Jon Stewart flips the bird on last night's Daily Show

[postcards]

@Quimby

Once in a blue moon they will miss something on the Daily Show and then bleep/blur it on future reairings. This may have been one of those.

The six PM rebroadcast the next day did not blur the finger.

[Acsenray]

@griffin1977

That is one of the many things that has mystified me about how censorship works on US TV. How could someone’s middle finger been deemed so offensive compared to some of the things that are shown.

I remember watching a documentary on A+E a while back and they showed the dead bodies of brutally murdered victims (with a bear minimum of blurring around the face), but completely blurred out someone’s hands when they were flipping the bird in a photo.

Broadcast censorship in the United States has always focused on sex/nudity, toilet functions, and “bad words.”