The Daily Show took an unusually serious turn last night when Jon Stewart broke down the shocking grand jury decision to not charge the cop who killed Eric Garner.
More: After Eric Garner, what am I supposed to tell my son?
Stewart, who arguably hasn’t been this solemn since his lauded post-Sept. 11 Daily Show opener, broke down the huge racial divide still evident in this country and how grossly unfair the decision is not to indict the NYPD cop who placed Garner in an illegal choke hold.
“I honestly don’t know what to say. If comedy is tragedy plus time, I need more f***ing time… but I would really settle for less [expletive] tragedy, to be honest with you,” Stewart said.
He then compared the Garner case to that of Michael Brown, another unarmed black man killed by a cop who will remain unpunished.
“None of the ambiguities that existed in the Ferguson case exist in the Staten Island case, and yet the outcome is exactly the same,” he said.
“Here, there is none of that [ambiguity]. The coroner called it homicide, the guy’s not acting threatening, and we know that because we are [expletive] watching it. Someone taped it.”
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Garner was selling individual cigarettes illegally when a cop put him in a choke hold, also illegally. On the tape, Garner can be heard gasping, “I can’t breathe” before dying on the street.
“To look at the bright side, we’re about to save ourselves a shitload of money on cop camera vests,” he said, referring to President Obama’s proposed solution to police the police. “I assume that the solution that they’re proposing, if implemented, would look something like the Eric Garner case.
“We are definitely not living in a post-racial society,” Stewart added, “and I can imagine there are a lot of people out there wondering how much of a society we’re living in at all.”
Watch Jon Stewart talk about the Eric Garner case on The Daily Show
http://media.mtvnservices.com/embed/mgid:arc:video:thedailyshow.com:3a30b27b-12bd-43b8-9996-1711491385dd
Nice little palate cleanser there for you at the end.
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