On a segment of last night's The Daily Show, Jon Stewart got serious while discussing the grand jury decision not to indict a New York Police Department officer in the death of 43-year-old Eric Garner.
"I honestly don't know what to say," the comedian said after talking about how humor was a "catharsis" to process "undigested emotions."
"If comedy is tragedy plus time I need more fucking time," Stewart said.
"But I would really settle for less fucking tragedy."
He then compared Garner's case to Michael Brown's in Ferguson, Missouri.
"What is so utterly depressing is that none of the ambiguities that existed in the Ferguson case exist in the Staten Island case. And yet the outcome is exactly the same."
In Ferguson, Stewart said, there was at least conflicting witness testimony, conflicting forensics, and a specter of police self-defense.
"But here, there is none of that," he said. "The coroner called it a homicide. The guy's not acting threatening and we know that not through witness testimony or unreliable bystanders, but because we are fucking watching it."
"We are definitely not living in a post-racial society," Stewart concluded.
