Wanda Sykes debuted her new comedy show Saturday on Fox. That critics met the show with reviews of varying degrees of mediocrity is hardly surprising, as Sykes simply recycled years of Bush-bashing and Obamamania into her monologue, which set the mood for the show.

Sykes is well known in political circles for proclaiming "I hope his kidneys fail" in reference to Rush Limbaugh at this year's White House Correspondents' Dinner. She went on to make fun of Limbaugh's former drug addiction, liken him to terrorists, and call for him to be waterboarded.

So it came as little surprise that Sykes kicked off her new show with attacks on Ann Coulter, discussions of environmentally-friendly sex toys, accusations of racism leveled against Rush Limbuagh, and an anti-Bush, Obama-crazed diatribe (video and partial transcript below the fold).

Comedian Wanda Sykes brushed aside her low blow about Rush Limbaugh’s kidneys failing as no big deal on CNN’s AC360 on Thursday: “Was it...too far for that room? Yes, it was...but, hey, you shouldn’t invite me....I think everybody would have been disappointed if I hadn’t gone too far. Sykes also gushed wildly over President Obama during the interview: “He is like the George Clooney of presidents.”

Anchor John King, filling in for Anderson Cooper, interviewed Sykes 45 minutes into the 10 pm Eastern hour, and brought up the issue of the Limbaugh crack mid-way through the interview: “As you know, there were one or two lines [from Sykes’s appearance at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner] that got a little bit of a gasp and a groan in the room. One of them was when you were making fun and criticizing Rush Limbaugh.” After playing a clip of the line in question, he asked, “Any regrets for that? As you know, there was a big gasp in that room. Washington wasn’t quite ready for that one.”

Comedian Wanda Sykes, invited on Thursday’s "Today" show to plug her HBO comedy special and new late night talk show, was pressed by co-host Meredith Vieira to comment about her crass remark at the White House Correspondent’s Dinner that she hoped Rush Limbaugh’s kidneys would fail. The stand-up comic initially defended her Limbaugh death wish as she claimed, "I was having fun...and I meant what I said," but did admit that perhaps it was "a little too much," however she concluded, "it was just a joke."

MEREDITH VIEIRA: Last year, a good year in many ways for you but also controversial. Beginning with the White House Correspondents Dinner where you talked about Rush Limbaugh.

WANDA SYKES: Right.

VIEIRA: You compared him to Osama Bin Laden. You got a lot of grief for that. In retrospect you wish you hadn't done that or are you saying, "No, I mean what I said I was having fun."

SYKES: Oh no! I meant what I said. I thought I was having, you know, I was having fun. And, and I meant what I said. I think people were more upset with the tagline when I said, "You know he hopes America fail," and I said "well I hope his kidneys fail."

Comedian Wanda Sykes drew little criticism from the "objective" media for wishing Rush Limbaugh’s kidneys would fail in a dinner thrown by the White House Correspondents Association in May. In her new HBO special, I’m A Be Me, Sykes continues her love for the Obamas, and her hate for anyone who crosses them. Sykes mocked people who didn’t like that the Obama family dog wasn't from a rescue shelter:

"How come he didn’t get a rescue dog? He should have gotten a rescue dog." I’m like, the man has to rescue a country that’s been abused by its previous owner.

Sykes also went on an extended riff about how beautiful Michelle Obama is, much more beautiful than Barbara Bush:

They say you shouldn't bite the hand that feeds you. But the 44^th President of the United States doesn't seem to be worried about that.

President Barack Obama, still with no fear of being overexposed, made the rounds on five Sunday morning talk shows on Sept. 20 to make another attempt at winning the hearts and minds over on his vague health care proposal.

According to Obama, alleging he wasn't doing any "media-bashing," mentioned the three major cable news networks by name, and said they were the ones enabling the "rude" behavior that some of their on-air voices have decried by giving it so much attention.

