You know the drill if you watch The Daily Show.
Host Jon Stewart plays a smashcut of television news clips, to help him destroy, eviscerate, demolish, devastate, torch, obliterate and disembowel a generally conservative straw man opinion, movement or Fox News host.
After that comes the true punch line, where Stewart often simply gapes at the camera for humorous effect, to convey his shock or revulsion at whatever those clips displayed. All this is done to raucous applause and laughter from an adoring studio audience.
It's impressive: A group of people who obediently guffaw like hyenas at a glance. Stewart often can be funny, but like fellow mainstream media-adored liberal comedian Stephen Colbert, he limits himself almost exclusively and rather boringly to targeting one side of the political spectrum.
Then, dutiful reporters for websites like Salon, Huffington Post and the like simply write down whatever Stewart said, or in this case stared at, and declare his target utterly annihilated.
It is law.