It wasn't the owning people want to remember it as, Stewart came off like as ass in that imo. That's said as a former huge daily show fan and someone who thought Tucker was a dork back then.
I'll always laugh at that line, but then again I have some deep-seated thing against bowties since I was a kid. Probably got molested by someone wearing one and have repressed it.
That being said, Stewart had no business calling anyone else a partisan hack given his track record. And when the heat gets too much or he gets hit with a point he can't refute, he hides behind the "oh, I'm just a comedian!" skirt. May have worked back in 2004, but it's old hat now.
Stewart and Carlson are two sides of the same coin for me: two guys I generally don't care for who occasionally make good points.