The last time Jon Stewart was on The Late Show, he ended up getting some pushback from his old friend Stephen Colbert when he went all in on the conspiracy theory that COVID-19 emerged from a Wuhan lab. So when Stewart returned Tuesday night, the two men made sure to assure viewers that there is no beef between them. But they clearly enjoy a healthy debate, and they found another big one to get into this time.
It began with a conversation about the “casual antisemitism” that seems to be bubbling up in recent weeks, with Stewart saying it was bittersweet to see “The Jews” trending on Twitter under “sports” after Kyrie Irving echoed Kanye West’s antisemitic comments. “Which for us, is nice,” he joked.
“Look, as our spokes-Jew, we hear you,” he continued, going on a riff about how he wasn’t on the “committee” that got West’s Adidas deal killed. “In terms of controlling, obviously, the world, sorry,” he added. “But it is my sincere hope that in my lifetime I do get to see a Christian president. I think America’s ready for it.”
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The discussion got really interesting when Stewart brought up his “very good friend” Dave Chappelle’s monologue on Saturday Night Live this past weekend. He dismissed out of hand the notion that Chappelle “normalized antisemitism” with his jokes. “I don’t know if you’ve been on comments sections on news articles, but it’s pretty fucking normal,” he said. “Antisemitism is incredibly normal, but the one thing I will say is I don’t believe that censorship and penalty are the way to end antisemitism or to not gain understanding. I don’t believe in that.”
After joking that a better punishment for Irving would be sending him to the Knicks, Stewart added, “In all seriousness, penalizing somebody for having a thought, I don’t think is the way to change their minds or gain understanding.” He said, “People think this. People think Jews control Hollywood, people think Jews control the banks, and to pretend that they don’t, and to not deal with it in a straightforward manner, we will never gain any kind of understanding with each other.”
Then it was Colbert’s turn to push back. While he said he believes “any comic has a right to say whatever they want,” viewers also “have a right to have a negative reaction to what people say on stage.”
When Stewart said that “reflexively naming things antisemitism is as reductive as some of the things they might be saying” and “immediately shuts down a conversation,” Colbert explained that people, including this writer, “perceived a promulgation—even with a comedic intention—of antisemitic tropes. That doesn’t mean the person is an antisemite.”
Stewart defended Chappelle by saying that comedy “plays with tropes” and comics “rely on those tropes as a shorthand for our material.”
The two friends continued to go back and forth on the issue, with Stewart ultimately arguing that “if we all just shut it down, then we retreat to our little corners of misinformation and it metastasizes, and the whole point of all of this is to not let it metastasize and to get it out in the air and talk about it.” To break the tension, he brought it back to a joke, telling Colbert, “Like I know you don’t like Jews, I see it in your eyes.”
After a long pause, Colbert joked back, “Really just one of you.”
On a more serious note, Stewart told the host, “I know you disagree with this.”
“I don’t disagree with you,” Colbert assured him. “I just want to say that I condemn antisemitism in all its forms and I stand with my friends in the Jewish community, a counterpoint.”
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