No more so than after 9/11, when terrorists struck the heart of America in Stewarts backyard.
Do we even have a show?
Is there a show to do here, or do we just…do we tap-dance?
I thought it was going to go variety show.
It all just seemed…so irrelevant and small.
Everybody uses those colored cardboard things with the pushpins.
Itll be eight thousand years from now and thats how late-night shows will be programmed.
Anyway, we looked at the board and we just realized this didnt make sense to us anymore.
We were all so numb.
I remember Stephen Colbert said, I am legitimately asking if a pie in the face is still funny.
Im asking because I dont know.
He was not joking.
Anything contiguous to the attack, we just cant touch.
He said, This now is more important than ever.
He wanted to confirm everyone was on board.
He didnt want to go back on the air and be a dick.
STEWART
Comedians process our emotions through this peculiar refinery of whatever puns you could come up with that day.
You remove that, and its as though theres a narcotic on the digestive system.
Youre blocked, its building up, and you dont know what to do.
It just had to be direct and I was going to have to do it without my crutches.
I generally cant take myself to a place without knowing what the finish line is.
It has to be timed right, because otherwise I will lose my inertia.
I wrote the 9/11 monologue on a paper plate.
Not the Chinet kind, either.
The sty paper kind.
Good evening, and uh, welcome to The Daily Show.
Uh, we are back.
And that we pray that you are and that your family is…
I know were late.
Which I gladly would have taken.
What are you going to say?
I mean, geez, what a terrible thing to have to do.
I dont see it as a burden at all.
I see it as a privilege.
I see it as a privilege and everyone here does see it that way.
The show in general, we feel like is a privilege.
Its the difference between closed and open.
And our show has changed.
I dontI dont doubt that.
What its become, I dont know.
Subliminable is not a punch line anymore.
Uh, but but weve had an unenduring pain herean unendurable pain.
Luckily we can edit this…
And the reason I dont despair is because this attack happened.
Its not a dream.
But the aftermath of it, the recovery, is a dream realized.
And that is Martin Luther Kings dream.
Whatever barriers weve put up are gone even if its just momentary.
And were judging people by not the color of their skin but the content of their character.
And you know, all this talk about, These guys are criminal masterminds.
Theyvetheyve gotten together and their extraordinary guile…and their wit and their skill.
Any fool can blow something up.
Any fool can destroy.
That, thatthat isthats extraordinary.
Thats why weve already won.
They cant shut that down.
They live in chaos and chaos…it cant sustain itself.
Its too easy and its too unsatisfying.
The view from my apartment was the World Trade Center, and now its gone.
And they attacked it.
This symbol of American ingenuity and strength and labor and imagination and commerce, and it is gone.
But you know what the view is now?
The Statue of Liberty.
The view from the south of Manhattan is now the Statue of Liberty.
You cant beat that.
Well be right back.
I think the end of it was just me holding up our dog, Monkey.
And then we all kind of looked at each other like, Now what?
I was just…I was done.
It had been an incredibly emotional experience.
We all knew people who had been down there and had lost people.
That first show was not a statement of what we were going to do.
It was a necessary draining of an abscess to even become ambulatory.
Copyright 2016 by Busboy Productions, Inc. Reprinted with permission of Grand Central Publishing, New York, NY.
