From the Associated Press:

NEW YORK — A frequent contributor to a jihadist website has threatened David Letterman, urging Muslim followers to “cut the tongue” of the late-night host because of a joke the comic made on his CBS show.

The Site Monitoring Service, a private intelligence organization that watches online activity, said Wednesday that the threat was posted a day earlier on the shumukh al-Islam forum, a popular Internet destination for radical Muslims.

Jihadist didn’t like his joke…

The contributor, who identified himself as Umar al-Basrawi, was reacting to what he said Letterman did after the U.S. military announced on June 5 that a drone strike in Pakistan had killed al-Qaida leader Ilyas Kashmiri.

Al-Basrawi wrote that Letterman had made reference to both Osama bin Laden and Kashmiri and said that Letterman had “put his hand on his neck and demonstrated the way of slaughter.”

“Is there not among you a Sayyid Nosair al-Mairi … to cut the tongue of this lowly Jew and shut it forever?” Al-Basrawi wrote, referring to El Sayyid Nosair, who was convicted of the 1990 killing of Jewish Defense League founder Meir Kahane. Letterman is not Jewish.

Al-Basrawi, which is likely to be an alias, has made some 1,200 postings to the Muslim website, said Adam Raisman, an analyst for the Site Monitoring Service. The private firm, part of the Site Intelligence Group, provides information to government and commercial clients on what jihadists are saying on the Internet and traditional media. Raisman said the online forum is often used by al-Qaida.

Muslim extremist groups in the past few months have increased calls for people to take violent action against certain targets in the West, he said.

“The concern is that there is someone who will read it, agree with it and say, ‘I want to be the Sayyid Nosair of 2011 and kill David Letterman,’” Raisman said.

The FBI is also looking into the threat, said Jim Margolin, spokesman for the bureau’s New York office. “We take every potential threat seriously,” he said.

Neither CBS nor a Letterman spokesman, Tom Keaney, would comment on the threat. CBS would not make available a transcript of Letterman’s monologue on the killing of Kashmiri.

Letterman has been the target of criminal threats in the past. A former CBS News producer was jailed for trying to extort $2 million from Letterman in 2009 by threatening to expose the host’s sexual dalliances with members of his staff. A former painter at Letterman’s ranch in Montana was jailed following a 2005 plot to kidnap the TV funnyman’s nanny and son.

A radical Muslim group last year warned the creators of “South Park” that they could face violent retribution for depicting the prophet Muhammad in a bear suit on the Comedy Central cartoon. Author Salman Rushdie spent years in hiding after Iranian leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini urged he be killed for blasphemy after writing the book “The Satanic Verses.”

Filmmaker Theo van Gogh was killed on an Amsterdam street in 2004 by a Dutch Muslim angered by his film “Submission,” a fictional study of abused Muslim women.

Sarah Palin will be joined by an unlikely group of co-stars in her upcoming film: Matt Damon, Rosie O’Donnell, David Letterman and Bill Maher, among other Hollywood celebrities who loathe her.

The stars appear in the feature-length biography of Palin from documentary filmmaker Stephen Bannon that is designed to reintroduce Palin as a woman who rose from nowhere to become the nation’s most popular governor. …

While the celebrities are only a small part of the film, Bannon’s goal is to remind moviegoers of the vile comments made about Palin, and he hopes the rest of the film makes the case that they were calculated and undeserved. …

Bannon made The Undefeated for $1 million and he predicts that, whether or not Palin runs for president in 2012, the film will help shape the narrative of the election and the various campaigns.
 
“This will go off like an atomic bomb in the upcoming Republican primary,” he says.

Full piece here.

Yes, Trump said “the blacks.” So what? VP Biden said “clean and articulate,” Senate Majority Leader Reid said “negro dialect,” and Sen. Robert Byrd, a one-time Grand Wizard of the KKK, used the N-word on television just a few years before his death. Like him or not, watching  the same MSM that eagerly participated in the “high tech lynching” of Clarence Thomas now attempting to smear Trump as racist is no different than watching a witch hunt. Pure and simple, this is a baseless charge being hurled to intimidate and quiet a political opponent.

