BARBARA'S TCHATZKAHS

AN OPEN LETTER TO JON STEWART by Ron Rosenbaum Dear Jon Stewart, You probably don't recall, but I was one of your earliest, most enthusiastic media admirers. I wrote a column nearly a decade ago, shortly after you took over The Daily Show, when you were still struggling for recognition of your genius, before the massive media love-in that took a while to develop. My column then took the form of an open letter to David Letterman, about how his show was getting tired and how he ought to get Jon Stewart to replace him. (I like open letters.) I talked about how much I loved the perfect pitch of your TV "newsmagazine" parodies but most of all how I was blown away by your astonishing quickness of wit, most evident in the unscripted interviews. I called you "an idiot savant" of comedy. (That was a compliment—ignore the idiot part, focus on the savant.) So please know I'm writing as an admirer, someone who thinks you have the courage as well as comedic smarts to tak...

MY AMERICA & WHY I STAND UP FOR HER In the small town of Oxford, Mass. if you proceed East through town and take a left up a lonely road at a sign that points to the local golf course, there's a small little cemetary on the left. If you get out you will see a lot of grave stones that have my last name on it (those of you who know my last name). Families going back to the 1600s. Revolutionary War times. A ship's captain who sailed for the Colonial Navy, families with babies who died after just a few weeks of life. Farmers. Wives who waited years for their soldier husbands to come home. Mayflower descendants. And I am one of them. It's my genetic duty, in a way, to speak up for democracy. I believe in family, despite all the problems my family had. My mother's ancestors ran from the Pogroms in Poland, my father's ran from the oppression of the British against the Puritans. We have yet another election coming soon. My children will be the inheritors o...