ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: About 10 minutes after you won the Emmys this year, you said your big plan was to start phoning it in. So how's that going?
JON STEWART [Laughs] That was something I was supposed to keep to myself until, ultimately, shrewd critics picked up on the fact that we had deteriorated. Unfortunately, the relentlessness of it doesn't allow a great deal of phoning it in.

Was it a fun year?
It was...hectic. Nobody realized how much work the book was going to be. We thought we'd take the money, maybe go to Cabo, have some shots, throw some s--- together in a pamphlet, and see what happens. But apparently they wanted something with pictures. I used to sleep a lot more, but it has lessened considerably.

Your baby son isn't respectful of your schedule?
He's purposefully disrespectful of my schedule. He'll oftentimes give me a look that says, ''Seriously. I know you guys just f--- off at the morning meeting, so why don't you stay here and put some rice cereal in my face?''

Your book America managed to become a best-seller even though it was banned from Wal-Mart.
See, I never realized that Wal-Mart was the Gutenberg press of booksellers. I knew Oprah had something to do with it. If you could somehow crack Oprah...imagine if you cracked Oprah and Wal-Mart. Then I guess you're The Five People You Meet in Heaven. I, for one, cannot wait to read the sequel. He's just gonna keep going: There's literally 30 or 40 people you can meet in heaven.

But his book won't have fake pictures of naked Supreme Court justices like yours.
That could actually be the key to The Da Vinci Code. You line up all their genitals on the Rosetta stone. We don't know yet. So much is still up in the air.

You're a well-behaved interviewee, aren't you?
Listen, I know I'm supposed to be...I believe the word is...

I don't want to say ''my monkey''...
I'm delighted to do that.

Under certain circumstances.
That was 'roid rage. I'd been taking the steroids at the time of the Crossfire thing...

Let me ask you seriously about that. Do you want to talk about the show, or the shame spiral afterward?
I've always — in print, with friends, in my sleep — cursed that very program. So I thought, the only right thing was to say in front of them: ''Thanks for having me down here. Just one thing — I think your show is corrosive and hurting America!'' I wasn't trying to suggest that Crossfire is the only show that thinks that talking points are the same as news. The conversation never got that far, because their phasers are so set on ''stun,'' and on such fragile triggers...

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