Jon Stewart laments his one mistake
Last week Jon Stewart had an “impromptu theme” of social injustice. In one his skits he enumerated all the black males that were killed by police recently. In the process of his enumeration he had a bad call. It turned out according to the coroner’s report that Dante Parker died from from drugs in his body and not from police action. This was according to San Bernardino County District Attorney Michael Ramos.
“District Attorney Ramos is right,” said Jon Stewart. “We were wrong. In our list of unarmed Black men shot by police we should not have included Dante Parker who according to the county medical examiner died of a PCP overdose. So I am sorry about that. We should not have done that.”
For that mistake Jon Stewart points out an interesting thing. “Now rather than having to have the uncomfortable conversation about a judicial system that may be biased or a disturbing pattern of unarmed Black men being shot by police or a certain element of militarization and force that has crept into certain aspects of law enforcement culture ,” Jon Stewart said. “– My stupidity, my sloppiness. I did this to me. — can become an opportunity to negate that entire conversation and shift it back to slightly safer, let’s say less nuanced ground.”
Jon Stewart then goes on to show how Fox News used his mistake to change the subject from the real issue of social justice for a segment of the population to Stewart somehow attacking police. He found it kind of ironic. “You see that’s what’s tough about working in media ‘countererrorism’, Jon Stewart said. “Daily Show has to be right 100% of the time. Fox only has to be right once.”
Stewart continued to show Fox News hyperventilating as they made him seem anti police. Stewart response is what should be heeded. “You can truly grieve for every officer who have been lost in the line of duty in this country and still be troubled by cases of police overreach,” Jon Stewart said. “Those two ideas are not mutually exclusive. You can have great regard for law enforcement and still want then to be held to high standards. … The point is this. Raising these issues is not the same thing as denigrating the police. It’s a plea to push past the defensiveness and try to get to the reality and make things better.”
Well said. Americans ought to better look at the adoration some have for police. Our police reflect the same ills within society. Some are good. Some are bad. Elevating them to the absoluteness of good lay the groundwork for a police state as check and balances are no more.