As anyone who’s watched the Daily Show regularly can attest, it’s been a running joke on the show for a while now that every time they go on hiatus, something huge happens. Lo-and-behold, Jon Stewart and his staff took off for the holidays and the Newtown shootings went down the next day.
At some point in the wake of it all — I think it was the day the NRA’s Wayne LaPierre finally spoke about the tragedy and made an ass of himself — I remember thinking a) how badly I’d love to hear Stewart’s take on things, and b) how it must be eating him up inside to not have his show on the air during that time to voice his opinions.Well, if you watched the Daily Show last night, it’s easy to see that Stewart had thought long and hard about what he was going to say when he came back, and damn was it a powerful, intelligent monologue.
Once again, this country’s most reasonable voice is that of a late night satirist. Stewart’s main takeaway: this country is being held hostage by a few squeaky wheels, deranged idiots like Alex Jones (who now claims the NYPD and the mafia are conspiring to kill him, btw) who truly believe that any attempt to regulate guns opens the door wide for the next Hitler to take power in America.
“Now I get it, now I see what’s happening,” Stewart said. “Their paranoid fear of a possible dystopic future prevents us from addressing our actual dystopic present.” We’re paralyzed, he concluded, because right-wing lunatics are obsessed with “imaginary Hitler.” And you know what? He’s spot-on correct.
Here’s part one…
And here’s part two…