While they don’t appear as frequently as the used to, Lewis Black’s “Black In Black” segments are still one of the best things about The Daily Show. Black’s perpetual rage reminds us just how angry we should be about some of the more ridiculous news items out there. With that in mind, let’s look at five of the most memorable “Back In Black” segments of all-time.
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His brutal takedown of Glenn Beck’s silly Nazi comparisons.
It’s hard to imagine now, but there was a time — about four years ago — when people actually cared about what Glenn Beck had to say. Luckily, Lewis Black was around to put him in his place, and become apoplectic in the process. If you watched Beck’s ill-fated Fox News program, you may remember that he had an unfortunate habit of comparing everyone and everything he didn’t like to Nazi Germany. Black tears him a new one for that here. The best line comes when Beck compares Al Gore’s global warming initiative to the holocaust: “I’ve met Al Gore, and Al Gore is no Adolf Hitler. Hitler had charisma!”
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His dismantling of arguments about the “moocher class.”
Exposing the hypocrisy of Fox News is one of Jon Stewart’s favorite pastimes, but when it requires an extra bit of rage, Black the man for the job. This time, the target is the right-wing’s rants about the “moocher class” — low-income folks who just don’t pay there share! Black points out that while they gripe about poor folks not paying more taxes, they also bristle at every plan to tax a given product, claiming it would hurt the poor consumers who buy that product. Of course, all these people are worried about is lost profits, and Black drives the point home. On a the rejection of a new cigarette tax: “In the war between ‘cough up a buck’ and ‘cough up a lung,’ lung wins!”
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His flawless rant over “artisan” foods at major restaurant chains.
If you’ve ever seen Domino’s, or Tostito’s advertise one of their products as “artisan” and you thought that seemed like a bit of a stretch, this is the Black rant for you. Responding to a Domino’s ad where they proudly claimed that they would say no to any requests to add toppings to their alleged artisan pizzas, Black goes in for the kill: “The only time you can say no to me at Domino’s is if I walk in and say ‘can I take a dump in the sink?’ Otherwise, the answer is ‘yes, sir!'” But the capper is when Black reminds us that the only American product that can truly be called artisanal is our meth. Walter White would be proud.
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When he advocated for Donald Trump to be President.
You may have blocked this out of your brain — I don’t blame you — but in early 2011, Donald Trump was in the news a lot. He joined the birther movement, and kept threatening to run for President in 2012. Thankfully, this never happened, but Lewis Black made a surprisingly strong case for why having Trump in the White House actually wouldn’t be such a bad thing. He claims that since America is screwed no matter what, why not just have a crazy dictator as President? And why not have one who talks to foreign dictators “like a Staten Island bookie?” He’s obviously being sarcastic, but perhaps there is a good case to be made for a President who is open and honest “about being a lying a**hole.”
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When he addressed the tasteless media reaction to Whitney Houston’s death.
Lewis Black recently made some news for his harsh — and accurate — response to Rush Limbaugh’s stupid comments about Robin Williams. But this was not the first time Black pointed out a tasteless reaction to a tragic death. When Whitney Houston passed away in 2012, many news networks inexplicably thought it would be appropriate to make little jokes about her song titles as a way of putting her death in context (“If only she’d done a better job of guarding her own body…”). Black doesn’t waste time here, laying these fools to waste with four words: “HEY A**HOLES, SOMEONE DIED!”