Comedian Wanda Sykes is back in Washington this weekend for two shows at the Warner Theatre. Randy Shulman of the local gay magazine Metro Weekly interviewed her and found not one iota of regret for calling Rush Limbaugh a terrorist and wishing his kidneys would fail at this spring’s White House Correspondents Dinner. Instead, she complained that people who loved the harsh jokes were hypocrites for laughing then and disapproving later:

METRO WEEKLY: Do you ever worry about stepping out of bounds, about doing a joke that’s gone too far?

SYKES: I don’t worry about it. My barometer is that I don’t want to be mean spirited – just to attack someone for the sake of doing it. If you started it, I have a right to go after you. If you did something, I can go after you. But I want it to be about what you did and not just a personal attack or something.

Washington Post fashion writer Robin Givhan used her Sunday column to find racism in the exception taken to Wanda Sykes describing Rush Limbaugh as the 20th terrorist on 9-11 and hoping his kidneys fail. Givhan never actually detailed those outbreaks of meanness. She merely suggested that a white guy like Stephen Colbert could get away with it, but not a black woman:

Comedian Wanda Sykes has been taken to the woodshed because her humor at the White House Correspondents' Association dinner turned pointed. Words alone didn't cause all that aggravation. A lot of it had to do with the person doing the talking. And how she looks.

Givhan ended by lecturing Washington that it should have never expected Sykes to be demure and not sassy. (This is a bit stilted, since anyone who knows Sykes knows she’s sassy – including the liberal White House correspondents who selected her, like AP’s Jennifer Loven, who said Sykes was selected for her "fresh style and engaging stage presence.") Givhan complained:

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Pres. Obama reacts after Wanda Sykes says of Rush Limbaugh: "I hope his kidneys fail.  How about that?"  Washington Correspondents' Association dinner, May 9, 2009.

On Friday’s American Morning, CNN anchor Kiran Chetry used the liberal talking points about Wanda Sykes and Rush Limbaugh, the two “Wingnuts of the Week,” according to John Avlon of The Daily Beast, Tina Brown’s Huffington Post knock-off site. After playing clips from Sykes’ now-infamous routine which bashed the talk show host and wished him dead, Chetry replied, “So, some would say, wait, she’s just a comedian, and she was trying to get laughs at the correspondents’ dinner. So what’s the harm in her joke, and why do her comments qualify her for wingnut of the week?” Later, the anchor asked Avlon concerning Limbaugh, “He’s certainly really dominated the voice of the GOP for -- for the past several months, and, you know, the left has been saying he’s the new voice of the Republican Party. Why did you pick him as the wingnut of the week?” [audio excerpt available here]

The CNN program began the “Wingnut of the Week” last week with Avlon, as a proposed regular segment on Fridays targeting, in his words, “the professional polarizers, the unhinged activists, the folks who are trying to always hijack our debates and divide us.” His picks last week were Representative Michelle Bachmann, for her recent anti-Jimmy Carter remark, and former Representative Cynthia McKinney, for comparing herself to Rosa Parks and referring to Washington, DC as a “Zionist-occupied government.”

Same-sex marriage remains illegal in most U.S. states, including the state of California where comedian and actress Wanda Sykes was "married" last October prior to the successful passage of Proposition 8. What's more, the issue is highly contentious in the District of Columbia where many religious African-American Democratic voters are upset with the city council for approving a bill to recognize same-sex marriages performed in other jurisdictions.

Yet the Washington Post seems confident that its readers will take no offense to the paper's granting the label of "wife" to the Limbaugh death-wishing comic's lover.

From today's Reliable Source gossip column:

Radio and MSNBC host Ed Schultz, he of hefty chip on shoulder when it comes to Rush Limbaugh, could hardly contain his glee over alleged comedian Wanda Sykes' criticism of Limbaugh at the White House correspondents' dinner.

Sykes likened Limbaugh to "the 20th hijacker" on 9/11 for possessing the audacity to hope that Obama fails in bankrupting the nation or leaving America vulnerable to attack.

