The Daily Show tackles the Oregon tragedy with a cleverly cynical bit on the sad predictability of U.S. mass shootings
On Monday's Daily Show, Trevor Noah addressed last week's mass shooting at Umpqua Community College in Oregon, and it started out with a fairly normal throw to senior correspondent Jessica Williams. It pretty quickly became apparent, though, that the Daily Show team was going to make a point about the déjà vu nature of these "terrible, unending national tragedies." And they did.
"I'm sick of having to do my job when our leaders won't even do theirs," Williams told Noah after admitting to pre-taping her segments on mass shootings and other sadly predictable events. When Noah protested that the media still has to cover tragedies like the one in Oregon, Williams said that the reports aren't pointless, exactly, just one part of America's "five stages of mass shooting grief," with Stage 4 being " a weekend of half-assed gun control debate in the media" and the final stage being when "we all go back to Keeping up with the Kardashians." When Noah responded with a rousing speech about demanding change, Williams brought the segment full circle. It's a little cynical, and pretty dark, but sadly appropriate. Watch below. Peter Weber
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Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.
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