Tempest In a Teacup

Okey doke, I have to say something about this. Lizz Winstead, co-creator of the Daily Show, is getting lambasted in the conservative press for a dumbass joke she made. This situation is filled with irony and misinformation.

First off, Winstead hasn't worked for the Daily Show since 1997. Craig Kilborn was the host then and his behavior drove her away. She has absolutely nothing to do with the show as it exists today. The Daily Show has always been good at skewering conservative and liberal hypocrisy, so I am not surprised that conservatives are using this as a chance to attack the Daily Show even though it has nothing to do with this situation. I was reading a post where a lot of people were calling for her to be fired. If they bothered to look into things beyond their narrow news outlets, they would know there is nothing to fire her from. At best, she has been showing up on some MSNBC talk show as a panelist for the past couple of years. So, if you really are offended, take her off that.

Secondly, ask yourself if you got her joke in the first place. Not too long ago, Pat Robertson said that Haiti was targeted for an earthquake because the people there were cursed and had made a deal with the devil. With that in mind, Winstead was creating a parody of such outlandish conservative thought. Natural disasters don't target anyone, obviously. She knows this. She was pointing out how no one will be saying Oklahoma "deserved" the devastation because religious leaders like people in Oklahoma. When Christians are killed, it is a tragedy, when Haitians are killed, they deserve it because they offended God. All of it is a tragedy, obviously.

When Winstead came out with her "bad joke, bad timing" reply, she was exactly right. Her twitter failed to convey the target of her joke. It wasn't topical in the way she wanted it to be (most people don't even remember Pat Robertson saying the dumb shit he says) and people get touchier about death closer to home. Ironically, it all kind of proves her point. Conservative media didn't get up in arms when Robertson said his offensive shit that he actually believes and means but they do when a liberal comedy writer says the same thing as a joke.

So please, turn this mountain back into the mole hill it deserves to be. It isn't a way to attack the Daily Show. It isn't a representation of liberal evil. It was a shitty joke, told poorly that was trying to prove a political point.

A friend of mine posted a link to an article about this and the comments were filled with hate. Someone who just said, "Liberal Whore" got a couple of "likes." I hope none of the name callers claim to be Christians. If so, they are failing.

OK, off the soap box.