Bill O'Reilly wrapped up the final portion of his interview with Jon Stewart on last night's 'O'Reilly Factor' and if you tuned in hoping for a night of hilariousness, well...you still got it. But this time, you got it from the right person.

Jon Stewart, the host of Comedy Central's 'The Daily Show', kept his trademark charm and wit at high volume during the third and final portion of their edited interview, even though the tone and substance of their discussion got a lot more serious.

And thankfully, O'Reilly put down his red nose and took off his clown make-up for this portion of the interview. As Joel mentioned yesterday, O'Reilly is painful to watch when he tries to be funny. Screw waterboarding; the NSA should have hired him as the emcee for their interrogations.



Now sure some might consider the "vice president" angle an attempt to be funny, it didn't feel like that. The whole tone of the interview was about "vetting" Stewart on the issues from the Iranian threat to global warming and the VP angle felt just like a vehicle for that. It would have been nice if he had done that up front and not spent a good half-hour the first go around trying to be the conservative Mort Sahl.

Stewart did have some jokey moments as well (the "war on Hanukkah" bit had me wiping the Caffeine Free Diet Coke off my computer screen, honest to God), but he's a comedian and even if he's a satirist, he's not supposed to take things seriously.

It's very irritating to hear people complain that a comedian or a comedy show host isn't being balanced enough for one point of view or the other. If you want serious critical thinking on complex political and sociological issues, then watch the news, not 'The Daily Show', 'The Colbert Report' or 'The Half Hour News Hour'. Sure you can introduce new ideas or even enlighten people with satire, but if comedy is absent, then it's not technically satire. The same frustration creeps up my spine when Bill Maher gets so heated on a political discussion that he's ranting away without a joke in sight.

As for the discussion itself, O'Reilly did a nice job of keeping things low-key or as low-key as they can be on a shout-fest news show like 'The O'Reilly Factor.' Both landed some strong punches against the other (i.e. O'Reilly got Stewart on the foiled Detroit underwear bombing, Stewart got O'Reilly on O'Reilly's Iraq War stance) and were actually cordial to an extent.

It felt very telling to see that these two almost polar opposite talking heads can discuss very hot-button and complex issues without resorting to the usual childish BS that cable news has become known for these last few years.