Jon Stewart Sums Up Govt. Non-Shutdown Drama In Three Words: ‘I Hate You’

As the nation begrudgingly emerged from the inevitable perfectly avoidable government shutdown that wasn’t Friday night, both Democrats and Republicans scrambled to make the ordeal into some sort of political victory. Tonight, Jon Stewart did his best to find the people on cable news asking the important questions about our budget, but instead delivered lines like “who came out ahead politically?” and “who are the real winners and losers?”

Stewart began at the start of the nail-biting ordeal, highlighting the various countdowns to the shutdown and increased certainty from cable news anchors that the government would be closed for business come midnight Friday. That, of course, failed to occur, thanks to what Stewart curmudgeonly described as “mundane pragmatic agreement… that should happen all the fucking time.” But with that over, what will that mean for the many non-essential programs that could be cut in the second round of negotiations? No one quite knows, because everyone was instead asking who the “real winners and losers” are, sometimes even with multiple choice (though with a pesky “none of the above” option). The conclusion? “Everybody wins by avoiding losing,” as one pundit put it, a line that drove Stewart to merely stare at the screen and whisper, “I hate you.”

The segment via Comedy Central below:

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