Stop you if you heard this one: A slip-and-fall lawyer turned liberal Democrat politician running for Congress attends a fundraiser wherein numerous comedians crack jokes predicated on rape. You haven't heard it? Maybe that's because the broadcast networks have failed to pick up the story.
Yes, the same media outlets that made sure Richard Mourdock and Todd Akin were household names are conspicuously silent when it comes to reporting on the rape jokes made during a fundraiser for the bombastic ex-Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.) this week.
Grayson is the one-term. hyper-partisan Democratic congressman from Florida, who famously said on the House floor that the Republican health care plan was for sick people to "die quickly.” It’s no surprise that leftist comedian and actress Sarah Silverman, along with four other comedians, rushed to the rescue to help raise cash for the independently-wealthy Grayson, who is mounting another congressional run in another district.
As reported by Jaime Weinstein at The Daily Caller yesterday, the fundraiser was littered with rape jokes. “Comedian Jimmy Dore riffed on how he and his wife were poor when they were younger and couldn’t afford birth control. ‘Guess you’re going to have to rape me,’ Dore mimicked his wife saying,” according to Weinstein.
The worst offender was the incredibly crass Silverman -- you may recall she offered to "scissor" Republican super PAC donor Sheldon Adelson if he gave money to President Obama's reelection campaign -- who after going up on stage listening:
…to Enya’s “Only Time,” Silverman declared to much laughter as the music faded, “Wow. God, I love that song — I was a brutally raped to that song.' ‘Didn’t ruin it for me,’ she added. Silverman went on to explain that while rape is perhaps the most “heinous crime imaginable,” rape jokes are a ‘hidden gem in comedy.’ Rape jokes are great because they make a comedian seem very edgy and very dangerous,” she said. Plus, she added, ‘who’s going to complain?’
Silverman joked that rape victims are “traditionally not complainers” and the worst that could happen is ”after a show a woman might come up to you and say, ‘Look, I’m a victim of rape … and I thought that joke was insensitive and inappropriate and totally my fault.’”
Moving away from rape jokes, Silverman told the crowd of just under 100 that they must remember that both conservatives and liberals want the best for the country, even if liberals are more ‘open-minded’ and conservatives are “less open-minded” and ” a little more ‘faggot-ish.’
Rick Overton, who Weinstein said was the least funny, decided that he wasn’t going to flee the country if Republican nominee Mitt Romney won and said that he was “going to stay here and fight…my dad fought Nazis and turned snow red in France with Germans.” Nazi references always are a classy touch when talking about the liberal democratic dynamics of our system of government.
Let’s not forget racism. “Another comedian, David Feldman…speaking of former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice… joked, ‘if she could read intelligence memos the way she reads teleprompters, the twin towers would still be standing,” according to Weinstein.
While NBC, ABC, and CBS have decided to undercut this night of despicable behavior, one print news outlet, The Tampa Bay Times, which linked to the DC piece, also commented on the event with the headline “Does bad taste have no bounds?” Apparently, liberals don’t.
If the media are so bent out of shape over Republican candidates views on protecting the life of unborn children conceived via rape, shouldn’t calling jokes about the detestable crime, a “hidden gem of comedy,” outrage them? How is that worse than saying that God creates life, even the life wrought because of a heinous crime?
Granted, Grayson is in the grand scheme of things a political sideshow, but one could argue that the Akin controversy was one as well. The media's selective outrage in service of liberal narratives and in the electoral interests of liberal Democrats is apparent in this double standard.
