Senior Daily Show international correspondent Trevor Noah, a South African, is like Jon Stewart's world-news Jiminy Cricket: A designated voice of conscience to remind The Daily Show about global events while allowing Stewart to chide his viewers over how little Americans know about the world in general and Africa in particular. It's a pretty effective arrangement.
On Thursday night's show, the topic was terrorism, and how the West united spectacularly over France's Charlie Hebdo murders while all but ignoring a much larger slaughter in Nigeria, carried out on the same day by another Islamist terrorist organization, Boko Haram. "Sometimes it seems like Africa is the Vegas of Islamist terror," Noah said, affecting an American accent: "What happens in Africa stays in Africa." When Stewart shrugged, Noah listed the similarities between Boko Haram and a group the West is paying attention to: "Don't you see, Jon, Boko Haram is black ISIS." In fact, "Boko Haram must feel like Tyler Perry — huge numbers but no recognition." Oh, and Noah's burn on Paul Simon is pretty good. —Peter Weber
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