Last night, The Daily Show used One Direction as a quick punchline in a joke about the number of terrorist groups emerging in the Middle East. “A new terrorist group just formed, with one member each from ISIS, al Nusra, al Qaeda, Hamas, One Direction, and the Zetas drug cartel!” joked Jessica Williams.
This was a terrible idea, because it provoked the shrieking, hormonal rage of the One Direction fanbase, rallying around the hashtag #TheDailyShowGoneTooFar.
A very angry One Direction fan posted this on Vine:
The text, if Niall Girls ever removes the Vine, states:
Let’s get serious just for a moment. This is a bit from The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. The whole thing started off pretty funny until it got to the part where they joked that one member of One Direction is now part of a super terrorist group. It stopped being funny when you think about how one of our boys have been struggling for the longest time about terrorist labels because of the color of his skin & his religious beliefs. This dumb bit is a blatant display of racism that we should not stand for. So please do me a favor and share this so people will know that these types of ‘jokes’ promote ignorance & hate towards other races. And that’s not okay.
To be fair to the fans, this is true: 1D member Zayn Malik, who is half-Pakistani and a practicing Muslim, is often harassed for his faith, and once had a song written about him called “Zayn Did 9/11”. However, the likelihood that The Daily Show knew about Malik’s background, much less that One Direction had a Muslim member, is slim. (And maybe they were talking about Niall! Come on, Niall Girls.)
Nevertheless, #TheDailyShowGoneTooFar blew up on Twitter last night, with many fans calling on the show to apologize:
zayn saved so many lives how come he's a terrorist #TheDailyShowGoneTooFar
— nobody (@AKINSIZAYN) September 26, 2014
we're not overreacting, we're just standing up for judged religions by the idiotic media and hypocrite society #TheDailyShowGoneTooFar
— fool (@STFUNOUIAM) September 26, 2014
And some girls started waging jihad against Williams herself:
@WW1DAlerts @TheDailyShow I'm gonna kill that bitch.
— ☆ｋｉｎｇ ☆ ｂａｂｙ☆ (@ZaynsBadGirlxXx) September 26, 2014
And also racism, because Williams is black, and that’s there:
@WW1DAlerts @TheDailyShow this 'joke' was presented by a black woman who should know the pain the racism can cause.
— – (@maliks_moves) September 26, 2014
Malik has yet to comment on the situation, but according to the hordes of 1D fans, that’s okay:
well nobody knows zayn the way we do and nobody loves him the way we doooo #thedailyshowgonetoofar
— ⚜no⚜ (@HiHeyZayn) September 26, 2014
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