Jon Stewart is adding his two cents to the Timothée Chalamet classical arts discourse.
In his first Daily Show broadcast following the Oscars, the political comic contributed his own joke to the now-two-week-long-simmering debacle, which kicked off when the Academy Award-nominated Marty Supreme star found himself in hot water for saying “no one cares” about ballet and opera and that he doesn’t wish to be a niche artist.
“But as of last night, it is clear that opera and ballet have defeated Timothée Chalamet,” Stewart said after Chalamet lost the Best Actor race to Sinners star Michael B. Jordan.
“No contest. A knockout! Even before they brought out prima ballerina Misty Copeland in the middle of the Sinners performance right in front of him,” he continued. “Boom. So, opera and ballet!”
In the aftermath of the flub, Chalamet was flooded with show invites by ballet and opera companies. He was also thoroughly critiqued by his peers, some of whom had harsher words than others. The hullabaloo fed the online churn of commentary for days, and was also addressed by Oscars host Conan O’Brien in his opening monologue. “Security is extremely tight tonight. I’m told there are concerns about attacks from both the opera and ballet communities,” the former late-night host said.
Meanwhile, Stewart’s episode focused largely on the ongoing U.S. war against Iran and President Donald Trump’s contradictory characterizations of the military action; the GOP leader has gone back-and-forth on classifying the aggression as constituting a war and waffled on how protracted it will be.
For his bit of the night, the late-night host invited a “panel of Trumps” featuring four different versions of the POTUS — “President Trump,” “Donald J. Trump,” “DJT” and “John Barron” (a common alias used previously by Trump) — to debate each other. At one point, a “Donnie” from Palm Beach called in to offer that the war will end “when I feel it in my bones.”
“All due respect to your bones, but should we really be giving them more responsibilities? Seems like they’ve got enough on their plate with the getting you up and down the stairs thing,” Stewart said.
