Just about everything big that's going on in the world right now is taking place in Switzerland, Jon Stewart said on Thursday night's Daily Show. The world's financial and economic elite have gathered in Davos for the World Economic Forum, and nearby in Montreux and Geneva are the big Syrian peace talks.
After a perfunctory joke about Switzerland's neutrality and Nazi gold, Stewart dug in. He didn't appear to be too hopeful about the Syrian talks, though he made ample fun of the supposed "word war" being waged by the delegates from Syria's warring factions. "I've seen games of Scrabble that have gotten uglier than that," he said after showing a mildly contentious back-and-forth between Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moualem and U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.
With no progress being made in Montreux, Stewart moved up the road to Davos... where things are even sillier. The big theme this year, apparently, is the growing global income inequality. How bad is that inequality now? Stewart pointed to a new study showing that the 85 richest people have as much wealth as the populations of China, India, Africa, and Australia combined. "Jesus Christ!... would not be very happy about that statistic," Stewart said.
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At least the gathering of the world's elite isn't going on behind closed doors, Stewart said, noting that financial journalists are there to cover every minute of the Davos confab. If you've watched Stewart talk about cable financial news reporters, you'll know where this is headed: They're less interested in news-gathering and more "excited to be invited to the money Oscars," Stewart lamented. Things get funnier when he brought out Jason Jones and Samantha Bee.
In the middle part of the show, Stewart looked at the backlash against Google's fleet of commuter busses between San Francisco and its Mountain View headquarters. The anger from the protesters who have been surrounding and blocking the busses "seems a little misplaced," Stewart said. It's so absurd, in fact, that it's probably a ruse by Google to get people to ignore the really weird stuff that's going on in Googleland — like the Google Glass app that lets you watch yourself having sex in real time. His reaction was about the same as mine, only funnier and more vulgar. Watch:
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