Jon Stewart swapped jokes for brutal truths on Thursday night to deliver an impassioned monologue in the wake of the shooting in Charleston that left nine black church-goers dead.
(Scroll down for a transcript of the speech if you can't listen to the video.)
He started: "I have one job and it's a pretty simple job. I come in in the morning, and we look at the news and I write jokes about it."
“I didn’t do my job today. I’ve got nothing for you in terms of jokes and sounds, because of what happened in South Carolina.”
The full clip is here...
Roof, pictured, being led away by police
Dylann Storm Roof, a white 21-year-old male, was arrested by authorities in Shelby, North Carolina just after 11am local time on Thursday, 13 hours after the original incident took place at a historic African-American church.
Speaking from the White House, President Obama said: "Any shooting involving multiple victims is a tragedy,” adding that there was something "particularly heartbreaking" about murder in a "place of worship.”
Stewart's speech drew lots of praise.
But others weren't as impressed...
Here's more of Stewart's speech...
“I honestly have nothing other than sadness that once again we have to peer into the abyss of the depraved violence that we do to each other and the nexus of a just gaping racial wound that will not heal yet we pretend doesn’t exist. I’m confident though that by acknowledging it—by staring into it—we still won’t do jack shit.
"That’s us. And that’s the part that blows my mind…What blows my mind is the disparity of response. When we think people that are foreign are going to kill us and us killing ourselves…
"We invade two countries and spent trillions of dollars and lost thousands of American lives and now fly unmanned death machines over like five or six different counties, all to keep Americans safe.
"We’ve got to do whatever we can—we’ll torture people. We’ve got to do whatever we can to keep Americans safe. But nine people shot in a church— ‘Hey, what are you going go to do? Crazy is as crazy is, right?’
"That’s the part that, for the life of me, I can’t wrap my head around. And you know it’s going to go down the same path.
"Nine people were shot in a black church by a white guy who hated them who wanted to start some sort of civil war.
"The confederate flag flies over South Carolina. And the roads are named for confederate generals.
"And the white guy is the one who feels like his country is being taken away from him. We’re bringing it on ourselves.
"And that’s the thing—al Qaeda, ISIS, they’re not shit compared to the damage we can do to ourselves on a regular basis."