Daily Show: President had plausible deniability for offensive 9/11 joke

[FourScore]

The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart and John Oliver compared President Obama’s potential foreknowledge of a joke about Rush Limbaugh at the White House Correspondents Association dinner to the Bush administration’s authorization of harsh interrogation techniques.

As Huffington Post’s Alex Leo observes, “Two days after Wanda Sykes appeared at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner and joked that Rush Limbaugh was the 20th hijacker on 9/11 but missed the plane because he was so strung out on Oxycontin, all hell has broken loose with commentators and politicians alike chiming in on why they hated what Wanda said.”

“Bad jokes and gay marriage are destroying this country, but torture can save it,” Stewart quipped.

Oliver later joked that President Obama’s smile was proof that Sykes’ “jokes were approved at the highest level.”

“How over-the-line would it be if we used these jokes on our own people?” Oliver mockingly asked.

Stewart wanted to be certain, “You’re saying that not only was the president of the United States aware that this joke was going to happen but that he personally approved this joke. Is that what you’re suggesting?”

Oliver’s response was as mixed up and garbled as the responses by former Bush officials accused of complicity in torture authorization.

This video is from Comedy Central’s The Daily Show, broadcast May 11, 2009

http://rawstory.com/08/news/2009/05/12/daily-show-president-had-plausible-deniability-for-sykes-joke/