Are You Joking?

Here's a piece by Jeffrey Jena on David Letterman finally showing the Bill Hicks piece he wouldn't air in 1993. Jena discusses what should and shouldn't be broadcast. He notes:

When Alec Baldwin was on Conan and “joked” about killing Henry Hyde and his family I was outraged. It’s a crime if you name the wrong person, and even though we may not like Billy Ray Cyrus or the other “Bill’s” named at the top of [Hicks'] monologue, calling for violence against anyone on national television is morally objectionable.

I saw the Baldwin bit when it first aired in late 1998. It was a rather stupid comment on the politics of the day, and perhaps one should be careful about calling for the death of any political figure, but there was no question he was joking. So I'm not sure why Jena feels the need to put "joked" in quotation marks. Is he unsure Baldwin was joking? Or did he just not find it funny?

For your entertainment, here's the transcript:

Baldwin: The President is very popular and things are going pretty good and they are voting to impeach the President. They voted on one article of impeachment already. And I come back from Africa to stained dresses and cigars and this and impeachment. I am thinking to myself in other countries they are laughing at us twenty four hours a day and I’m thinking to myself if we were in other countries, we would all right now, all of us together, (shouting) all of us together would go down to Washington and we would stone Henry Hyde to death! We would stone him to death! (crowd cheers) Wait! Shut up! Shut up! No shut up! I’m not finished. We would stone Henry Hyde to death and we would go to their homes and we’d kill their wives and their children. We would kill their families. (stands up and screams) What is happening in this country? What is happening?

A friend insisted I also include Baldwin's phone call to his 11-year-old daughter, so here it is: