Jon Stewart has returned from his long summer hiatus, only to find the chaos in Ferguson waiting for him. And he addressed it as only Jon Stewart can.
He started out by taking the Ferguson Challenge, which is like the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge, but with tear gas and mace. Then he moved to the meat of his segment, dealing with the situation in Ferguson, and introducing the police by saying that they “appeared to be auditioning for Robocop.” Relying on his mastery of the understatement, he called the story one “that has a lot of people outraged and upset.”
Like the people at Fox, who Stewart saved his sharpest criticisms for. He played several clips, from Bill O’Reilly, Steve Doocy, and other FOX talking heads, complaining about how the police officer has been vilified. Stewart mocked them for complaining about the media reporting the facts, saying that:
Yes. Describing the actual facts of the case really does color the way we look at it. White cop shoots unarmed black teen does sound terrible. Where as, say, hero cop kills aliens hunting humans for sport, would put an entirely different spin on things. Which, while accurately describing the plot of Predator 2, is in this case not what happened.
He then added “And you know what? There’s so many other stories out there,” before playing a clip of Lou Dobbs complaining about black-on-black crime. The complaining prompted Stewart to say “Yes! Why all the interest in holding police officers to a higher standard than gangs? They both flash colors.”
He then ripped Lou Dobbs and company, explaining all the steps that the African-American community has taken to deal with the intra-community violence, adding that their “ignorance” didn’t mean it hadn’t happened.
After playing a clip of Sean Hannity defending the cops, Stewart simply stated “You really have no fucking idea, do you?”
If only Michael Brown, instead of holding his hands over his head, reached down to his waist and lifted up his shirt, to show the gun he did not actually have, well, this whole tragedy could’ve been avoided. Do you not understand that life in this country is inherently different for white people and black people?
No, he doesn’t, but that’s beside the point. This is Sean Hannity we’re talking about.
He then started into his monologue, tearing into Fox by using their “War on Christmas” as a launching point:
Remember? You were furious that America’s 11-month-long celebration of Christmas wasn’t enough. But now, if you can, just imagine that instead of having to suffer the indignity of a Festivus pole blocking something you could’ve just set up in your own yard anyway, imagine that instead of that, on a pretty consistent basis, you can’t get a fucking cab, even though you’re a neurosurgeon, because you’re black. I guarantee you that every person of color in this country has faced an indignity, from the ridiculous, to the grotesque, to the sometimes fatal, at some point in their, I’m gonna say last couple of hours. Because of their skin color.
Stewart addressed the sorts of things that black people go through on a daily basis that white people do not; relaying a story about two Daily Show correspondents, one black, one white, the white man dressed in “homeless elf attire” and the black man dressed in a suit, revealing that, unsurprisingly, it was the black correspondent that the NYPD stopped.
Stewart then dropped it down to the audience, telling them “You’re tired of hearing about it? Imagine how fucking exhausting it is living it.”
In the second segment, correspondent Michael Che raced to find a place where black people aren’t stopped and/or shot by the police; and he ended up in the one safe place in the universe: outer space.
You can watch the first segment here:
And you can watch the second segment here: