Jon Stewart says he was rendered speechless by the Eric Garner decision.
“I honestly don’t know what to say. If comedy is tragedy plus time, I need more (expletive) time,” the host said Wednesday night, “but I would really settle for less (expletive) tragedy, to be honest with you.”
Stewart made the comments during the opening monologue on his show, “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart,” after a grand jury decided not to indict the New York Police Department officer for an illegal chokehold on Eric Garner.
“None of the ambiguities that existed in the Ferguson case exist in the Staten Island case,” Stewart said, comparing the Garner decision to a grand jury decision in Ferguson, Mo., “and yet the outcome is exactly the same.”
The two cases are noticeably similar in that they both involve a white male police officer causing the death of an unarmed black male. However, in the case of Eric Garner, there is video footage showing the July 17 confrontation between him and Officer Daniel Pantaleo. The grand jury still decided not to indict.
In Ferguson, Officer Darren Wilson was not indicted last week by a St. Louis grand jury in the Aug. 9 shooting death of unarmed black teen Michael Brown.
In the footage, Garner’s neck is in an apparent chokehold, something deemed illegal by the NYPD, while repeatedly saying “I can’t breathe.” Garner, 43, was later pronounced dead from a heart attack at a nearby hospital. Pantaleo, like Officer Darren Wilson in the Ferguson case, will not be indicted.
“We are definitely not living in a post-racial society.” Stewart added, “and I can imagine there are a lot of people out there wondering how much of a society we’re living in at all.”
Protests broke out around New York City after the grand jury’s decision was announced.
The Justice Department said Wednesday it will be investigating Garner’s death.
