"It’s a different world when you have kids," comedian Jon Stewart told a packed Barton Hall audience on Parents’ Weekend. "The opportunity to ruin them from early on is very exciting."
The bond between parents and children was an overarching theme of Stewart’s 90-minute stand-up act, which he offered on both Friday and Saturday nights (for a total audience of 10,000). The popular "Daily Show" host talked about the developmental differences between his young son and daughter—noting that the girl greets him with thoughtful, probing questions about his workday, while her older brother runs around without any pants on.
Speaking of intimate parts of the male physique: they figured prominently in Stewart’s sold-out act, a fact he copped to while noting how delightful it must be for undergrads to laugh at genitalia jokes while sitting between mom and dad. He also addressed more grave topics, including school violence—suggesting that bullied kids would benefit from the realization that ultimately, nerds inherit the earth. "If you want to end high school violence," he quipped, "take students on field trips to twenty-five-year high school reunions."
Naturally, much of Stewart’s humor was aimed at politics; lamenting the perceived failures of the Obama Administration, for example, he noted what a miracle it was that someone named Barack Hussein Obama had been elected in the first place. (For the slightly off-color punchline, which brought the house down, consult the Daily Sun.) With the Occupy Wall Street protests in full force, Stewart jokingly suggested another movement: Occupy Cornell. "We are the 99 percent!" he shouted, then took in the Ivy League audience and reconsidered. "No," he said, "we’re the .25 percent."
— Beth Saulnier