At Saturday night's White House Correspondents Association Dinner, Wanda Sykes got a decidedly mixed reception for this joke about Rush Limbaugh:
The White House, today, made no bones about the President's reaction, reports Jake Tapper:
Gibbs said "a lot of topics are better left for serious reflection rather than comedy. I don't think there's any doubt that 9/11 is a part of that."
The spokesman had been asked by a New York Times reporter if the president had any reaction to Sykes' jokes about Limbaugh at the (dinner).
I have to agree. Normally, I err on the side of the comic, but jokes about 9/11 are reprehensible, even when done to retaliate against other jokes about 9/11. The late George Carlin, who posited that anything can be made funny, might have been able to pull it off, but I'm not certain.
It's a real shame, because she finishes the clip with a really strong joke about Sean Hannity.
Still, a stand-up comic has considerable latitude in terms of the half-life of something like this. With an envelope-pushing comic like Sykes, this wasn't the first, nor will it be the last, time she crosses a line she shouldn't.
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