Jon Stewart opened Monday night's Daily Show by talking about New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo's (D) recent ultimatum-cum-advice to his state's Republican Party: Moderate or, if you insist on being anti-gay and pro-assault rifle, get out. Cuomo's remarks maybe came out a little wrong, Stewart said, but at least one person is taking them at face value: Conservative pundit Sean Hannity.
Hannity said on his Fox News show that if Cuomo doesn't want him, he'll move somewhere else — possibly Florida or Texas — as soon as he can. "It's not East Germany," Stewart advised Hannity. "You can really get out any time." As a large metropolitan area, in fact, New York has a number of ways to leave, he added, helpfully: Airport, seaport, highways, "you could walk — I would carry you."
After talking through Hannity's two top options — and pointing out some possible hypocrisy on Hannity's part, vis-à-vis Texas — Stewart changed tack and decided New York needs millionaires like Hannity to support the tax base. What followed was the best part of the show: A short film begging Hannity to stay in New York. (Watch above.)
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The entire short, narrated by Nathan Lane, is a pretty delightful bit of high snark — a taxi driver pledging to shed his foreign accent, a gay male couple vowing to marry women, black teenagers promising to cut off their hoodies, a food cart vendor saying he'll serve apple pie instead of Halal food, all if Hannity will only stay — but it soars to the sublime when the cast of Jersey Boys gets involved. Who knew so many things rhyme with "Hannity"?
Here's the video in the context of the first half of the show:
In the middle segment, Stewart debuted a segment he called "Where Are We Now?" — a sort of State of the Union for the rest of us. Or at least that's the conceit: It also appears to be a place for Stewart to catch us up on some choice stories from over the weekend. In any case, between the media's obsession with Justin Bieber, Ted Cruz's revisionist history, the tanking of Obama's nominated ambassador to Norway, and the creepy bird attack on Pope Francis' white doves of peace, let's hope Obama's actual State of the Union speech is more upbeat. Watch:
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