The Daily Show's Zimmerman Coverage Is as Rage-Filled as It Should Be

By Madeleine Davies | July 16, 2013 | 4:10pm

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The Daily Show tends to do a pretty good job of finding glee and humor in even the grimmest of subjects, but that wasn’t the case last night when they finally got around to covering the George Zimmerman acquittal. Don’t get me wrong — the jokes were there (and the jokes were good), but for the most part, the segment was one of barely contained rage…and it was perfectly appropriate.

“How does 2013 Florida have a law that seems cut and pasted from 1881 Tombstone?” asked a seething John Oliver. “Because – let’s be clear here – according to current Florida law, you can get a gun, follow an unarmed minor, call the police, have them explicitly tell you to stop following him, then choose to ignore that, keep following the minor, get into a confrontation with him and if at any point during that process you get scared, you can shoot the minor to death and the state of Florida will say, ‘Well, look, you did what you could.’”