Moreover, you would think that of all people, Hollywood would be the most careful about participating in this kind of political-baiting, but just last week Letterman jumped right on the New Blacklist Bandwagon with a threat to ban Trump from his show for being a communist racist.

Smelling an obvious set-up and not taking the charge lying down, Trump struck back at the bitter and increasingly mean-spirited and partisan “Late Show” host this morning:

—–

Was questioning George W. Bush’s intelligence racist — a phony narrative Letterman himself relentlessly pushed?

Was digging into Bush’s National Guard records three-years into his presidency racist and off-limits?

Letterman knows Trump is no racist, he’s just trying to chill the billionaire into silence and at the same time send a ‘dog-whistle’ to his showbiz pals to follow suit. They all watched Obama’s poll numbers drop as Trump went after their precious one, and now they’re hurling around the word “racist” just as readily as McCarthy hurled “communist” in order to shut Trump up and shut him down. 

This is nothing more than a variation of the showbiz blacklist of the 1950s; the creation of a phony charge in order to intimidate into silence and marginalize a political opponent.   

Just as there are Birthers, there are now Racers — people obsessed with race and using the race card as a political weapon.

2012 is already getting ugly and we’re not even halfway through 2011.

—–

Ooh. So edgy, bold and original.

Maybe the card’s other side has a Top 10 Reasons Jokes About Sarah Palin’s Children Are Funny.

No doubt we missed the cards that mocked Obama, Reid, and Pelosi in year’s past. Letterman’s just an entertainer, don’t you know, not a partisan.

I think we can all take a wild guess.

Whether it’s the feigned offense from the derogatory use of the word “gay” in Vince Vaughn’s “The Dilemma” or Tinseltown’s constant hurt feelings over the op-ed journalists at Fox News, one’s thing’s for sure; Hollywood doesn’t exactly have a thick skin.

At least not when it comes to the things that the media elite love to huddle around.  Sure there are the old whipping-post standby’s like Christians, conservatives and white men. They’re fair game. Turn the guns on the politically correct cause du jour however, and “funny” seems to go right out the window. Even equal opportunity offenders aren’t welcome (see Sean Penn’s feud with Matt Stone and Trey Parker of South Park).

Sam Kinison made fun of all of it. Actually “assaulted” is probably a better word. The man was a former minister, so he had his finger to the pulse of Christian hypocrisy and he knew how to push the right buttons within the community. Just as surely, he’d turn around on a blistering rant about neo-Liberals and their pansified antics. If there were targets, he would hit them.

Could he do that today?  I mean, could he REALLY do that today?  With people like the ACLU, Tim Robbins and Sean Penn, political correctness is no longer about being offended but about goons attempting to intimidate people into their way of thinking. 

If the idea of Sean Penn as a goon makes you laugh, please understand that I’m only using the term in a psychological sense as yes, Sean Penn would most likely get bitch-slapped by Vern Troyer.

With the entertainment industry elite, it is no longer enough to be “offended.” It is now also their duty to prevent people from offending any further. Whether it’s blacklisting, boycotting or simply public badmouthing, the intimidation machine of Hollywood is a powerful one and you can be sure that today, it would fear a Sam Kinison.

It’s for that very reason that comedy today, while still funny, has rendered itself topically irrelevant.  From SNL’s kissing of the King’s ring to David Letterman’s one-sided skew, mainstream comedians are afraid to truly go against the grain.  Instead, they decide to play it safe and then herald themselves as biting political satirists.

No, Hollywood, making your thousandth joke at the expense of Christians isn’t treading new ground and doesn’t make your tired material any more cutting edge than Gallagher’s watermelon schtick.

I was a young comic, barely breaking in my comedy teeth when I got to work with Sam. I was booked at Yuk-Yuks in Rochester NY, when Sam did a string of dates around the franchise, in early 1986. I was already booked at the Rochester Yuks all week, and Sam came in for two nights of that tour. I not only got to see his show twice, I was privileged to hang with him late in to the evening at the condo that first night.

—–

It was a week that changed my entire perspective on the art of comedy. I like most other beginners had a pretty simple act, just trying to get people to laugh. I was looking for the funny in pop culture references, maybe making fun of a television commercial, or the new practice of putting missing kids pictures on the sides of milk cartons. I was just another happy eighties comic with a skinny tie, open collar and my blazer sleeves pushed up to my elbows.

