Jon Stewart amazed by ‘jaded’ Russian reaction to meteor

Imagine you’re driving to work one day when a blazing meteor streaks across the horizon and explodes into a fireball. You’d be pretty shocked, and might even blurt out an expletive or two, right?

That’s what most of us, including Jon Stewart, would assume. But apparently that’s not the case in Russia, where a 10,000-ton space rock lit up the sky last week, injuring hundreds and releasing as much energy as 30 Hiroshima-sized atomic bombs -- or, as the locals call it, “Friday.”

On “The Daily Show” Tuesday night, Stewart played video from a small dashboard-mounted camera of a Russian driver. Stewart was disappointed, then amused, to discover that the driver remained totally silent throughout the incident, rather than spewing a string of colorful vulgarities.

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“The guy in the car didn’t even say anything. That’s more amazing than the footage itself. The dude in the car is totally unimpressed by a 10-ton death rock hurtling at mach 50 toward the city,” he noted, joking that this explains why “Armageddon” was released with the title “Oil Driller Gets Very Good Job” in Russia.

The non-response got Stewart wondering: “Is everyone in Russian society just that jaded?”

So it would seem. As evidence, Stewart played a CBS News report about how Russian motorists commonly use “dash cams” to protect themselves from crooked cops and insurance scammers. It turns out meteors are some of the less astonishing things these Russian dash cams have captured.

Other amazing sights include a woman effortlessly tearing apart a car, a roadside confrontation between a man with a hatchet and a man with a baseball bat, low-flying fighter jets and, of course, a truck full of cows tipping over while remaining completely calm.

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“I think what we seem to be learning is that Russians in the course of their everyday lives see so much crazy [stuff] they have become unfazable,” Stewart said.

The segment was a highly entertaining break from the usual political content on “The Daily Show,” and is definitely worth a watch -- especially if you think your morning commute is rough. Let’s just say it could be worse.

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