Schultz told his radio listeners on Monday that he was in the audience at the dinner and got a huge kick out of Sykes' remarks (click here for audio) --

On Monday night’s Daily Show, Jon Stewart warmly recalled Stephen Colbert having the "titanium balls" to mock President Bush at the White House correspondents dinner in 2006. Predictably, he also came to the defense of Wanda Sykes for going soft on Obama and wishing Rush Limbaugh dead at this year's dinner. Stewart played both of the nasty Sykes jokes, and then made fun of Bill Bennett for objecting on CNN, joking about how Bennett referred to his wife in the third person. Then Stewart bizarrely compared Sykes jokes to waterboarding:

STEWART: So sometimes comedians are so offensive that Bill Bennett and his lovely wife Elaine Bennett have to leave the room because offensive jokes are not a hallmark of good decent society. They are over the line. By the way, what is waterboarding? Is that over the line.

BENNETT: [Graphic: April 23] These were serious measures. This is not torture. These were serious measures. [Graphic: May 10] I don't care if you do call it torture.

STEWART: Bad jokes, and gay marriage are destroying this country – but torture can save it.

On Monday morning’s Today, NBC seemed to respond to Wanda Sykes making jokes about hoping Rush Limbaugh being the 20t terrorist and hoping his kidneys would fail...by making the issue Limbaugh’s potential to be a liability for the Republicans. There was no question whether Wanda Sykes was a liability for the Democrats, or the White House correspondents who invited her to wish Limbaugh dead on a national stage. In a report by NBC’s Savannah Guthrie (complete with the on-screen question "Is Limbaugh a Liability To The GOP?"), Rush was controversial, while Sykes was apparently just funny:

GUTHRIE: Meantime over the weekend, radio host Rush Limbaugh continued to dominate the political conversation in Washington.

OBAMA: The Republican Party does not qualify for a bailout. Rush Limbaugh does not count as a troubled asset. I'm sorry.

GUTHRIE: On Sunday, former Vice President Dick Cheney, was asked if he had to choose between having Limbaugh or former Secretary of State Colin Powell, who endorsed Obama, in the Republican Party, the former VP did not hesitate.

DICK CHENEY: Well if I had to choose, in terms of being a Republican, I'd go with Rush Limbaugh I think. I think, my take on it was that Colin had already left the party. I didn't know he was still a Republican.

On Monday’s CBS Early Show, co-host Harry Smith and weatherman Dave Price described attending Saturday’s White House Correspondents Dinner and Smith commented on the controversial joke about Rush Limbaugh made by comedian Wanda Sykes: "She told a joke about Rush Limbaugh as being one of the -- one of the hijackers and the reason he didn't make the flight was because he was, you know, on drugs or whatever...And the whole place -- yeah -- so the whole place groaned, and I ran into Keith Olbermann afterwards...And he said 'I'm not sure, I think that was probably -- probably in bad taste.' I said 'what do you think her job is?’"

In one of many jokes attacking conservatives, Sykes remarked: "I think maybe Rush Limbaugh was the 20th hijacker, but he was just so strung out on oxycontin he missed his flight." Apparently, while even left-wing bomber thrower Keith Olbermann thought that was over the line, Smith defended Sykes: "Well, you know what, any comedian, anybody who does that job, their job is to push the envelope...You can't go home -- you can't go home to the community of comedians unless you've gone too far."

Co-host Julie Chen later wondered: "But how did the room react, you guys, who was there?" Smith replied: "They groaned, serious groan...And Michelle Obama, in particular, was very uncomfortable with some of Wanda Sykes." Dave Price explained: "It was pretty much the only groan. I mean, there were a couple of other small ones. But she was -- she was pretty much en fuego [on fire]."

On CNN’s Sunday Morning program, anchor John King revealed that he thought comedian Wanda Sykes’ barb at Rush Limbaugh at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner was in poor taste: “You know, I don’t give personal opinions that often, but I give you one here. I think that one was probably a tad over the taste line, and you could sense that around the room. Even Democrats, who are no fan [sic] of Rush Limbaugh -- a lot of them had a little bit of a cringe at that moment.” King later brought up the issue with Republican operative Mary Matalin and the Huffington Post’s Hilary Rosen on his own State of the Union program, where Rosen defended Sykes’ off-color joke.