Sam did something I had never seen on a comedy stage before. He took real issues and dissected them with a comedy scalpel. On second thought, make that a chainsaw. He tore through the status quo with the subtly of a Pete Townsend power chord, wailing like a heavy metal priest. His act was an hour stream of consciousness, alternating between calm rationality and the battle of the id. He was Speed Metal to the Billy Joel pop that was passing for comedy in those days

Something few people know is that Sam never actually screamed while he was on stage. What he did was raise the pitch of his voice to sound like he was screaming, and turned the mike way up to compensate for the missing volume. It was an elocutionary device he learned from his days as an evangelist preacher.

Sam was actually a really nice guy. It’s one of the first things I learned in comedy, is that the guys whose stage character is mean, usually aren’t on stage (conversely, the really nice guy on stage, is the one with the Tolstoy-length rider.) Sam was warm, generous, and quiet backstage, and I’m still grateful for the time and patience he spent with a young wide-eyed comic, just learning the ropes.

I didn’t realize it then, but I was evangelized. Rather than be content to make simple jokes, I wanted to become like Sam. I took on a new character, and began savaging the things in America that frustrated me: The Drug War, taxes, censorship, and other institutions.

But something happened in the meantime. There was a new wave across the landscape. After Nora Dunn boycotted Saturday Night Live the evening that Andrew Dice Clay was supposed to appear, there was a notion that Americans had the right to be unoffended. As I started breaking into TV, political correctness swept the nation like a chilling frost.

—–

It probably cut my rise on television short.  I had been on both MTV and Showtime, when I came up with a great piece about how men have a better sense of humor than women (I’ve posted a 1998 version above). Though it is by no means the caliber of Sam, you can see the watermark. Even though it deals with adult concepts, it’s clean enough for late night. Only recently did I find out that a lot of women found the bit incredibly offensive; which was a shock. It was always my impression that it actually supported women. Had the bit been a part of the Vagina Monologues, it probably would have been widely acclaimed for it’s bold empowering perspective.

Unfortunately I used it for a showcase bit, and women who had attended college during the glorious rise of political correctness were now the bottom-rung talent scouts for the TV shows. Following in the brave footsteps of Nora Dunn, they were fulfilling their duty to censor any comic deemed “offensive” to women.

And it still persists. I did a showcase for David Letterman’s talent coordinator just a couple years ago, and before the showcase he sent  me an email of what he didn’t want me see me do. There was a list of politically correct rules that comic were to follow, but most notably: there will be no making fun of the disadvantaged, and no talking with the audience. Shortly after the showcase (which went quite well actually) my distributor sent me the clip of Sam Kinison’s first Letterman appearance (posted at top). In it, Sam violated both of those rules, something that today’s young comics cannot do.

So can a young comic rise as far as Sam? Not on the television networks. Network TV has been zombified by their Human Resources Departments, they have a hard time seeing the funny in a controversial topic.

On the upside, the television networks no longer hold the power they once wielded; in 2010, things are different. The disease of Political Correctness is so ingrained in society, that Comedy Clubs are the only place where free speech is truly practiced. The Internet allows comics that nobody ever heard of to rise up in the ranks quite quickly. Clubs are selling out shows with comics that the networks have never heard of.

Meanwhile radio has been very good to me. The bit that television rejected is now in heavy rotation on XM/Sirius. My recent Stand-Up for America tours, which have been cross promoted on talk radio, are finally finding an audience for what the network executives rejected long ago. Just as the Big sites are the dawn of open journalism, technology is bringing to a close the Dark Age of Comedy

The truth is that Seinfeld reflects the worst among us. It is made up of a memorable cast, all of whom play the most self-serving people you could ever meet. Self-absorbed, vain and often underhanded, the show is a perfect embodiment of many involved with the entertainment industry.  You’ve got to love its transparency. Unlike James Cameron (who is just as materialistic and self-serving as a George Costanza), you never have to worry about the show sermonizing the politically correct cause du jour.

