WATCH: Jon Stewart Rails Against the Injustice of the Eric Garner Decision
Jon Stewart had no jokes to tell about the yesterday's stunning grand jury decision not to indict the cop who choked Eric Garner in Staten Island.
“I honestly don’t know what to say," he said, seemingly unscripted. "If comedy is tragedy plus time, I need more f*cking time. But I would really settle for less f*cking tragedy, to be honest with you.”
The Eric Garner case seemed even more clearcut than that of Miichael Brown and Ferguson, Missouri police officer Darren Wilson, Stewart pointed out. There was footage, for instance, that all the world could see, of a man being grabbed from behind in a chokehold, saying he could not breathe and going limp. There was a coroner's report stating that his death was a homicide by chokehold. There were no conflicting bystander or witness accounts.
One thing seems clear, having his death recorded does not seem to have brought justice to Eric Garner, which would seem to suggest that the recent White House proposal for camera vests for cops will not solve the problem of extra-judicial killings of unarmed black men.
“I mean, maybe, to look at the bright side, we’re about to save ourselves a sh*tload of money on cop camera vests, but damn,” Stewart managed to joke. “We are definitely not living in a post-racial society. And I can imagine there’s a lot of people out there wondering how much of a society we’re living in at all.”
Then he just gave up, showed some kitty cat footage and yelled, "F*ck," at the ceiling.
Watch:
