Tina Fey’s remarks on Sarah Palin cut by PBS
[HMG Celebrity News] – The intrusion of Sarah Palin into the collective American consciousness was a gold-mine for performers. None more so than 30 Rock’s Tina Fey. But when Tina obliquely thanked her at last week’s Mark Twain Awards, PBS did some cutting.
Joining past recipients such as Whoopi Goldberg, Bob Newhart, Billy Crystal and George Carlin, Tina accepted the ‘Mark Twain Prize for American Humor’ at s $1,000-a-plate dinner at New York’s Kennedy Center on November 9th. And she couldn’t resist a few digs at her mentor.
“Politics aside, the success of Sarah Palin and women like her is good for all women,” Fey told the crowd. “Except, of course, those who will end up paying for their own rape ‘kit ‘n’ stuff,” Fey said. “But for everybody else, it’s a win-win…Unless you’re a gay woman who wants to marry your partner….or whatever.”
The crowd loved it. Then Tina went for the payoff;
“But for most women, the success of conservative women is good for all of us. Unless you believe in evolution. Actually, I take it back – The whole thing’s a disaster!”
But when the show aired on PBS on Sunday, that’s not what the viewers heard. The rape and evolution lines were gone, and only her blander remarks made it to air, such as;
“I would be a liar and an idiot if I didn’t thank Sarah Palin for helping get me here tonight,” Tina was heard saying. ”My partial resemblance and her crazy voice are the two luckiest things that ever happened to me.”
But when it was discovered that PBS had played nanny and cut Tina’s speech, viewers were steamed. Now the venerable channel is in ‘Damage control’ mode;
“It was not a political decision,” claimed Peter Kaminsky, one of the show’s producers. “We had zero problems with anything she said.”
He claims the show ran about 20-minutes over schedule, so they went in with the scissors.
“We took a lot out,” he told the Post. “We snipped from everyone.”
But this isn’t the first time PBS has cut a Twain recipient’s comments. George Carlin won in 2008, but died four days before the ceremony. The ‘Twain’ bosses played a video of his ‘Seven Dirty Words’ routine in tribute – and PBS promptly bleeped most of it out.
So PBS claims the cuts were just done to save time, but the viewers aren’t buying it. Do you think they were right to cut Tina’s speech or was this political censorship?…
