White House Distances Itself From Wanda Sykes's Joke About Rush Limbaugh

Posted by Amanda Terkel, Think Progress at 12:34 PM on May 11, 2009.

At the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner on Saturday night, comedian Wanda Sykes raised eyebrows with her controversial joke about Rush Limbaugh. Sykes joked that “maybe Rush Limbaugh was the 20th hijacker, but he was so strung out on Oxycontin he missed his flight.” Several media outlets began saying that Obama seemed to “like” Sykes’s joke. However, in today’s White House press briefing, Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said that the administration thought Sykes’s joke went too far:

I think the President — I haven’t talked specifically with him, but my guess is, Jeff — I think there are a lot of topics that are better left for serious reflection rather than comedy. I think there’s no doubt that 9/11 is part of that.

Watch it:

Tagged as: 9/11, rush limbaugh, wanda sykes

Amanda Terkel is Deputy Research Director at the Center for American Progress and serves as Deputy Editor for The Progress Report and ThinkProgress.org at the Center for American Progress.