Jon Stewart has addressed fellow comedian Dave Chappelle’s recent gig hosting NBC’s Saturday Night Live during which he told a series of Jewish jokes during the opening monologue. Stewart said censorship and punishment are the wrong way to respond.
“The one thing I will say is, I don’t believe that censorship and penalties are the way to end antisemitism or to not gain understanding,” Stewart said Wednesday on CBS’ Late Night with Stephen Colbert. “I don’t believe in that. And I think it’s the wrong way for us to approach it.”
“Penalizing somebody for having a thought, I don’t think is a way to change their minds or gain understanding,” he added. “Comedy is reductive, and I think part of what it is is that we play with tropes. Everybody has prejudice in their lives and the way they view things, and comics rely on those prejudices as a short hand for our material.”
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Jon Stewart noted that he himself has been accused of antisemitism for criticizing Israel’s treatment of Palestinians.
“Whether it be comedy or discussion or anything else, if we don’t have the wherewithal to meet each other with what’s reality, then how do we move forward?” he said. “If we all just shut it down, then we retreat to our little corners of misinformation and it metastasizes.”
As Breitbart News reported, Dave Chappelle hosted last week’s SNL, opening the show with a 15-minute monologue during which he addressed Kanye West’s recent antisemitic comments and made a few Jewish jokes of his own.
Follow David Ng on Twitter @HeyItsDavidNg. Have a tip? Contact me at dng@breitbart.com
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