Anti-Palin remarks get snipped from Tina Fey's Mark Twain Prize acceptance speech

By The Reliable Source



Tina Fey during her acceptance speech, 2010. (Marvin Joseph /TWP)



Tina Fey got a little political airbrushing from PBS on Sunday night during its annual broadcast of the Kennedy Center's Mark Twain Prize for American Humor.

Fey, this year's recipient of the prize, caused a few ripples during her acceptance speech at the ceremony on Tuesday when she mock-praised "conservative women" like Sarah Palin, whom Fey has so memorably impersonated on "Saturday Night Live." As reported in Wednesday's Post, Fey said the rise of conservative women in politics is good for all women, "unless you don't want to pay for your own rape kit ... unless you're a lesbian who wants to get married to your partner of 20 years ... [or] unless you believe in evolution."

But that's not what viewers heard when PBS and WETA (Channel 26) broadcast an edited version of Fey's speech on Sunday.

The part about rape kits and evolution was gone, leaving only Fey's more harmonious -- and blander -- comments about Palin and politics: "I would be a liar and an idiot if I didn't thank Sarah Palin for helping get me here tonight. My partial resemblance and her crazy voice are the two luckiest things that ever happened to me. All kidding aside, I'm so proud to represent American humor, I am proud to be an American, and I am proud to make my home in the 'not real' America. And I am most proud that during trying times, like an orange [terror] alert, a bad economy or a contentious election, that we as a nation retain our sense of humor."

Was PBS shielding its viewers from Fey's more pointed remarks?

"It was not a political decision," responded Peter Kaminsky, one of the broadcast's executive producers. "We had zero problems with anything she said."

But with the 90-minute show running about 19 minutes long after the taping Tuesday night, a few things had to give, Kaminsky said. "We took a lot out," he said. "We snipped from everyone."

This isn't the first time editors have stepped on a Twain recipient's bit. When George Carlin was posthumously awarded the prize in 2008, the show's producers spared the ears of the Kennedy Center audience by bleeping out the naughty parts from a video of Carlin doing his famous "Seven Dirty Words" routine. Thus, a monologue about words you couldn't say on television became one you couldn't say in the Kennedy Center, either.

-- Paul Farhi



