Upon receiving the Kennedy Center's Mark Train Prize for American Humor on November 9, comedian Tina Fey trashed Sarah Palin in her acceptance speech.
By the time PBS broadcast the taped ceremony, the taxpayer-subsidized network had edited out some of Fey's harsher jokes that maligned the former Alaska governor.
NewsBusters publisher and Media Research Center founder Brent Bozell appeared in studio on today's "Fox & Friends" to address the controversy, lauding PBS for doing the right thing by making those edits.
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Bozell argued that PBS edited out Fey's remarks both out of consideration for the length of broadcast and because Fey had crossed a line of good taste:
BRENT BOZELL: It's something about these comedians, they don't know when and where things are appropriate. This is the Mark Twain award ceremony at the Kennedy Center. You leave that kind of stuff at home. You can be very funny without being offensive. That was clearly offensive so they took it out.... The greatest irony of all this is that she won the award because of that kind of humor.
GRETCHEN CARLSON, "Fox & Friends" host: So you actually think that it was a good thing that PBS, in supposedly trying to be fair and balanced, that they took those comments out?
BOZELL: I think that this goes beyond politics and goes beyond ideology. It's a function of taste on an awards ceremony, they would want it to be positive and light-hearted and funny, and they don't want ugly politics in it.
CARLSON: Well, let's take a look at what PBS said about it. This is what they said, "It was not a political decision. We had zero problems with anything she said." How do you feel about that?
BOZELL: I don't think for a second you're going to find Sarah Palin pom-pom cheerleading people at PBS. I don't think they did have a single problem with that.
CARLSON: I didn't know there were Sarah Palin pom-poms.
BOZELL, chuckling: I don't know that there's anyone at PBS who is supportive of Sarah Palin. That's what I'm saying. It doesn't have anything to do with politics. I do believe it when they say that they support what she said. But it was offensive for this program, so they did the right thing in cutting it out.
