Last night Jon Stewart returned to his show after a summer vacation, and he was no-holds-barred in discussing the media's coverage of Ferguson.
Stewart started the segment taking the "Ferguson Challenge," in which he got sprayed with something resembling pepper spray, and then with tear gas.
Then he turned to how Fox News has been covering the protests. He played a clip of Sean Hannity saying how a person should handle police confrontations.
Then described how different it would be if a black man reached down to his waist to show his gun:
You really do have no fucking idea, do you? You're saying that if only Michael Brown, instead of holding his hands over his head, had reached down to his waist and lifted up his shirt to show the gun he did not actually have, this whole tragedy could have been avoided. Do you not understand that life in this country is inherently different for black and white people?
Some Fox News hosts have claimed that Ferguson protesters were playing the "race card" and that is was unclear if the Brown shooting was "about race." One of these panelists said, "You know who talks about race? Racists!"
"Did you just 'whoever smelt it, dealt it' with racism?"
Stewart pointed out that the media gets mad about a lot of seemingly trivial stuff. Like how Christmas only lasts "11 months" a year.
"Imagine that instead of having to suffer the indignity of a Festivus pole blocking something you could have set up in your own yard anyway, that you can't get a cab, even though you're a neurosurgeon, because you're black."
"Race is there; it exists," said Stewart. "You're tired of hearing about it? Imagine how fucking exhausting it is living it."
