We’ve noted how the Media Research Center gives conservative comedians a pass for saying offensive things (perhaps because it’s not offended by, say, rampant homophobia) that it would never give to a non-conservative comedian who offended the MRC’s right-wing sensibilities.
Well, the MRC’s Gabriel Hays had a meltdown over an obvious joke by George Lopez in a Jan. 6 post:
Trying to walk back his enthusiastic support for Iran’s $80 million bounty on Trump’s head, terminal TDS sufferer George Lopez claimed his comment that “we’ll do it for half” was just “a joke.”
Yeah, presidential assassination on behalf of an evil, anti-American government. All in good fun, eh?
[…]Even with lefties in the media accusing Trump of possibly committing “war crimes” over his bombing of the leader of the Iranian Royal Guard Corps — a terrorist organization — Lopez’s unhinged joke stuck out like a sore thumb.
In his rage, Hays missed the obvious thing Lopez was riffing on: the trope that immigrants, typically Hispanics, are considered cheap labor.
By comparison, the MRC had little to say when right-wing gun activist Ted Nugent declared that he would be “dead or in jail” if Barack Obama won re-election in 2012. At the time, all it served up was Jeremiah Wright whataboutism even though Wright never threatened a president’s life.
Then again, Hays’ comedic tastes tend to lean toward transphobia, having already defended Ricky Gervais for it.