Funnily enough, it is Seinfeld’s lack of a soapbox that spurs me to take a good hard look at myself more than any other show on television. How often do you find yourself disgusted at the selfishness of George or Jerry, only to realize that you’ve most likely acted similarly (if not identically) at one point or another?

Whether it’s as mundane as bragging about a prime parking space or as shameful as breaking up with a dame due to hygienic differences, we’ve all found ourselves in “Seinfeld moments” more often than we care to admit.  How often have you watched the show with your friends only to hear echoes of, “Oh, that’s so something  you would do.”

Miraculously enough, I’ve probably made more self-corrections from watching Seinfeld than I ever would from listening to today’s self-righteous celebrities. Isn’t that the way life goes?  Whether it’s your parents putting a limit on your candy intake as a child or a pompous celebrity demanding that you adopt his opinion as your own, when someone else tries to force you, your natural instinct is to rebel. Action meets reaction. But when someone lays everything out on the table and allows you to make your own decisions, more often than not, you’ll opt for the right one. You find yourself thinking things like, “Hrm, Mom was right.  Eight pounds of Pixie Stix probably isn’t such a great idea.” Or, “I now see why fires should only be lit in a contained area.”

In the same way, when watching Seinfeld, one often finds themselves with a well-deserved feeling of guilt in their gut, muttering, “Well, I’ll never do that again.”  A mirror’s reflection is the greatest tool one can use toward self improvement, and Seinfeld is one hell of a mirror.

That’s why I love this show.

Plus, Letterman just sucks these days.

As a fan, I didn’t want Letterman to move into Carson’s chair.   Not because Letterman couldn’t handle it.  It just seemed too refined for someone as eccentric and edgy as Letterman.  Turned out NBC saw it that way too when they awarded “Tonight” to Leno.  It pained Letterman.  But it helped to foster that continued edgy, underdog status that led fans like me to follow him to CBS.

Letterman’s historically large deal with CBS was fascinating.  He was granted an enormous contract and complete ownership of his own show.  A show that could be built from the ground up with no expectations or standards set by a previous host like Carson at NBC.  More importantly, Letterman answered to no one.  He became his own boss – a dream scenario for an entertainer who always answered to someone else.

For fans at home it was like watching the underdog finally win one.  He won by remaining true to his “Late Night” formula.  Silly characters, Stupid Pet and Human Tricks, Top Ten Lists all made the trip to the new show.   Though Letterman only enjoyed one year atop the ratings heap versus Leno - it mattered not to me and people my age.  Ask a high school or college kid at the time who was the “cool” host, or the “funny” host – Letterman won in a landslide.

As a college student in the rural Midwest, I applied to become an intern with my broadcasting hero.  I would later discover hundreds of kids a semester applied for one of fifteen spots as interns on the show.  Although I presumed I stood little chance, the internship coordinator informed me that Letterman’s show favored Midwesterners.  Letterman was a Midwest kid himself, and the show was of the mindset that Midwest kids were generally polite, conscientious, and hard working.  It was the most exciting, promising, thrilling moment a young college kid with a broadcasting dream could have.

It took only a few months of my internship to learn a thing about the business of comedy, at least as it relates to Letterman.   It was not an epicenter of fun and creativity.  Rather, it was an atmosphere of employees who worked for a man many of them never saw and seldom, if ever talked to.  Many of his employees seemed to resent his cold distance.  He was most certainly guarded and unapproachable.  This was not the irreverent showman I came to adore. The wide-eyed enthusiasm I arrived with in New York was quickly dashed. 

To be clear, I never witnessed anything inappropriate as it relates to Mr. Letterman.   I was not mistreated nor was there any juicy gossip overheard during my stay.  The knowledge I came home with regarding Letterman was purely observational. Honest students of “Late Show” and comedy in general have certainly come to the same conclusion.  Letterman, we must sadly confess, is seldom funny anymore.

It’s hard to know just when his entertainment value began to decline.  It most likely began the day he became his own boss, ironically.  Letterman’s personal work ethic he admired in Midwesterners like me seemed to be wanting.  He slowly phased out any sketch comedy that featured him.  It was a staple of his old shows.  The Alka-Seltzer-covered suit he sported before jumping in a tank of water and the Velcro suit that left him stuck to a wall of fabric were no longer.  His roving interviews and interaction on the streets of New York became less and less.  It was as though the thing that made Letterman so likable – his ability to be silly and laugh at himself – disappeared.  He was too important for that now.

