“I watch him every night and think he’s very funny,” said Weinstein, adding however that “just because you’re a comedian but you have a political show doesn’t mean you can avoid scrutiny like everybody else. So we looked into his record and while he, as you just showed, he decried Mitt Romney for making $57,000 a day, he himself, according to estimates, makes $41,000 a day. So not too much of a difference between him and Mitt Romney on that level. But in fairness, of course, he was talking that Mitt Romney makes this amount but supports — doesn’t support the Buffet Rule. But I think the real interesting question is how Jon Stewart feels on income inequality and how he actually treats the staff.”

Fox & Friends is the Fox News network's most transparent talking point factory. If you want to know what Roger Ailes wants said, on any given day, you can just tune in and watch as the three dimmest bulbs in the Fox News studios woodenly wedge it into conversations, or gleefully introduce "stories" generally not peddled anywhere else in the media firmament. Today's edition is, roughly paraphrased, that Comedy Central's Jon Stewart makes a lot of money, so it's hypocritical of him to not like Mitt Romney. The jerk ... which devolves into saying that, well, if Jon Stewart likes the Buffett Rule so much, then why doesn't he just give his money away, huh? Huh? (This is a killer conservative talking point, because it is widely understood that rich people should only pay taxes if they feel like it, and should not have to pay them if they don't feel like it, which is a wonderful suggestion that only applies to the filthy stinking rich and not to any of the rest of us, because they are better than us.)

Nothing seems to irritate rich conservatives (God help me, when I think of the money the Fox & Friends tools probably rake in, while complaining about the money Jon Stewart makes, while defending how much money Mitt Romney makes, and so on) more than a wealthy American suggesting that wealthy Americans ought to pay more taxes. The point is, of course, not that people are outraged over Mitt Romney being wealthy—they're pissed off that he made that money doing nasty things to other people. That's the problem. If Jon Stewart made his money by opening a factory to turn adorable puppies into overpriced meals marketed towards senior citizens (unrelated note to self: trademark Soylent Seamus, immediately) then yes, I think people would be pissed at him too.

