Double Standard - If a Conservative Made Jokes Even Half This Tasteless They Would Be Crucified By The Media!!
Simon/Pool
Comedian Wanda Sykes has President Obama in stitches as she performs at Saturday's White House Correspondents' dinner in D.C.
Mouths That Roared… Tastelessly!! - Since when are jokes about 9/11 and death okay?? It seems that the answer is when they are aimed at conservatives.
What did you think of the jokes made by David Feherty and Wanda Sykes?
Their comments were tasteless, and both should apologize.
Feherty deserves punishment, but Sykes' comments were fine considering the setting.
It was all in good fun - neither should be reprimanded.
Here is what David Feherty, a golf guy who poses no threat to the memory of Lenny Bruce, wrote in a Dallas magazine recently:
"If you gave any U.S. soldier a gun with two bullets in it, and he found himself in an elevator with Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and Osama Bin Laden, there's a good chance that Nancy Pelosi would get shot twice, and Harry Reid and Bin Laden would be strangled to death."
Not funny. An old joke, tastelessly retold. Feherty of CBS - who once wrote a book called "Somewhere in Ireland a Village is Missing an Idiot" - is drawing fire because of it. But you have to wonder how a similar joke might have played at the White House Correspondents' dinner on Saturday night, as long as it was about a Republican.
Because here are a couple of jokes Wanda Sykes wrote and then delivered to that crowd:
"You know, you might want to look into this, [President Obama], because I think maybe Rush Limbaugh was the 20th hijacker, but he was just so strung out on OxyContin he missed his flight. ...
"Rush Limbaugh hopes the country fails? I hope his kidneys fail, how 'bout that?"
Somehow Ms. Sykes got laughs with this material, and draws no fire. It is all supposed to be about the setting, or so we are told. President Obama was there, the dinner is always the Washington version of a Friars Club Roast, just without the Sopranos language.
So Sykes, a comedian, gets a pass because of where she was, and whom she was talking about. And maybe who she is. David Feherty, who fancies himself a bit of a comic himself, doesn't, at least not so far. As always, the rules on all this change from day to day like baseball's strike zone.
This isn't about condoning what Feherty wrote. It sure isn't about running interference for Limbaugh. He has become the clown at the right-wing circus and has had the bully pulpit for a long time, not just banging away at people who think like President Obama - or Wanda Sykes for that matter - for a long time.
Limbaugh is another gasbag in this country who has gotten rich on meanness, and so if he is getting a taste of his own medicine now, prescription or otherwise, that is probably just swell with the people he has trampled on the way to the buffet table. Then the bank.
But what if Limbaugh, white talk show host, goes on the air and says that Sykes, black comedian, is about half-a-terrorist and that, oh by the way, he hopes she dies? Is he allowed to say he's just an entertainer, and tell everybody to lighten up?
Feherty? He has been condemned by representatives from Pelosi and Reid and even the PGA Tour. CBS issued a statement that said, "Feherty's column for a Dallas magazine is an unacceptable attempt at humor and is not in any way condoned."
A poll was taken by the Daily News… 68% of the participants said both Feherty and Sykes’ comments were tasteless and both should apologize!
Double Standard - If a Conservative Made Jokes Even Half This Tasteless They Would Be Crucified By The Media!!
Updated Monday, May 11th 2009, 8:34 AM
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