Jon Stewart's Daily Show alums are uniquely prepared to bring us through this moment

Salon.com

Stephen Colbert, Samantha Bee, John Oliver, Hasan Minhaj and Stewart's successor Trevor Noah all understand how systems keep failing us and are skilled at critiquing them, says Melanie McFarland. "This is not news," she says. "But it does confirm that, as Stewart put it in his recent New York Times interview, The Daily Show's role as a critique of both the news and systems, generally, is serving viewers better in this moment than other varieties of topical comedy. And no scenario has made this more apparent than the acceleration of support for Black Lives Matter that has occurred in the midst of this pandemic."