Jon Stewart revealed that he scrapped his intended opening monologue after the X account belonging to beloved Sesame Street character Elmo was hacked over the weekend. The Daily Show host explained that due to the anti-semitic, violent tweets that appeared on Elmo’s account he felt he had to address the issue.
“Let me be completely frank: We had a tremendous show planned for you,” Stewart said. “Well-designed, articulate, a tremendous deconstruction of the most interesting issues of the day. We prepared a whole piece on the new Trump tariffs, breaking down the different rates and their secondary impacts—a truly illuminating dive into the overlooked role of the commodities markets in trade deficit accounting. It was going to be so funny. But sadly at the last minute we had to scrap all that because Elmo lost his fucking mind.”
The host then played a clip of a news anchor describing how a hacker had posted anti-semitic tweets on Elmo’s X account on Sunday. “This is what happens when you go too long without tickling Elmo,” Stewart quipped.
Stewart added that the tweets were “especially shocking” to him because he has collaborated with Elmo in the past. “I’ve worked with Elmo, as everybody definitely remembers,” he said, showing a very old photo of him with the muppet. “The truth is, I’m being honest, Elmo at the time was great to work with. He was. Was there a ton of coke on set? Of course. But hateful, racist Elmo is not the Elmo that I remember. I know what’s in Elmo’s heart.
Stewart then invited a rudimentary, hand puppet version of Elmo to join him on the show. The puppet appeared in front of an incel-inspired bedroom and began to chat with Stewart about the hacking incident. Hilariously, Stewart did the puppeteering and Elmo’s voice himself during their conversation.
At first, Elmo insisted he really had been hacked. “They hacked Elmo!” the muppet said. “They guessed Elmo’s password was Elmo! Elmo123. Elmo knows passwords should have more numbers, but Elmo only knows three numbers.”
But when Stewart demanded more accountability Elmo admitted, “It’s true, Elmo wasn’t hacked. It was Elmo. But Elmo was radicalized by the manosphere. Elmo is part of the male loneliness epidemic. You-you-you see, what happened was, Elmo was doing his own research on flu shots. Six hours later, because of the algorithm, Elmo was moderating the QAnon Discord chat and building homemade bombs.”
He continued, when Stewart pressed him to take responsibility about being a role model for kids, “Are you canceling Elmo?! Once again, the so-called tolerant left is policing speech that’s inconvenient to their woke dogma. Who’s the real puppet now, Jon?! You! You’re the real puppet.”
The host replied that Elmo was getting caught up in “alt-right talking point word salad.” “Yeah, you said it, not Elmo,” the puppet said. “Elmo’s alt-right. No reason to cancel Elmo’s funding then.”
“Is that what this is about?” Stewart replied, pretending to be shocked. “You’re pandering to the right so you can keep your government funding for public broadcasting?”
“Elmo can’t go back on the streets, Jon,” Elmo replied. “You have no idea what it’s like. Elmo’s too pretty to live under a bridge, Jon. It’s a life brought to you by the letter sucking dick, OK? Elmo won’t! Elmo won’t go back. Elmo can’t go back. No!”
In the second half of the show’s opening segment, Stewart reflected on the right wing response to Trump’s unwillingness to release the Epstein files. At the end, Elmo reappeared to shout, “Viva la revolución! Antifa forever!” The puppet said that listening to Stewart’s “trenchant analysis of the many hypocrisies of the right have re-radicalized Elmo to the populist left. Free Luigi!”
www.rollingstone.com
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