A night removed from The State of the Union, Jon Stewart & Co. got around to tackling that other thing grabbing national attention: Atlanta being shut down by two inches of snow. Using Lindsay Graham’s fear-mongering Chris Traeger routine as a jumping off point, The Daily Show gave Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed and Georgia Governor Nathan Deal all the sh*t they deserve for inexplicably ignoring winter storm warnings and taking a casual approach to prevention when they are more than aware that a city that sees snow once a year max is not equipped to deal with it when the entire workforce has reported in and all the kids are at school.
As I mentioned in that eerie Walking Dead side-by-side shot the other day, I live in Atlanta and being overly cautious and shutting things down is the only way to 100% prevent this sort of citywide melee from happening. We’re going to get made fun of either way.
Speaking of which, Jon Stewart makes all the easy southerner jokes about Atlanta in the above video. Lead-ins like Lindsay Graham enable that sort of thing. As I’ve touched before, this is such a weird, uncomfortable phenomenon for me. No one I know speaks with a drawl or quotes bible verses, yet nationally this town is consistently depicted like there’s a confederate flag decal on every car. It’s unsettling and a little too easy for my tastes. Then again there’s not a Canada joke I won’t giggle at so I guess you reap what you sow.
All of this is just adds to my appreciation of Aasif Mandvi’s two inches bit in the second clip of the segment. Now that’s just good joke-making.
