Say this for One Direction fans: They’re always ready to defend those guys — maybe even when they don’t really need to.
On Tuesday night’s Daily Show, Jon Stewart aired a segment about the United States’ escalating conflict against ISIS and how people are going out of their way to not call the increased action a “war.”
Correspondent Jessica Williams then delivered a (very funny) explanation about the constantly forming new terrorist organizations, culminating in her saying, “Just as you were talking, a new terrorist group formed with one member each from ISIS, Al Nusra, Al Qaeda, One Direction and the Zetas drug cartel. They like to hijack planes, Jon, and take them to Cuba. They’re really taking it old school. Very vintage.”
That throwaway line was the extent of One Direction’s mention in the segment, but fans of the band — once they learned the segment had aired — were not happy with the implication that the guys were terrorists. They particularly zeroed in on Williams calling Zayn Malik a terrorist (She never mentioned Malik, for the record.) The hashtag #TheDailyShowGoneTooFar, referring to the incident, was a top trending topic on Twitter Friday morning. A representative tweet:
Basically a TV show called Zayn a terrorist because of his religion. #thedailyshowgonetoofar
— One Direction (@1DFinders) September 26, 2014
Hopefully Jessica Williams wasn’t planning on going through Tiger Beat for cute pictures of Harry Styles at the local middle school, because she is totally not invited now.
Trending on Billboard
UPDATE: The Daily Show — seeming to respond to the hashtag — tweeted Friday afternoon:
Dear 1D fans: We didn’t know the band members’ names, religions, hobbies, etc. Just knew they were popular. But not THIS popular. #whoa
— The Daily Show (@TheDailyShow) September 26, 2014