"fuck them and their stupid red ties"
"I was just wondering, y'know," a 19-year old The Daily Show audience member asks Jon Stewart, "how do you maintain a sense of hope and levity when times..."
The audience erupts into laughter.
. . .
Today, my girlfriend and I went to the bookstore desperate to escape the news. If you fancied yourself a sensible American this morning, you might have done the same. The impending inauguration has been a source of anxiety for the two of us, and so we took refuge in the books and knowledge and various stuffed animals of the local Barnes & Noble. For a few hours, it was nice to forget.
We went to lunch and found all the TVs switched to Trump signing the executive orders that would effectively destroy years of activism, surrounded by a loyal horde of white men in ill-fitting suits, and my girlfriend scoffed. "Fuck them and their stupid red ties." I laughed, and knew it would be a long time before I would forget again, if I could forget again, but I laughed anyway.
. . .
"It's always a mess," Stewart answers, "and what that makes you realize is, that's just the game. We buckle down... and you carry through."