Jon Stewart Lets Rip On Clint Eastwood’s ‘Empty Chair’: Laughter Not Optional

It’s the 12 minutes everyone’s talking about. Footage of actor Clint Eastwood’s bizarre “empty chair” monologue to an “invisible” President Obama went viral pretty much the moment it went online.

Now, TV host and political satirist, Jon Stewart, has entered the breach.

On a special Friday night edition of The Daily Show, Stewart offered his take on Eastwood’s much talked about speech at the recent Republican National Convention in Tampa, Florida.

Between cuts to footage of the Oscar winning actor on the RNC stage, Stewart let rip in his usual acerbic, hilarious style with a slew of Oscar-worthy lines of his own:

“A fistful of awesome emerged in the night where it spent 12 minutes on the most important night of Mitt Romney’s life yelling at a chair.”

“This is the most joy I’ve gotten from an old man since Dick Cheney non-fatally shot one in the face.”

“Back where we work at The Daily Show on the West Side of Hell’s Kitchen in New York City, you don’t have to go far to see an old man yelling at an inanimate object.”

“But rarely is that inanimate object on stage at a national political convention. And almost never is that old man, Oscar winner Clint Eastwood.”

“A truly hilarious 12 minutes of improvised awesome in a week of scripted bla.”

“You will not silence me invisible Barack Obama.”

After pouring humor-laced scorn on Eastwood, Stewart proceeded to lay into Republican nominee Mitt Romney’s acceptance speech.

Incidentally, President Obama’s Twitter response to Eastwood’s gauntlet — “This seat’s taken” — tagged with a photo of Obama sitting in the presidential chair, is the most retweeted post on the GOP Convention, racking up a staggering 51,400 RT’s so far.

Obama has since said he’s a “huge Clint Eastwood fan” although in his interview with USA Today he refused to be drawn on the gist of Eastwood’s taunt, instead saying “if you’re easily offended, you should probably choose another profession.”

The Democratic National Convention begins this week in Charlotte, N.C.