Jewett City Party candidate for Warden, Ron Ward, appears on Comedy Central's 'The Daily Show with Jon Stewart'

Report from 'Godless Hellscape'

by Roger Catlin - 'TV Eye' columnist & TV critic for The Hartford Courant -
published by Courant.com on March 6, 2007
Read the 'TV Eye' by Roger Catlin - click here

“The Daily Show” piece on Jewett City finally ran Tuesday, disguised as a consumer advocate report by Samantha Bee.

“The Sam on Your Side” segment began with a complaint from one Bill Russell about the bells in a Jewett City church that chimes songs – some of them religious -- from a system paid for by the town.

Unfortunately it was not the NBA Hall of Famer Bill Russell who Bee first interviewed:

Q. Why are you so offended by these chimes? You know, the chimes? Jewett City, Connecticut? You’re Bill Russell, chime hater?
A. I don’t have the slightest idea bout what you’re talking about.

Eventually she talks to the real but less famous Bill Russell, identified as lightbulb salesman and atheist, who had complained about the bells during the Christmas season as a violating the separation of church in state.

Trouble was, he wasn’t a town resident and couldn’t file suit. So Bee goes door to door to try to find a plaintiff for him. She finds that everyone likes the chimes.

Borough warden candidate Ron Ward, described as an “the incredibly fabulous” Jewitt town elder, says, “It just gets our dander up that somebody would challenge us on something as important as our bells.”

Finally, she wonders if she could still be “Sam on Your Side” against these odds.

"This is a tough one,” she levels with Russell. “You don’t live in the town, the church barely plays religious music and everyone in town loves it. If you were me, would you still be on my side?”

He takes a long time to answer.

So she asks if there’s some other issue she can more easily side with.

He then goes on, if editing is to believed, a long litany of slights and persecutions. So by the end, she’s “Sam on Your Side” for the town of Jewett City, being terrorized by this mustachioed guy with a corduroy cap.

And she gets more screen time with the more famous Russell.

As the episode’s credits roll, Bee is back in front of the Jewett City church as its chimes pound out “Onward Christian Soldiers.”

Then she pauses and grabs her cell phone, saying “Oh, I’m sorry, I think that’s me.”

And she mutters to her friend on the line: “I’m just in some godless hellscape, doing another story.”