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Last night on The Daily Show, Jon Stewart dropped all comedic pretenses while reacting to a grand jury’s decision not to indict the officer responsible for choking and killing an unarmed Eric Garner, invoking a tone he rarely calls upon (his intro to The Daily Show‘s first post-9/11 broadcast is the only instance that comes to mind).
“If comedy is tragedy plus time, I need more f*cking time,” he told the silent studio audience. “But I would really settle for less f*cking tragedy, to be honest with you.”
Stewart went on to denote the lack of ambiguity in the clearly filmed Staten Island incident (as opposed to the conflicting witness testimonies that complicated the Ferguson case) and challenge the idea that we’re living in a post-racial society with a gorgeous statement: “We are definitely not living in a post-racial society, and I can imagine there’s a lot of people out there wondering, ‘How much of a society do we live in at all?”
When words failed him, Stewart resorted to hair-tugging and muffled screams. The entire segment is worth a watch.
