Jon Stewart sends Larry Wilmore off the air with advice, comfort from David Letterman

Jon Stewart sends Larry Wilmore off with inspirational flourish

(Image credit: The Nightly Show)

Gawker will cease to exist next week, the news and gossip site announced Thursday, the same day Larry Wilmore's Nightly Show taped its final episode. Gawker Media was bankrupted by an unusually large court judgment bankrolled by billionaire Peter Thiel, while The Nightly Show apparently died due to lackluster ratings, but Jon Stewart tied the two together in his appearance on the show's finale. "The last show — oh my god, what did you do, piss off Peter Thiel?" Stewart asked Wilmore. "Does revenge know no bounds?" Mostly, though, Stewart was there for a pep talk.

"I have been in situations, in what we call show business, television, where my name has been on the show and they have locked the door and told me, 'Get your shit and get out,'" Stewart said, then passed on some advice he got from David Letterman. "A very wise man said to me, 'Do not confuse cancellation with failure.' And I took that to heart." Then he used the noun "task" as a verb: "What you, my friend, were tasked to do, you did, and you did it beautifully. You brought voice to an underserved voice in the media arena. And you did it — it was a show that was raw and funny and poignant and smart, and all those things.... You took something and got better every f---ing day."

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Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.