Last night, Larry Wilmore was on to talk with Jon Stewart about how various groups are trying to appropriate Martin Luther King, Jr., for their own.
LARRY WILMORE: As long as we're celebrating Dr. King's birthday, I'd like to make one request. Can we, as a nation, please, please stop using Martin Luther King as a prop in our own petty political arguments?
JON STEWART: You mean about race.
LARRY WILMORE: No, no, no, Jon, about everything. Listen to what the chairman of National Gun Appreciation Day said last week.
LARRY WARD (1/11/2013): I believe that Gun Appreciation Day honors the legacy of Dr. King. ... The truth is, I think Martin Luther King would agree with me, if he were alive today.
(audience groans in disgust)
LARRY WILMORE: Yeah, yeah, let me stop you right there. He is not alive today. Uh, now what was it that killed him? Hmm... I dunno, Jon. Was it diabetes?
JON STEWART: No, I don't think it was diabetes.
LARRY WILMORE: Sandwich choke, maybe?
JON STEWART: No, I don't think so.
LARRY WILMORE: Mauled by lions on the porch of a Memphis hotel?
JON STEWART: Yeah, I don't think that's it.
LARRY WILMORE: But I'm sorry, you were channeling Dr. King. Please continue.
LARRY WARD (1/11/2013): ... would agree with me, if he were alive today, that if African-Americans had been given the right to keep and bear arms from day one of the country's founding, perhaps slavery might not have been a chapter in our history.
(shocked audience yells in disgust)
LARRY WILMORE: Yeah, slavery wouldn't have been a chapter; it would've been a preface, all right? Followed by the chapter entitled, "All the Black People Are Dead, Now Who's Going to Build the Country?"
JON STEWART: You believe Martin Luther King would've favored gun control?
LARRY WILMORE: Absolutely yes.
JON STEWART: Now, why would you say that?
LARRY WILMORE: Wait, um, hmm... no, on second thought, he wouldn't.
JON STEWART: OK, why would you say....?
LARRY WILMORE: Wait, wait... yeah, he would.
JON STEWART: Larry....
LARRY WILMORE: I'm just fucking with you, Jon. I HAVE NO IDEA! How am I supposed to know, Dr. King is dead, OK? So you don't get to use him as your imaginary black "yes man".
JON STEWART: I guess it's because, you know, Martin Luther King's held up in our culture as a symbol of sort of an unassailable good, so people try to make him....
LARRY WILMORE: Jon, I understand, but that doesn't mean you can use him to endorse everything you happen to like. You don't like porn. You know who loved porn? Martin Luther King!
JON STEWART: I remember his letters to Penthouse from the Birmingham jail. (Jon cracks up) Are people really being that specific with King's likes and dislikes?
LARRY WILMORE: Oh yes, Jon. Look, this Arizona Congressman thinks he knows what MLK hated.
REP. TRENT FRANKS, R-AZ (2/10/2009): Every day, Mr. Speaker, almost 1,500 black children are aborted. ... Mr. Speaker, I have every conviction that if he were alive today, the Reverend Martin Luther King would not be silent in the face of such an outrage.
LARRY WILMORE: I think it's an outrage that your state spent 10 years fighting to not observe Dr. King's birthday.
(wild audience cheering and applause)
LARRY WILMORE: Oh, and fuck you, Arizona.
(wild audience cheering and applause)
JON STEWART: Now, if I'm not mistaken, I believe "Fuck You, Arizona" is the state motto of Nevada.
LARRY WILMORE: I didn't know that.
JON STEWART: Yeah, that's true.
to oppose everything Obama does.
, mostly about the flu and other sicknesses.
, which went long. Here's the unedited interview in three parts.