PBS Ombudsman: Would Mark Twain Have Edited Tina Fey?
I’ll take the liberty of answering the question in the headline: “I doubt it.”
But that’s what the producers of the annual Mark Twain Prize for American Humor did to the show that was aired nationally on PBS last Sunday. It was a decision that resulted in far more negative news coverage, and online and e-mail expressions of outrage, than the largely positive reviews of the live performance a few days earlier.
A couple of quick points:
First, the producers of this event — Comedia and Mark Krantz Productions — are experienced. They’ve been doing the Twain Prize show since it started in 1998 in conjunction with the Kennedy Center and with PBS as a broadcast partner.
This time, however, I think the producers made a big mistake, one that was virtually certain to come back and bite them and PBS, in editing out several lines Fey used in the actual live performance about supporters of former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.
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I would REALLY appreciate it if the media would stop pulling this nonsense. That goes double when it’s PBS.
The comments about Palin start around 11:30:
