Watch The Daily Show play 'Racist or Not Racist,' with Key and Peele

(Image credit: Comedy Central)

last updated 8 January 2015

Jason Jones drew the short stick on Wednesday night's Daily Show. Jon Stewart began the show discussing his lactose intolerance, but things got rolling when he brought on Jones and fellow panelists Aasif Mandvi and Jessica Williams to play a game he called "Racist or Not Racist." The premise was to determine whether certain people in the news are exhibiting racism — a question cable news talkers frequently ask but seldom answer, Stewart pointed out.

The gag here is that Jones is white, while Williams is black and Mandvi is Indian. It's more cleverly presented than that: As Williams and Mandvi continue to find things racist and Jones opts for words like "adorable" and "creative," the panelists all tiptoed around their own race — until Jones asked if Stewart would bring on some "impartial judges." He can't explicitly bring up race, but that's the smart, almost subversive point of the segment: The label "racist" is so toxic we often just dance around the issue of race.

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This was not the backup Jones was looking for. "Jon, they're not impartial," Jones pleaded — and at this point, "impartial" was an obvious code word for "white." Key and Peele made it explicit, noting that they're both mixed-race, "and it doesn't get more impartial than that." Things got a little tense, and then Key and Peele went off on some riff about sexual fantasies, and the "Is Jones Racist?" moment was over.

Stewart rounded out the first part of the show by noting that New York City will officially have America's tallest skyscraper, as One World Trade Center was just judged to rise higher than Chicago's Willis (formerly Sears) Tower. Chicago isn't taking the loss of its four-decade-old crown without a fight. Stewart found the whole idea of competition between the two cities laughable... until Chicago claimed pizza superiority. This prompted him to go all gangster on deep-dish "pizza," accent and all. It's an impressive tirade. Watch:

Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.