Jon Stewart said farewell to “The Daily Show” after 16 years on Thursday night with one last rant against all the bullshit we put up with each day — from lying about ugly babies to the Patriot Act.
“Bullshit is everywhere,” Stewart said. “There is very little you will encounter in life that has not been, in some ways, infused with bullshit, not all of it bad. General day-to-day free-range bullshit is often necessary or at least innocuous.”
Bullshit, he said, comes in three different flavors: making bad things sound good, complexity and the bullshit of infinite possibility.
These kind of bullshitters are getting lazy though, Stewart said.
“These bullshitters cover their unwillingness to act under the guise of unending inquiry. We can’t do anything because we don’t yet know everything. We cannot take action on climate change until everyone in the world agrees gay marriage vaccines won’t cause our children to marry goats who are going to come for our guns,” Stewart said.
Listening and detecting bullshit, he said, is a good pastime.
“I say to you tonight friends the best defense against bullshit is vigilance,” Stewart said. “So if you smell something, say something.”
Watch Stewart’s final, yet understated, rant below:
Oh man. Stewart channeling his inner Carlin.
I loved it.
Brilliant as ever… will sorely miss the man.
Maybe it’s my becoming callous to the tone of the media, but I didn’t think of this as a rant. He sounded calm and in control to me, and what he said was about the best advice for being part of public life I’ve ever heard.
It wasn’t a rant by the standard of most dictionaries. :" to speak or declaim extravagantly or violently; talk in a wild or vehement way; rave:"
It was said a notch above sotto voce.
“So if you smell something, say something.”
HA! Thanks John…I knew you understood my moniker lol