Last week, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney had called on fellow candidate Rick Perry to renounce an anti-Mormon Dallas pastor who he had chosen to introduce him at last week's Values Voter Summit.
In his introduction, Dr. Robert Jeffress hailed Perry as "a genuine follower of Jesus Christ." Jeffress has said that Romney was not qualified to be president because "Mormonism is a cult."
Later in the week, Texas First Lady Anita Perry complained that her husband was actually the one who was being attacked "because of his faith."
"Yes, no one gets it worse from the base of the Republican Party than evangelical Christians - or as their also known: The base of the Republican Party," Stewart joked.
In the next segment, Stewart was joined by Samantha Bee, who was wearing a "Team Mormon" t-shirt, and by Wyatt Cenac, who was wearing a "Team Normal" t-shirt.
"We are not a cult," Bee pointed out. "Mormonism is proud religion, founded by a great man, guided by the Angel Moroni to golden plates buried in upstate New York that he place in a bottom of a hat where he read them using a seer stone."
"Cult!" Cenac exclaimed.
"I think I got the problem here," Stewart noted. "Neither of you has an issue suspending your disbelief of any of the stories in the New Testament, but, Wyatt, you seem thrown off by some of the more eccentric tweaks Mormons have made to the story."
"Oh, look who's talking," Bee replied. "The guy whose people (Jews) think it's fun to hang out in someone's living room and watch a guy with a beard cut off a baby's penis while everyone eats pound cake!"
"Cult!" both Bee and Cenac agreed.
"In my defense, it's just the tip and the cake is incredibly moist," Stewart said.
Watch this video from Comedy Central's The Daily Show, broadcast Oct. 17, 2011.
It looks to me more like the improv comedy I used to go watch at the Freight and Salvage in the 1980's!
But, be that as it may: You can line up all the mainstream religions, and a bunch of the less-know ones, and quiz them about their beliefs and practices, and you will come up with some pretty bizarre material. Just look at the formal costumes worn by most Roman Catholic clergy!
But that happy-faced preacher did, in a later interview, give us his definition of "cult" (roughly): Any church that follows the teachings of a prophet instead only those of Jesus Christ. So he can hide behind his self-made definition of the word!
As a Scientologist (probably one of the most secular religious practices I am aware of, which advances no set belief system whatsoever) I have had to put up with this crap for many decades now. And I can only put it this way: From what I can tell (since I don't watch it regularly) the mainstream media has become an intellectual and moral wasteland. And when jokers also become degraders, their humor isn't that useful, either.