‘This Wasn’t A Tornado, This Was A Racist’: Jon Stewart Drops Comedy For Charleston Shooting

Watch an emotional and frustrated Jon Stewart frame the Charleston church shooting in a way everyone in America needs to hear.

Jon Stewart delivered an opening monologue Thursday night that is exactly what America needs to hear.

“I didn’t do my job today, so I apologize,” Stewart said. “I’ve got nothing for you in terms of jokes and sounds, because of what happened in South Carolina.”

The retiring “Daily Show” host admitted he just didn’t have it in him to joke about the slaughter in a historically Black Charleston, South Carolina church that left nine dead.

“Maybe if I wasn’t nearing the end of the run, or if this wasn’t such a common occurrence, maybe I could have pulled out of the spiral, but I didn’t,” he said. “So, 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.”

“I’m confident though, that by acknowledging it,” Stewart reminded America, “by staring into that and seeing it for what it is, we still won’t do jack sh*t. Yeah, that’s us. That’s the part that blows my mind.”

UPDATE:Jeb Bush: ‘I Don’t Know’ If The Charleston Church Shooting Was Racially Motivated

Stewart also chastised America for spending unlimited resources and lives to “keep Americans safe” at any cost, from overseas threats, but won’t lift a finger to stop the madness of killing each other on our own home soil.

He called it a “terrorist attack, a violent attack.” 

And he took a swing at those calling the massacre a “tragedy.”

“This wasn’t a tornado, this was a racist,” he said. “I hate to even use this pun, but this one, is black and white. There’s no nuance here.”

The “Daily Show” host, who over his 16-year run has seen and analyzed far too many of these events, pointed to the culture in South Carolina that continues to allow a racist system. The Confederate flag flies over the state, he said, and the roads that Black people drive on are named for Southern Civil War Confederate generals whose very mission was to deny them the freedom to move about. 

Stewart pointed to the irony that despite this system of oppression, it’s “the white guy who feels like his country’s being taken away from him.”

Appropriately, his guest for the rest of the evening was Nobel Peace Prize winner Malala Yousafzai.

 

Image: Screenshot via Comedy Central