Jon Stewart has No Jokes About Charleston
Image by Comedy Central
By Lior Zaltzman June 19, 2015
You might have already gotten used to us sharing Jon Stewart’s amazing jokes about news-worthy item du jour, and let’s face it, since he’s leaving the Daily Show soon, we want to share as much as possible. But last night, Jon Stewart’s regular sobering dose of truth came unmasked with humor.
“Sorry, no jokes tonight,” Stewart declared in his opening monologue.
Because as he said: “We once again have to peer into the abyss of the depraved violence that we do to each other in the nexus of a gaping racial wound that just won’t heal yet we pretend doesn’t exist…” and yet “we won’t do jacks—t.”
It’s the disparity in our reaction to that internal racial violence and our reaction to “Islamic terrorism”, that blows Stewart’s mind.
When Al-Qaeda attacks, he argues, we don’t hesitate to invade countries and start wars. But when a white guy goes into a church and shoots nine people, we chalk it up to crazy.
“There’s not nuance here, this is black and white,” Jon Stewart says. “This wasn’t a tornado, this was a racist”.
Charleston still is ridden with “racial wallpaper”, Stewart added, dumbfounded, with streets named after confederate generals and buildings that fly confederate flags, and yet “the white guy is the one who feels his country is taken away from him.”
Watch the whole speech here:
It’s our birthday and we’re still celebrating!
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news.
This week we celebrate 129 years of the Forward. We’re proud of our origins as a Yiddish print publication serving Jewish immigrants. And we’re just as proud of what we’ve become today: A trusted source of Jewish news and opinion, available digitally to anyone in the world without paywalls or subscriptions.
We’ve helped five generations of American Jews make sense of the news and the world around them — and we aren’t slowing down any time soon.
As a nonprofit newsroom, reader donations make it possible for us to do this work. Support independent, agenda-free Jewish journalism and our board will match your gift in honor of our birthday!
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
