`Comedy survives every moment'
Comedian Jon Stewart receives Mark Twain Prize for American Humor
Some of the country's top satirical minds were at the Kennedy Center on Sunday to praise Jon Stewart during the annual Mark Twain Prize for American Humor ceremony.
It was the first gathering of its kind in two-and-a-half fairly dark years. Dave Chappelle was honoured in October 2019, and that ceremony later aired as a Netflix special. (This one hits PBS on June 21.) It's also the first in the now-permanent spring slot.
In his speech, Stewart said he was pleased to get the award, since “almost none of the other recipients turned out to be serial rapists.” (Earlier in the ceremony, Jimmy Kimmel had joked that they were actually recycling Bill Cosby's award.)
Throughout his speech, Stewart riffed about the masked audience (“like something from an O. Henry story”) and his elder statesman looks (“The Jews, we age like avocados”).
Most of the comedian's speech, though, focused on his family. He praised his mother for largely raising him alone, told stories about his children and recalled meeting his wife on a blind date.
Stewart, 59, then discussed the job of being a comic, describing it as “an iterative business. It's a grind. It's work. The best amongst us just keep at it.”
He closed his speech by discussing frequently parroted concerns that comedy is somehow in peril in today's world, scoffing at the idea: “Comedy survives every moment.” And good thing it does, Stewart said, because “comedy doesn't change the world, but it's a bellwether. We're the banana peel in the coal mine. When society is under threat, comedians are the ones who get sent away first.”
“What we have is fragile and precious, and the way to guard against it isn't to change how audiences think, but to change how leaders lead,” he concluded.
During the ceremony, friends and collaborators, including Chappelle, Kimmel and former Daily Show correspondents Olivia Munn and Samantha Bee, took turns offering praise, sharing stories and roasting the comedian. Stewart, who sat with his wife, Tracey, and their two children in a box overlooking the Concert Hall stage, often swayed back and forth with laughter.
The prize comes at a transitional time in Stewart's career. He left The Daily Show in 2015 after 16 years on Comedy Central and launched an Apple+ show in 2021. The new show is far more probing, and more interested in exploring the world's problems rather than turning them into comedic fodder.