Jon Stewart gleefully piles on Donald Sterling

(Image credit: Hulu)

last updated 8 January 2015

"Here's the thing about racism in our country," Jon Stewart said on Monday night's Daily Show, after about eight minutes discussing Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling and Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy, among other recent race-linked flare-ups in the U.S. The "overwhelming condemnation" of Sterling and Bundy shows that "we have made enormous progress in teaching everyone that racism is bad. Where we seem to have dropped the ball is in teaching people what racism actually is."

Stewart illustrated this insight with a clip of an amazingly un-self-aware interview with two hooded Klansmen, but he got his best zingers in earlier when discussing Sterling, who was recorded telling his girlfriend that she can sleep with black men so long as she doesn't bring them to his basketball games or post photos of herself with them. The Klansmen have the opposite argument — whites should befriend but never sleep with black people — showing, Stewart says, that there's a "rich tapestry," a "gorgeous mosaic, of racism in America." --Peter Weber

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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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