When Tina Fey accepted the Mark Twain Prize for Impersonating People We Don’t Like, she made this joke:
“And, you know, politics aside, the success of Sarah Palin and women like her is good for all women – except, of course –those who will end up, you know, like, paying for their own rape ‘kit ‘n’ stuff. But for everybody else, it’s a win-win. Unless you’re a gay woman who wants to marry your partner of 20 years – whatever. But for most women, the success of conservative women is good for all of us. Unless you believe in evolution. You know – actually, I take it back. The whole thing’s a disaster.”
Ha ha ha! But as the intrepid Paul Farhi at the Washington Post discovered, PBS cut that joke when the event was broadcast Sunday night:
Was PBS shielding its viewers from Fey’s more pointed remarks?
“It was not a political decision,” responded Peter Kaminsky, one of the broadcast’s executive producers. “We had zero problems with anything she said.”
But with the 90-minute show running about 19 minutes long after the taping Tuesday night, a few things had to give, Kaminsky said. “We took a lot out,” he said. “We snipped from everyone.”
Scandal! Well, let’s look at the tape. The joke in question starts at about the 12:30 in the following clip from the PBS site:
Watch the full episode. See more Mark Twain Prize.
So it got a bit of a rocky reception. Could it be that PBS thought they were helping out the winner of a humor prize by cutting out a joke that left the audience cold? No, more likely they’re a bunch of underhanded right-wing censors. Y’know. At PBS.