King brought up Sykes during a segment with anchors T.J. Holmes and Betty Nguyen just before the bottom half of the 8 am Eastern hour. After briefly mentioning some of President Obama’s act at the dinner, King mentioned how the comedian “did cause some groans and some -- some uncomfortable moments in the room.” Nguyen replied that “we’ve gotten a lot of traffic on our Twitter and Facebook pages” about Sykes’ attack on Limbaugh, and asked how her act went over. The State of the Union anchor answered:

KING: Some people were laughing because most of the jokes leading up to it were very funny, and people were laughing, and then you could sort of sense a little bit of the oxygen come out of the room -- people start to cringe a little bit. You know, I don’t give personal opinions that often, but I give you one here. I think that one was probably a tad over the taste line, and you could sense that around the room. Even Democrats, who are no fan [sic] of Rush Limbaugh -- a lot of them had a little bit of a cringe at that moment.

Time's Joe Klein on Sunday accused conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh of "delivering misinformation, lies to a large audience in America."

Such was said during quite a debate between himself and the Washington Times' Amanda Carpenter on CNN's "Reliable Sources."

After Klein angrily made this comment, even host Howard Kurtz seemed a bit taken aback by it saying, "Well, lies is a strong word, but we'll come back to that another time."

What follows is the video and partial transcript of this exchange that began when Kurtz brought up some of the potentially over the line jokes made at Saturday evening's White House Correspondents' Association dinner:

NewsBuster Tim Graham asked Saturday if comedienne Wanda Sykes, appearing at the annual White House Correspondents' Association Dinner, would really make fun of President Barack Obama or go all gentle.

Well, the answer is likely worse than any of us could have imagined, for Sykes used this platform to attack conservatives rather than the person who is historically roasted at this event.

In fact, her only real knocks on Obama were that he's constantly being photographed with his shirt off, and that if he screws up, everybody will blame it on "the half white guy!" 

After some respectful and largely complimentary jokes about the President, including how he's really not all that great on the basketball court, Sykes attacked Republicans, conservative pundits, and white people (video part I embedded right, part II below the fold with some lowlights):

As Tim Graham reported earlier, comedian Wanda Sykes was given the spotlight for the White House Correspondents' Dinner tonight. We wondered if she'd throw a barb or two Obama's way as is customary. All past hosts have spared no opportunity to skewer the current commander in chief and his administration. That is what the thing is for, after all.

Well, even if comedian Sykes did give a lighthearted whack or two to The One, we wouldn't know about it by listening to the ABC Radio news break at the top of the 10PM hour (central). During the radio news break a report was aired on the dinner that featured one of Sykes' jokes.

Was it about Barack? Michelle? Even an Obama staffer? Nope. ABC couldn't find its way clear to air any of those jokes. No, what ABC aired was Sykes' joke about... Dick Cheney. Isn't he out of office?

Barack Obama’s first White House Correspondents’ Dinner is tonight, and the comedian in the roasting job is Wanda Sykes. The burning question: will Sykes really make fun of the president, or go all gentle, since she is a big Obama fan?

I suspect she’ll do a few jokes in the usual accepted vein, some messiah jokes and some tax-evading nominee jokes, but nothing like Stephen Colbert’s 2006 Bush-trashing leftist routine, complete with Helen Thomas-like attacks on the media for being in Bush’s pocket. Here's some examples:

– To actually sit here, at the same table with my hero, George W. Bush, to be this close to the man. I feel like I'm dreaming. Somebody pinch me. You know what? I'm a pretty sound sleeper -- that may not be enough. Somebody shoot me in the face.

From that quiet and lonely place where comedians consider the rare possibility and danger of making fun of Barack Obama, Amy Chozick of The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday that Wanda Sykes is trying out some Obama jokes on the road in anticipation of her May comedy gig at the White House Correspondents Dinner in Washington:

"It's so crazy how everyone is just in love with this man," Ms. Sykes said. She imitated a love-struck teenager calling into a radio show. "I would like to dedicate 'Always and Forever' to my president."

The audience laughed.

Mr. Obama should have chosen New York Gov. David Patterson as his vice president, she continued. "Who's going to hurt the half-black guy if you're going to be left with the whole black, blind guy?"

The audience groaned.