Stepping out of the typical broadcaster suits that he sports as the main anchor on The Daily Show, Jon Stewart greeted a packed Alumni Arena in a suave black V-neck shirt and khakis as the fourth presenter in the 22nd annual Distinguished Speakers Series on Saturday.
Stewart didn't leave the stage until he thoroughly made fun of Buffalo's pride in chicken wings, acknowledging the large population of drunken college students and scoping out the university bull's golden goods on stage, as well as calling the audience a bunch of "pi?+/-ata f*ckers," all tidily in his hour time slot.
"What a delight it is to be here, the gateway to Fort Erie," Stewart joked after stepping on stage to the sounds of "Baba O'Reily" by The Who. "I have never been in a town that is so proud of inventing a bar food. It must be a great place to be high, then."
Stewart continued to poke fun at Buffalo as one of the drunkest towns he has ever seen, citing the madness he witnessed near Delaware Avenue, where he stayed the night before. .
"Have you guys ever gotten so drunk as a town and just wake up the next morning and say 'Did we f*ck Rochester last night? Oh God, it's Utica. What were we thinking?'" Stewart said.
Taking a break from Buffalo jokes, Stewart emphasized the atmosphere of hope and change, commending the fact that this country successfully elected Barack Obama, who he called the "candidate of change."
He joked about waking up the morning after the elections, only to find that he was still 5-foot-7-inches tall.
"I thought I'd wake up and be like 'Oh my God, cancer's cured by ice cream now,'" Stewart joked.
Throughout the fun-filled lecture full of impersonations, for which Stewart utilized most of the stage, he made fun of President George W. Bush's eight-year term for which he was "wrong for the entire time." Stewart expressed his disdain for the president, who he says avoids questions like the plague.
"Iraq is a country in the Middle East, which was led by a man named Saddam Hussein... he had a mustache. He was covered in skin known as an epidermis. He was a mammal, which means he bred live young. Next question," Stewart said in a Bush-based Texan accent and serious presidential demeanor.
He argued that the U.S. is so fed up that a man named Barack Hussein Obama won Virginia, poking fun at the association people have made of his middle name and ties to terrorists.
"You got to be in real bad sh*t to elect a black guy whose middle name is the same as the dictator we overthrew in Iraq, and whose last name rhymes with Osama," Stewart said with his signature sarcasm.
He dared the university students to follow Bush's lead and be wrong for an entire semester of school.
"Be so f*cking wrong people can hardly believe it. Try it - be wrong all semester, and at the end of the semester, find the oldest man you know and shoot him in the face," Stewart said, in reference to Dick Cheney's hunting accident in February 2006, where he shot 78-year-old attorney Harry Whittington in the face. "Just as a little bit of whipped cream on top of your sh*t sundae."
Stewart made jokes about Republicans - old and new - including this year's Republican presidential candidate John McCain and his running mate Sarah Palin, after comparing the duo to Anna Nicole Smith and "that old oil guy."
"I understand you, Joe the Plumber... Denise the Stripper, I'm just like you," Stewart said, doing his best McCain impersonation, criticizing the idea of anti-elitism that presidential candidates have used in this past election.
Other hot topics of the night were the Iraq War and gay marriage.
Stewart explained that the U.S. should have taken Germany's lack of support for the war as a sign that it was a bad idea.
"The country that invaded Poland because they thought Poland was looking at them - if they thought it was a dumb idea... listen to Germany," Stewart said.
At this point of the lecture, he crouched down on the floor as if imitating a recovering addict tempted by the idea of cluster bombs.
"I miss them so much," he said, cupping his microphone tightly to his body, mocking Germany's love of war.
In the night's stand-up act, to which the audience reacted in volatile laughter every couple of seconds, Stewart acknowledged the much-needed makeover of the U.S. education system as well as giving homosexuals the right to get married.
In reference to the newly passed Proposition 8 to ban gay marriage in California, Stewart mentioned that it is appalling that it remains illegal and that homosexuals are not allowed to fight for the U.S.
"How in God's name is gay marriage allowed to be an issue in this country in elections?" Stewart questioned, yelling enthusiastically to cheers in the audience. "Black people voted 70 percent to ban gay marriage in California... 'We shall overcome, but you motherf*ckers are taking a step back.'"
After the humorous political propaganda, Stewart went off on a tangent about finding a tape of a man having sex with a pi?+/-ata. Stewart was shocked when the audience reacted in giggles instead of the gasps he was expecting.
"University at Buffalo... go Fighting Pi?+/-ata F*ckers," Stewart said to immense applause. "[Stephen] Colbert warned me about you. Actually, he spoke very highly of you. That's why I came - I always send Colbert out first, he's like the scout."
He ended the lecture by talking about his 4-year-old son and 2-year-old daughter, the pope, and religion. He then left the audience with a message of hope.
Stewart, a New York City native who currently lives a few blocks away from the World Trade Center site, brought the audience back a few years to 9/11. He bore witness to the aftermath of the terrorist attack of 2001 that covered his neighborhood in gray soot. He was numb for weeks, he recalled.
He explained that the current state of things is comparable to that time - where circumstances were discouraging.
Stewart described the day when, coming out of his apartment, he found a homeless man masturbating on his stoop, but the man didn't stop when Stewart saw him. That was when he knew everything would be fine, Stewart said.
"I know the job of my generation was to leave the world in better shape, and to that I say 'Oops.' Although on the positive side, it will be very hard to f*ck it up. It can seem very bleak... this is not a fragile nation, not a fragile world. We have faced much greater tragedies," he said. "We're gonna be OK."
Photo: Courtesy of Laron Fomby
