Jon Stewart on the Charleston shooting:
I didnāt do my job today. Iāve got nothing for you in terms of jokes and sounds because of what happened in South Carolina. And maybe if I wasnāt nearing the end of the run or this wasnāt such a common occurrence, maybe I could have pulled out of the spiral. But I didnāt.
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 just gaping racial wound that will not heal yet we pretend doesnāt exist. Iām confident though, that by acknowledging it ā by staring into that and seeing it for what it isā¦We still wonāt do jack shit. Yeah, thatās us. And thatās the part that blows my mind.
I donāt want to get into the political argument of guns and things. What blows my mind is the disparity of response between when we think people that are foreign are going to kill us and us killing ourselvesā¦
If this had been what we thought was Islamic terrorism, it would fit into our [narrative]. We invaded two countries and spent trillions of dollars and [lost] thousands of American lives and now fly unmanned death machines over like five or six different counties, all to keep Americans safe. Weāve got to do whatever we can ā weāll torture people. Weāve got to do whatever we can to keep Americans safe. But nine people shot in a church, what about that? āHey, what are you going go to do? Crazy is as crazy is, right?ā
Thatās the part that I cannot, for the life of me, wrap my head around. And you know itās gonna go down the same path. āThis is a terrible tragedy.ā They are already using the nuanced language of lack of effort for this.
This is a terrorist attack. This is a violent attack on the Emanuel Church in South Carolina which is a symbol for the black community. It has stood in that part of Charleston for a hundred and some years and has been attacked viciously many times ā as many black churches have. And to pretend that ā I heard someone on the news say ā ātragedy has visited this churchā. This wasnāt a tornado. This was a racist. This was a guy with a Rhodesia badge on his sweater. So the idea that ā I hate to even use this pun ā but this one is black and white. Thereās no nuance here. And weāre gonna keep pretending like, āI donāt get it, what happened. This one guy lost his mind.ā
But we are steeped in that culture in this country and we refuse to recognize it. And I cannot believe how hard people are working to discount it. In South Carolina, the roads that people drive on are named for Confederate generals who fought to keep black people from being able to drive freely on that road. Thatās insanity. Thatās racial wallpaper. You canāt allow that.
Nine people were shot in a black church by a white guy who hated them ā who wanted to start some kind of civil war. The Confederate flag flies over South Carolina and the roads are named for Confederate generals. And the white guy is the one who feels his countryās being taken away from him. Weāre bringing it on ourselves.
And thatās the thing ā Al Qaeda, all those guys, ISIS ā theyāre not shit compared to the damage that we can apparently do to ourselves on a regular basis.
