Missing out on the action during The Daily Show's week off, Jon Stewart pondered the proliferation of pepper spray across the nation. There were familiar faces like the reality TV-bound New York officer Anthony Bologna, the casually indifferent UC Davis officer, and the inevitable Black Friday "competitive shopper." Picked over individually, anyone on YouTube or Tumblr has glanced all the footage or memes that have surfaced from this strange sequence of events. But taken together, Stewart concludes: "We've suddenly become a people that use pepper spray to alleviate minor inconveniences. Pepper spray has become our new car horn." 

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Erik Hayden