WATCH: The Daily Show welcomes Miss America, and our new Indian-American overlords
Jon Stewart is pleased that Nina Davuluri was crowned Miss America, but Aasif Mandvi sees a bigger picture
Last Sunday, Miss New York Nina Davuluri was crowned Miss America. On Thursday's Daily Show — better late than never — Jon Stewart gave a nod of approval for the first Indian-American woman to win America's premier beauty pageant.
If that doesn't sound very Daily Show, there is a kicker: Not everyone was so pleased to see an Indian-American win, and they said so on Twitter (and elsewhere).
Stewart rolled his eyes at the stupid sniping aimed at Davuluri, but correspondent Aasif Mandvi — in a segment called "Back in Brown" (a takeoff on the recurring Lewis Black bit "Back in Black") — waved away the Twitter haters. Mandvi is mostly excited about this new benchmark in his fellow Indian-Americans' conquest of America. He gleefully pointed out that along with Davuluri, the reigning spelling-bee champ is Indian-American — and he won with a Yiddish word.
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Mandvi's routine is a panoply of Indian-American jokes ("wake up and smell the curry, Jon"; "if you like it, then you should have arranged a marriage with it") mixed in with a triumphant proclamation of Indian-American conquest. His proof involves Indian-Americans selling the rest of the country junk food at convenience stores, then churning out doctors to help treat the resulting diabetes epidemic.
"You took this country away from the Indians," Mandvi crowed, "and now a different group of Indians is taking it back."
Earlier in the show, Stewart took a look at the conservative efforts to undermine ObamaCare, and the loopholes businesses are using to get around the law:
For the fun of it, Stewart brought on "senior deranged millionaire" John Hodgman to explain how his company, HodgeCo, gets around not only ObamaCare regulations, but also mandatory weekend pay and child labor laws. It is John Hodgman, so it is funny. Watch:
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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.
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