You know, I was going to relegate Nancy Franklin's New Yorker article about our trusty and truthy "Colbert Report," served with a hefty slice of "The Daily Show" to a Media Minutiae bullet-point, right along with John Murtha and Harry Potter, until we got to this line describing how audience applause is the lead-in and lead-out of ever segment, especially with respect to Jon Stewart:

there's something masturbatory about his leaving in every second of the raucous adulation, as if he were Portnoy and the audience his slab of liver.

THE SPINOFF ZONE [New Yorker]

Related:
My Sexy New Yorker: A Series [FishbowlNY]