Jon Stewart Compares Fox News’ SC Shooting Coverage To Sickness — ‘Fox-abetes’
After giving a jokeless, solemn monologue on the South Carolina church shootings on Thursday, Jon Stewart was back to comedy on Monday, slamming Fox News’ coverage of the tragic event. This time though, Stewart may have been a little late.
As previously reported by the Inquisitr, Fox News was almost immediately criticized for calling the incident an “attack on faith,” and questioning whether the shooting of nine black churchgoers by a confirmed white supremacist had anything to do with race.
Steve Ducey on Fox and Friends said it was extraordinary that the mass shooting was called a “hate crime.”
Even Jon Stewart’s Comedy Central colleague Larry Wilmore, who dedicated an entire show to the massacre, was quick to mock Fox News.
According to the Huffington Post, Wilmore explained there was no room for doubt that the tragedy was racially motivated.
“But even with all of that evidence, on a day like today, Fox News just makes my f******g head explode.”
According to Entertainment Weekly, Jon Stewart had a different target for his slightly-late Fox News critique — Sean Hannity.
On the Monday episode of the Daily Show, Stewart showed some of the footage from Fox’s shows, highlighting Sean Hannity calling the rush to politicize the event as a “sickness.”
Jon Stewart couldn’t agree more.
“Yes, it’s a sickness. This rush to use tragedy to advance your narrative. Combine that with an inability for self examination, an almost comical degree of self exculpatory rhetoric, flag pins, a little bit of leg, and complete immunity to irony … You got yourself a full-blown case of Fox-abetes.”
Jon Stewart used his near-infinite Fox News clip library to show how late last year, the cable news channel politicized the killing of two New York police officers. In the wake of that tragedy, Fox was quick to criticize both Mayor de Blasio and President Obama for creating an “anti-police” atmosphere.
Fox News commentators even went so far as to say Mayor de Blasio had “blood on his hands” for the deaths.
Jon Stewart also explained that the least, absolute least, South Carolina could do now is take down the Confederate flag — a symbol killer Dylann Roof used frequently.
“You can’t spit your tobacci in Charleston without hitting a public monument to the glorious days of slavery, because in the context of Charleston’s extensive Confederate porn industry, the flag is just a money shot.”
Temporary Daily Show host John Oliver also commented on the flag, saying in the end it needs to go into a box labeled “bad flag” and left somewhere to rot.
Although Jon Stewart ripped into Fox News pretty bad, he saved his harshest words for Charleston itself, calling it “Confederate Epcot” in the end of his segment (see below).
[Image Credit: Getty Images]
