Jon Stewart started out Monday night's Daily Show with a brief ensemble interpretive enactment of why it's so hard to discuss Israel's most recent battle with Hamas — the bit involves a lot of shouting — but he spent most of the show talking about Malaysia Flight 17. And he began by pooh-poohing Russia's hand-washing of any responsibility for destroying the civilian flight, apparently shot down by confused pro-Moscow Ukrainian separatists using Russia-supplied missiles.
The stakes here are high, because whoever shot down the plane will face a stream of global anger, Stewart explained. "And right now it looks like it's Russia's fault — because it's Russia's fault." But Moscow is doing everything it can to evade blame, including re-editing Wikipedia pages on the crash and pushing stories like one flying around Russia's state-controlled media that Flight 17, which took off from Amsterdam, was filled with corpses and run on autopilot then crashed to make Russia look bad. Yes, Stewart deadpanned, "the country that gave us windmills, pot brownies, and a bed sheet oven powered by farts now gives us the unprovoked flying zombie plane — that's so like the Dutch."
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