Last week, many were surprised by The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart laughing off comedian Tony Hinchcliffe’s explicitly racist joke about Puerto Rico (not to mention the cracks toward Black people and Jews).
via: Daily Mail
The Daily Show producer-host Jon Stewart has been publicly blasted, yet again, by his former correspondent Wyatt Cenac, this time, for 'shielding' Trump rally comedian Tony Hinchcliffe.
The 61-year-old Mark Twain Prize winner admitted on the October 28th episode of his Comedy Central show that he finds the 40-year-old insult comic 'very funny' despite him calling Puerto Rico 'a floating island of garbage' and other racially-charged material.
'[Jon excused] the comedian's participation in a xenophobic rally as the fault of the organizers for booking a "roast comedian." Having worked for Jon, his response wasn't really surprising. Disappointing but not surprising,' the outraged 48-year-old wrote on Substack Sunday.
'He appeared to be shielding a comedian whose performance offered those rally attendees the chance to laugh at bigotry which perhaps made the more serious hateful vitriol that followed that much easier to swallow.'
Cenac continued: 'On Monday, "America's trusted" voice wasn't defending comedy as much as suggesting to racists maybe if their hate speech had made him laugh, he might have their backs too.'
Cenac also criticized Stewart for defending Joe Rogan - whose podcast boasts 18.1M subscribers - despite him 'coming under fire for spreading misinformation about COVID, as well as a history of misogynist and racist comments.'
'[Stewart said Rogan] was personally "more worried about the algorithm of misinformation than the purveyor of misinformation," which feels a bit like being worried about bullets but not the person holding the gun,' the Grammy-nominated funnyman wrote.
Cenac noted how the 23-time Emmy winner defended Dave Chappelle for his transgender jokes because 'his intentions are never hurtful' and 'feigned ignorance' when asked about having Louis CK on The Daily Show after allegations he sexually harassed women.
'When it comes to criticizing other comedians, Jon in his unique position often chooses to close ranks the way cops do when a fellow officer is under investigation for impropriety,' Cenac wrote.
The native New Yorker spoke out while realizing that most people will think of him as 'that guy who had a bad experience working for Jon Stewart and was the only one dumb enough to speak about it.'
Indeed, Wyatt was the only African-American writer working on The Daily Show when he became deeply offended by Jon's minstrel-style impersonation of Republican Presidential candidate Herman Cain in 2011, which led to an explosive confrontation.
'[Stewart] got incredibly defensive. I remember he was like, "What are you trying to say? There's a tone in your voice,"' Cenac recalled to WTF with Marc Maron in 2015.
'I was like, "There's no tone. It bothered me. It sounded like Kingfish." And then he got upset. And he stood up and he was just like, "F*** off. I'm done with you." And he just started screaming that to me. And he screamed it a few times. "F*** off! I'm done with you." And he stormed out. And then I didn't know if I had been fired.'
The five-time Peabody winner - whose contract was extended til the end of 2025 - told The Breakfast Club in 2020 that the incident with his ex-staffer was 'humbling' but they made up via email in 2015.
'Those were hard lessons for me and they were humbling lessons and I was defensive about them,' Stewart admitted.
'We think we're doing the right thing, but we're not doing it in the right way.'
The Great North actor - who quit The Daily Show in 2012 - won all three of his Emmy Awards for writing on the late-night satirical news show in 2009, 2011, and 2012.
Cenac went on to launch his own late-night satirical comedy show Wyatt Cenac's Problem Areas, which was canceled by HBO in 2019 after two seasons.
Cenac - whose last gig was producing and writing Urkel Saves Santa: The Movie! - has released four albums and two stand-up specials.
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