VIDEO: You need to watch Jon Stewart’s powerful monologue on the Charleston shootings

You can always rely on Jon Stewart to lay it out straight. Especially when things get serious.

Last night, the host of The Daily Show stripped away his usual biting satire and quick wit saying that in the wake of the Charleston shootings, he just couldn't summon the energy to find any humour in the situation.

"I have one job and it's a pretty simple job. I come in in the morning and we look at the news and I write jokes about it," he said.

"But I didn't do my job today so I apologise, I've got nothing for you, because of what happened in South Carolina."

"I honestly have nothing, other than sadness once again that we have to peer into the abyss of the depraved violence that we do to each other and the nexus of a just gaping racial wound that will not heal yet we pretend doesn't exist."

Stewart went on to contrast America's decisive reaction to perceived threats from Al Qaeda and Isis with the repeated inaction of authorities in the wake of mass shootings such as this one.

Calling the shooting a terrorist attack, he attacked the perceived notion that when the shooter is white, he is a random loner with possible mental health issues as opposed to a symptom of a larger racial divide in America. He also criticised the hypocrisy of South Carolina's lingering respect for its troubled past.

"Nine people were shot in a black church by a white guy who hated them, who wanted to start some kind of civil war. The Confederate flag flies over South Carolina, and the roads are named for Confederate generals, and the white guy's the one who feels like his country is being taken away from him," said Stewart.

"We're bringing it on ourselves. And that's the thing. Al Qaeda, all those guys, ISIS, they're not s**t compared to the damage that we can apparently do to ourselves on a regular basis."

HT: breakingnews.ie