Former Daily Show correspondent, Wyatt Cenac reveals how Jon Stewart caused him to have a nervous breakdown.
Remember when everyone loved Jon Stewart’s opinion on the Charleston shooting? Well, Jon Stewart may still be pretty clueless about racism, at least when he was being called out on it. That’s what former correspondent Wyatt Cenac argues, recalling the time how Jon Stewart told him to “f*ck off” when Cenac called him out on a racist joke he made.
As Wyatt Cenac told Marc Maron on Maron’s podcast, in 2011, Jon Stewart did an impression of the blackk Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain. After Fox News took issue with the voice the Daily Show host put on, Jon Stewart wanted to do a segment called “everything I do is racist”, so Cenac told him that he also had an issue with the voice. Well that didn’t go over too well.
Here’s what he had to say:
[Stewart] got incredibly defensive. I remember he was like, What are you trying to say? There’s a tone in your voice. I was like, “There’s no tone. It bothered me. It sounded like Kingfish.” And then he got upset. And he stood up and he was just like, “F*ck off. I’m done with you.” And he just started screaming that to me. And he screamed it a few times. “F*ck off! I’m done with you.” And he stormed out. And I didn’t know if I had been fired.
The fight carried on at Stewart’s office and was only stopped when one of the office dogs began pawing at them. (Aww.) Eventually, the show had to go on, and Cenac remembers going outside to a baseball field and having a breakdown. “I was shaking, and I just sat there by myself on the bleachers and fucking cried. And it’s a sad thing. That’s how I feel. That’s how I feel in this job. I feel alone,” he said.
“I represent my community,” added Cenac. “I represent my people, and I try to represent them the best that I can. I gotta be honest if something seems questionable, because if not, then I don’t want to be in a position where I am being untrue not just to myself but to my culture, because that’s exploitative.”
