Jon Stewart incredulously mocks the IRS's shoddy record-keeping

Jon Stewart incredulously mocks the IRS's shoddy record-keeping
(Image credit: Daily Show)

Add Jon Stewart to the list of people disgusted with the IRS's vanished emails. Well, disgusted may not be the right word, exactly. The IRS scandal isn't, as conservative Tea Partiers would like to believe, President Obama ordering the tax collectors "to target them, while he sat in a dark room smoking a cigar, stroking a cat," Stewart said on Tuesday night's Daily Show, but it is something — the IRS is definitely "giving off scandal stink."

Stewart is as archly annoyed as everyone else that the government agency which forces "Americans to live like borderline hoarders only keeps their shit for six months." But unlike the IRS's myriad other critics, Stewart said the big scandal is that the government's internal communication systems border on "criminal idiocy." And that makes him sad. So he ended with a plea to Uncle Sam, on behalf of the citizenry: "Just because we're totally unreasonable doesn't mean that you have to be totally incompetent." --Peter Weber

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Peter Weber

Peter Weber is a senior editor at TheWeek.com, and has handled the editorial night shift since the website launched in 2008. A graduate of Northwestern University, Peter has worked at Facts on File and The New York Times Magazine. He speaks Spanish and Italian and plays bass and rhythm cello in an Austin rock band. Follow him on Twitter.