With vacation over, Jon Stewart got back to what he does best: skewering 24-hour cable outlets for over-hyping the news. This time, his deemed "Tales of Manufactured Conflict" surrounded last week's relatively minor flap over a scheduling conflict between the Reagan Library GOP presidential debate and the president's long-anticipated jobs speech. They both were planned for today. Obama officials eventually reasonably decided, Stewart notes, that Thursday would be OK with him. In trademarked highlight reel fashion, the Daily Show host then took to task both the cable outlets and the White House press corps for magnifying the whole situation into "speechgate." He quipped of the press corps: "There were 23 questions about the scheduling of [Obama's] speech. 9 about its content."

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Erik Hayden