Lisa Rogak - Angry Optimist

“Just because Jon Stewart makes fun of it doesn’t mean he’s right,” said Jeff Zucker, president of CNN.

Still, Stewart’s message was heard by some. MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann revealed that he was taking Stewart’s advice to heart and would discontinue his nightly “Worst Persons in the World” segment on his Countdown show. “Its satire and whimsy have gradually gotten lost in some anger,” Olbermann explained. “So in the spirit of the thing, as of right now, I am unilaterally suspending that segment with an eye toward discontinuing it.”

The criticism continued that Stewart was intentionally blurring the lines again. “There will be some commentators questioning whether Stewart and Colbert crossed the line from comedians to political commentators,” said Pete Dominick, the commentator who had worked as the warm-up comedian for both Colbert and Stewart. “In all honesty, I’d say, yeah, I think they did make a political stance at the rally. The fact is comedy is an art form, and comedians are artists. You can’t be passionate about something and not have some part of yourself and your beliefs shine through.”

Yet again, Stewart denied it. “My job is to make jokes,” he asserted. “I don’t solve problems. If my job became solving problems, I would suddenly become a lot less good at what I do, unless the problem being had by the country was a lack of jokes.”

There was one bit of criticism that he took to heart in the rally’s aftermath. Author Salman Rushdie called Stewart to complain about having Yusuf Islam appear at the rally, since years earlier the singer had publicly supported the Islamic fatwa calling for the death of Rushdie, which had come about after publication of his best-selling novel The Satanic Verses , which many Islamic followers believe criticizes Islam and the Koran.

Yusuf Islam gave a speech at London’s Kingston University in 1989 in which he said, “[Rushdie] must be killed. The Qur’an makes it clear: if someone defames the prophet, then he must die.”

In an interview that same year, Yusuf Islam had said he’d be willing to carry out the execution of Rushdie if “ordered by a judge or authority to carry out such an act.” When questioned about a demonstration where a group planned to burn Rushdie in effigy, Islam commented, “I would have hoped that it’d be the real thing.”

After the rally, Stewart dismissed Rushdie’s concern, to the author’s great dismay, telling him, “I’m sure he doesn’t believe that people should be put to death for apostasy. I’m sure the guy isn’t really like that, let me talk to him.”

He spoke with Yusuf, who initially denied that he agreed with the fatwa, but soon shifted into his default mode of defense, asking Stewart, “Why do you have to insult the prophet?”

“We get into a whole conversation, and it becomes very clear to me that he is straddling two worlds in a very difficult way,” said Stewart. “And it broke my heart a little bit. I wish I had known that, I wouldn’t have done it, because that to me is a deal breaker. Death for free speech is a deal breaker.”

At the time of their conversation, Yusuf had been booked to appear on both The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, but both ended up canceling his appearances.

Not all critics disliked the rally, though, and the two-hour live broadcast of the rally was nominated for four Daytime Emmy awards, including Outstanding Special Class Special and Outstanding Special Class Writing.

To further add to his workload, Stewart was helping his wife, Tracey, to launch and operate Moomah, a children’s play space in Manhattan’s Tribeca neighborhood which opened in 2009 that also offered art classes and workshops and a café with coffee and healthy dishes.

Despite being a celebrity wife, Tracey still found it difficult to navigate the city with a baby—or two—on her hip when her husband wasn’t by her side. “Prior to having children, I loved going out to eat, being in my neighborhood, and visiting with my neighbors,” she explained. “When I was pregnant, same thing. People open the doors and they’re happy to see you, but the minute that baby is on the outside of you, they want nothing to do with you.” She did the typical mommy-and-me classes and other activities, “dancing around with the baby and singing really terrible songs, but I wanted to shoot myself in the head,” she admitted. If “the place was welcoming to kids, the music and food were terrible. I knew I wasn’t the only one that was feeling like this.” Thus, the idea for Moomah was born.

And she decided to add the art component to the café because she was unhappy with the kinds of children’s art classes that were offered in her neighborhood. “I started to get frustrated with what was being offered to my kids,” she said. “I would send my kids out to an art class and they would come home with a piece of construction paper with some glitter on it and I’d [think], ‘This is what you did with my kids’ time?’”

So with Jon’s blessing, Tracey opened the kind of neighborhood place where she’d feel comfortable—along with her kids—and named it Moomah, which was what she had called the security blanket she had when she was a kid. “I wanted it to be like a security blanket for moms.” And she decided to make creating art the focal point of the business partly because in addition to working as a veterinary technician, Tracey also had a background in art—she’d earned a degree in design and business from Drexel University and redesigned the lobby and offices of the Columbia University Clinic for Anxiety and Related Disorders—and partly due to her own anxiety issues. “Since I suffer from anxiety, the art projects help me find some peace of mind during the day.”

From the beginning, Moomah was a hit. One reviewer said, “Moomah offers a killer parent-kid recipe: it’s part café, part gymnasium, part art gallery, and part eco-exploratorium.” And Jon helped out occasionally. “When we get in a bind business-wise, we always say, ‘What would Jon Stewart do?’” said Tracey. “He advises us over the phone and has lots of ideas.”

But the business soon ran into trouble and began losing tens of thousands of dollars each week, so Tracey decided to temporarily close the business in January of 2012 to regroup. “I couldn’t get on top of my labor costs,” she said. “I had a lot of teachers working who were staffing the art workshops all day.”

Moomah didn’t stay closed for long. “I was completely overwhelmed by the emotional response from my customers [when it closed],” said Tracey. “I didn’t realize how much a part of the community it was.” She radically scaled back from twenty-seven employees to just five, and scaled back the workshop hours along with the menu when she reopened the business in May of 2012.

However, just two months later, she decided to close the business permanently and convert the idea of the business—making a space where moms could make art and feel comfortable—to an online magazine at moomah.com.

As it turned out, her husband was in the process of gravitating toward the very same thing: finding a place where he could make art and feel comfortable.

Only he’d have to travel almost six thousand miles to do so.

WHEN 2013 BEGAN, it was clear that Stewart was ready to head off in a new direction, at least temporarily. Though he had announced three years earlier that he had optioned the rights to Maziar Bahari’s book and life story, he rarely mentioned it in public after the fact.