Letterman’s personal politics have become so strident and hostile in just the last two years, any conservative feels unwelcome to watch.  He would regularly pontificate about the war in Iraq.  “George Bush is a dumb guy” jokes were told with such frequency it became rote.  When candidate John McCain had the “audacity” to cancel a scheduled appearance in 2008, Letterman blasted McCain with both barrels until Election Day.  A tasteless shot aimed at Sarah Palin’s daughter seemed to be the joke that broke the audiences’ back.  Letterman, after much public outrage, eventually apologized for the remark.  Then, the recent hour-long sit down with Barack Obama.  It seemed to be the host’s final admission.  Dave’s a pundit, not a comic. He’s not interested in entertaining the masses any longer.  Just the partisans. 

Letterman’s admission of sex with members of his staff and stories of sex in the office dominated his show in the last week.  News of his personal life, his humiliated and injured wife, his six year old son, and his beleaguered employees made a once entertaining show of comedy and variety nothing more than a television tabloid.  Ratings, while high, weren’t due to the quality of show being produced by the legendary host.  America is tuning in to see a famous man’s life crash and burn around him. 

David Letterman has, in fact taught this intern something.  He is a cautionary tale of the ultimate success story.  Success can be achieved through hard work, tenacity, and staying true to your style.  Success can also breed complacency.  Success can breed arrogance and narcissism that places your personal needs, wants, beliefs, and desires ahead of all others.  Success can ultimately be your undoing.

I wish I could have interned for that edgy, Midwestern underdog at NBC.

And with the full knowledge of what will happen next, the current King of Late Night. David Letterman announced to the world that he has been guilty of sexual indiscretions with some of his staff.

 That had to be difficult. Over the past 27 years we’ve enjoyed watching Letterman take apart people who have fallen prey to simple human urges. From Gary Hart’s Monkey Business, through Woody Allen and Soon Yi, into the Clinton years, and right up to the Palin scandal that forced an apology; David Letterman has been right on top of others’ indiscretions.

So he knew what he is facing. In a stifled apology on his show last night that sounded like it was written by Garrison Keillor, he got remorseful with the audience:

Maybe this looks better to you at noon, but six in the morning all you can think about is every terrible thing you’ve ever done in your entire life.

I am motivated by guilt…I’m just a towering mass of Lutheran Midwestern guilt

But you have to give Dave credit. He did do the right thing. A person of Letterman’s wealth and power could have paid the guy off. He also could have gone across the hall and had the guy fired.

I’m sure that CBS News, and “48 Hours,” both still reeling from the Memo-Gate scandal of 2004, would Rather have swept the whole thing under the rug (capitalization intended). They could have quietly dispatched him, and with a few well-placed phone calls made certain the guy never worked in another news room ever again. (As it looks now, Robert Halderman might be editing a Prison Newsletter in the near future.)

Yet, as Greg Gutfeld observed, he did the Right thing (again, capitalization intended). Many similar scandals have been worsened with a botched cover-up. This takes more courage from someone like Letterman, who knows all too well, the implements of his impending torture.

So now we wait for the court of Late Night to pronounce verdict. Will the other hosts show a little professional courtesy, or will they attack with all the bluster that Dave has attacked others in this predicament?

There is too much here NOT to go after: Ironic that Halderman wrote the Letter, and Letterman did the Handling.

And  these women should have KNOWN  they were working inside Worldwide Pants.

The top-ten lists practically write themselves.

I’m predicting that almost all the Late Nights will go after it. There’s just too much competition between the shows to let it lay. It would be hard not to.

Most interesting will be Craig Ferguson’s response. Craig actually works for the Pants, so it will be interesting to see if Craig’s impish personality will trump his corporate loyalty (assuming he’s even free to even mention it).

On the other hand, I think Bill Maher won’t touch it. Something tells me that Bill has several skeletons in his OWN closet, and will avoid it like a real debate. No sense setting up your own inquisition.

And the biggest question of all, what will David do?

Stay tuned!