Comedy Central Host Jeff Ross: ‘Glad Charlton Heston Isn’t Alive’

It's often said that “a picture is worth a thousand words.”

Apparently, that wasn't enough for Jeff Ross, host of “The Burn,” a 30-minute show that airs on the Comedy Central cable TV channel.

Instead, the  comedian created a graphic that had as its background a well-known picture of the late Charlton Heston holding up a replica of a Sharps rifle during the National Rifle Association convention on May 20, 2000, in Charlotte, North Carolina, and again when he stepped down from the post in 2003.

The first time was when Heston, who was then the president of the NRA, concluded a speech by stating that his gun could only be removed by Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore “from my cold, dead hands.”

On Tuesday, only four days after Adam Lanza shot and killed 27 people at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., Ross posted a version of that photograph on his Facebook page with two new sentences added to the graphic.

The first read: “I'm Glad Charlton Heston Isn't Alive to See This.”

At the bottom of the shot, Ross added: “I'm Also Glad Charlton Heston Isn't Alive.”

As NewsBusters previously reported, the comedian's popularity rose after he appeared on the channel's roast of comedienne Rosanne Barr as a poor replica of deceased Penn State football coach Joe Paterno while remarking that former GOP vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin is hated “by a lot of people.”

The program's web page states that Ross is the “Roastmaster General” who burns “a wide array of targets.”

From politicians to athletes to b-list celebrities making sex tapes to stay relevant, the Comedy Central icon and his friends will take aim at what’s wrong with the world and the people who make it happen.

Judging from that description, it's not surprising that the comedian would go after Heston, a well-known actor and gun rights activist who passed away on April 5, 2008.

Remembered as everything from “a villain to many” to the “NRA's Moses” -- a reference to his starring role in the hugely successful 1956 film “The Ten Commandments” -- Heston was also described by network news anchors as “polarizing” and “controversial.”

Supporters of the Second Amendment and gun rights consider Heston's speech during the 129th NRA convention his greatest “role,” when he referred to the 2000 election as a chance “to defeat the divisive forces that would take freedom away:

I want to say those fighting words for everyone within the sound of my voice to hear and to heed, and especially for you, Mr. Gore: 'From my cold, dead hands!'

However, Heston wasn't the first person to use that phrase. It originated in a 1976 report from the Senate Judiciary Committee Subcommittee to Investigate Juvenile Delinquency and was later used by the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms

Nevertheless, a second season of “The Burn” is slated to begin in January on Comedy Central, so we can only wonder what other dead people he'll choose to roast then.