When will Jon Stewart quit?

Watching Jon Stewart sometimes is one of the high points of my day, partly because he refuses to move on and persists in exposing the international scandal that is Iraq, and also because his irreverence is almost limitless--- though I must admit I cannot possibly be sure of that.

One other reason is that he features many thought-provoking authors (especially agnostics, skeptics, and atheists). The most recent was Allan Brandt (The Cigarette Century) who was especially relevant for me because I’m trying to stop for the nth time. I had not known that the number of smokers continues to grow even with the declining numbers in the United States and Europe. And that is because there is still a mine to be gold-mined, the developing world, especially China and India. (Shame on the members of the Philippine House of Representatives who watered down the law meant to increase cigaret taxes three years ago.)

I had almost succeeded in quitting and had been off for more than two months in 1997 if not for a phone conversation I had with the chair of the Energy Regulatory Board at the time over the phaseout of the Oil Price Stabilization Fund as part of the Oil Deregulation law. He was so exasperating I lit one cigaret and a pack three hours after we hung up. As I had been on nicotine gum, my heart started to palpitate and my neighbor volunteered to bring me to a hospital. Luckily my blood pressure stabilized but I continued to be an addict.

The other episode I saw recently was the one where Stewart criticized the media for its mindless coverage of Paris Hilton, when CNN ‘felt’ it had to cut away from a press conference with US defense secretary Gates and joint chiefs chair Pace just to cover Paris’s trip back to prison. Stewart characterized the frenzy as similar to the Black Nazarene procession in Quiapo, Manila. Paris was the Nazarene, he said.