Jon Stewart scrapped whatever plans he had for the Daily Show last night and devoted a pretty stunning two full segments to railing about the mass shooting in Charleston, South Carolina.
Stewart apologized to the audience: “I have nothing for you.” They chuckled uneasily, and he made it clear that he was serious:
I honestly have nothing other than just sadness, once again, that we have to peer into the abyss of the depraved violence that we do to each other, and the nexus of a gaping racial wound that will not heal, yet we pretend doesn’t exist… What blows my mind is the disparity of response between when we think people that are foreign are going to kill us, and when we’re killing ourselves.
If this had been what we thought was Islamic terrorism — we invaded two countries and spent trillions of dollars and thousands of American lives, and fly unmanned death machines over five or six different countires. All to keep Americans safe. We gotta do whatever we can. We’ll torture people. We gotta do whatever we can to keep Americans safe. Nine people shot in a church? What about that? ‘Hey, what are you gonna do? Crazy is as crazy is.’
Stewart didn’t mince words and he didn’t make some half-assed argument about why we shouldn’t call this terrorism: