Jon Stewart Speaks to South Florida Like No One Else Can

Put yourself in Jon Stewart’s seat last night. You’re a political/news satirist, you have normal human emotions and promote rational discourse, you know you must acknowledge the Tucson shooting, but you also have to make people laugh. What do you do?  

I don’t know what you would do, but Jon Stewart delivered the most genuine, rational — actually rational! — monologue that left me, and I imagine many others, sitting at the edge of the couch.

Here’s an edited snippet, and the video, which would serve you well to watch, is below.

As
I watched the political pundit world, many are reflecting and grieving
and trying to figure things out, but it’s definitely true that others
are working feverishly to find the tid-bit or two that will exonerate
their side from blame or implicate the other, and watching that is as
predictible, I think as it is dispiriting… Did the toxic political
enviornment cause this?… I have no ******* idea… You cannot outsmart
crazy. You don’t know what a troubled mind will get caught on.

Which
is not to suggest that resistance is futile… and I do think it’s
important for us to watch our rhetoric. I do think it’s a worthwhile
goal not to conflate our political opponents with enemies of for no
other reason than to draw a better distinction between manifestos of
paranoid madmen and what passes for acceptable political and pundit
speak. It would be really nice if the ramblings of crazy people didn’t
in any way resemble how we actually talk to each other on TV… Let us
hope we never become numb to what real horror or to what the real blood of
patriots looks like when it’s spilled.

And then, the dilemma:

How will we process this
tonight? Absolutely no idea. We’ll come back, I’ll show field piece
about something incredibly stupid and silly…

We’re
going to show you a field piece about old people having sex, and if
this doesn’t distract you, I don’t believe anything will.

Then
came the clip about old people having sex in the place where old people
arguably have the most sex: That’s right, SOUTH FLORIDA.
Bowchickawowwow. Just like that, Jon Stewart does what Jon Stewart does
best and gives a nod to our neighborhood — the nexus of the universe
when it comes to outrageous rhetoric, bombastic politics, and loss of
inhibitions by both old and young — well, we have to cope somehow.

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