It’s a strange world we live in when the edgiest, most abrasive, and controversial thing a comedian can do is point out the obvious. In years past, this was simply known as “observational humor”. John Stewart channeled that power on Steven Colbert’s “The Late Show”, though the points being made were all too serious.
Feeling, perhaps, emboldened by the damning Fauci emails that were released two weeks ago, Stewart unleashed an onslaught that host Steven Colbert struggled to keep a lid on. It isn’t quite clear what the mainstream, establishment narrative is on the origin of covid-19, but it remains imperative that one conjecture remains taboo; that the virus could not have possibly emerged from a lab in Wuhan, China. This friction between highlighting the obvious and propagandistic gas-lighting caused fireworks on social media.
Stewart earned the praise of many, as well as the frustrated tears of others, who wanted only to be told that what they were fed for over a year by cable news was the right stuff and not the truly crack-pot side take.
Stewart hammered on the importance of science, but also its double-edged nature – it is a matter of the one doing the work. Stewart also ripped into the idea that covid just happened to occur naturally and worked its way into the human population, tearing apart the absurd assumptions needed to reach such conclusions when a bio-weapons research lab was right next door to the epicenter.
“Science is incredible,” Stewart said, “but they don’t know when to stop and no one in the room with those cats ever goes, ‘I don’t know if we should do that. They’re like, ‘curiosity killed the cat, so let’s kill 10,000 cats to find out why.’”
Colbert, who failed to gain control of the conversation several times over the course of the segment, ultimately dismissed Stewart’s arguments by inquiring how long he had been working for Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson – who has been regularly lampooned by the media for his positions and cited sources that run counter to more preferential narratives.