effective public intellectual has to be less the pedant and more the artful catalyst for independent thought," Parsi concluded. "Perhaps unwittingly or even unknowingly, Stewart has taken on this role with relish and gusto. Although neither a bioethicist nor an academic, Stewart has taken on the mantle of our greatest public intellectual."