Jon Stewart talks seriously about Charleston shooting

Jon Stewart, the comedic host of the Daily Show on Comedy Central, opened his show with an apology Thursday night.

“I didn’t do my job today, so I apologize,” he said. “I have nothing for you in terms of jokes and sounds.”

Instead, Stewart spent the first segment of his show reflecting seriously on the shooting of nine people in Emanuel AME Church in Charleston Wednesday night and the massacre’s racial tones.

“I honestly have nothing, other than sadness,” he said. “Once again we have to peer into the abyss of the depraved violence we do to each other in the nexus of just a gaping racial wound that will not heal, yet we pretend it doesn’t exist.”

Stewart compared the American reaction to terrorism in the Middle East to the reaction to shootings at home like the one in Charleston.

“What blows my mind is the disparity of response between when we think that people are foreign are going to kill us and when we kill ourselves,” he said, elaborating that when shootings happen, the shooter is dismissed as “crazy.”

He criticized the media for calling the shootings a “tragedy,” saying, “This wasn’t a tornado. This was a racist.”

“I hate to even use this pun, but this one is black and white,” he said. “There’s no nuance here.”

This story was originally published June 19, 2015 at 8:56 AM with the headline "Jon Stewart talks seriously about Charleston shooting."