Can nobody take a joke anymore?
Excerpt:
CONCORD, New Hampshire (AP) -- The Concord Monitor was wrong to run an editorial cartoon that depicted a plane labeled "Bush Budget" slamming into two towers labeled "Social Security," the newspaper's editor said.
"The decision to run Mike Marland's Friday editorial cartoon was mine alone, and it was a mistake," Editor Mike Pride wrote in a column that appeared Friday night on the newspaper's Web site and was to be published in Sunday's newspaper.
[snip...]
The cartoon also prompted a harsh response from the White House.
"Equating the president's budget with terrorist attacks that took 3,000 lives is as wrong as wrong can be," White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said. "This is tasteless and an affront to the people of New York."
Doing my best Marlowe impersonation I say:
First, the White house needs to stay out of it. Anything they say can (and will) be seen as an attempt at prior censorship of an issue that desperately needs debating.
Second, in spite of Fleischer's huffing and puffing, it is entirely possible that destroying Social Security will kill 3,000 or more per year. But, hey...they're old people of modest (or less) means, and besides, they don't vote Republican, so who cares?
Third, its a fscking joke awready...Get over it, ferchrissakes. Yes, it may have been in bad taste, and it could well have offended some people. But last I heard, offensive speach in bad taste was still protected (or did something happen last night that I wasn't aware of?), and the self-flagelation that Mike Pride, the paper's editor, had to go through was just not justified by the "crime" he "committed".
