Bill Maher vs. Jon Stewart

Bill Maher criticized Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert for pretending that the &quot;insanity is equally distributed in both parties.&quot;

(Image credit: Screen shots)

last updated 8 January 2015

The video: Bill Maher took on Jon Stewart on his HBO show Friday night, attacking him for claiming during his Rally to Restore Sanity that there are extremists on both the Right and the Left. Liberals are not as "violent and cruel" as Right-wingers, Maher said, adding that a "big mistake of modern media" was the idea of "balance for balance's sake." Stewart's parallels between Keith Olbermann and Glenn Beck were particularly egregious, said Maher: "One reports facts, the other one is very close to playing with his poop." (Click here to watch Stewart's response.)

The reaction: "Bill Maher for president, anyone?" asks Alex Moore at Death and Taxes. This "brutally incisive, logical argument" felt like a real "restoration of sanity" after Stewart's inherently flawed event on Capitol Hill. Could this could lead to a "civil war" between Stewart fans and Maher fans, muses Jon Bershad at Mediaite. While "both sides seem too smart to really become adversarial towards each other," it would be interesting to see who would come out on top. Watch the clip from Maher's show here: