It can be hard to inject humor the right way into topics that are gravely serious. Somehow Jon Stewart manages to do this, and do it better than most.
On Wednesday, Stewart put the embattled NFL organization on blast during a segment of his popular Comedy Central program The Daily Show.
“The National Football League used to have a good name,” quipped Stewart in reference to the league’s reputation suffering severe damage over the past few weeks.
Much of the backlash is due in large part to their poor handling of NFL players who’ve either been guilty of or stand accused of acts of domestic violence.
Of course, it must be pointed out that the majority of ongoing criticisms against the NFL and its handling of player behavior existed long before the explosive scandal involving former Baltimore Ravens player Ray Rice.
Jon Stewart on the NFL: "You know your business model is in rough shape when you need to appoint your own in-house special victims unit."
— Comedy Central (@ComedyCentral) September 18, 2014
Stewart said the flip-flopping by the NFL organization on the treatment of players like Rice and Greg Hardy of the Carolina Panthers demonstrates “the kind of firm decision-making we’ve come to expect from people who don’t know what the f**k they’re doing.”
Stewart also pointed out that, not too surprisingly, the reversal in the decision on the part of the Vikings had a large part to do with the response of some of the league’s sponsors. Anheuser-Busch came out with a strongly worded response to the NFL’s handling of domestic abuse problems.
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To be blunt, the money is being threatened and we all know few things will make a large organization move to do the right thing quite like lost revenue.
As for Sean Hannity’s comment that the response to the Adrian Peterson child abuse allegations would somehow snowball into laws forcing political correctness on parents, Stewart pointed out that Hannity’s “special brand of spiteful ignorance would always be legal”.
Sean Hannity unbuckles belt, demonstrates how he was beaten as a child http://t.co/oqQ4Hfy5lx pic.twitter.com/3pokxhlbSd
— Daily Mail US (@DailyMail) September 18, 2014
Watch Jon Stewart’s response to the ongoing NFL scandal in the Youtube video below: