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:

Lior Zaltzman was the Forward’s Digital Fellow. Follow her on twitter @liorca.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.

This year, we have stood together in strength and sorrow. Our Forward team has worked around the clock to help you find clarity amid the chaos.

If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.

Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO