Who Hates Sarah Silverman?

There still seems to be a lot of anger towards Ms. Silverman since her appearance the MTV Video Music Awards weeks ago when she referred to Britney Spears' children as "adorable mistakes". Frankly, I don't see what's so outrageous about a comedian (or comedienne, if you prefer) saying something offensive in an attempt to get laughs.  Isn't that pretty much par for the course?

Some might argue that it fell flat and just wasn't funny, and there's nothing wrong with having that opinion but lots of comics make jokes that fall flat — why is Silverman deserving of additional scrutiny? It appears the primary reason is that people felt sorry for Britney after her lackluster performance which preceded Silverman's roasting (too soon?)

But really, we're talking about a girl (and I say "girl" rather than "woman" because Ms. Spears, while undeniably physically mature — perhaps even past her prime — has yet to display mental or emotional maturity) who drove her car with an infant on her lap. We're talking about a girl that waited until after she was a parent to get completely messed up on drugs and/or alcohol requiring rehab.

So do people feel sorry because she's a single mom (by choice)? Or because she looked a little chunky and lame on stage and obviously realized it? Far worse things have been said about far better people, and they were still funny.  Spears on the other hand needs to get her life together and if a comic can't make a joke about someone who had it all and then turned into a complete idiot then what's this world coming to?

The Sarah Silverman Program, smartly anchored by Comedy Central immediately following South Park, is actually pretty funny too. In each show Sarah picks a theme — racism, abortion, bestiality, some bizarre stuff really — and then Sarah's character proceeds to blunder through a series of related events acting like a complete imbecile and yet somehow manages to explore the issue-at-hand rather artfully.

Ms. Silverman may not be everyone's cup of tea but between her and Ms. Spears the latter is far more worthy of public scorn. And the truth is that if you added a laugh track to Silverman's VMA performance and watched it again today (without re-watching Spears' sad lip-sync-n-dance-job), it was actually pretty funny! I say give the girl a chance, and if you're up after South Park give her show a look-see.

- one

P.S. if you don't watch South Park you really should — 10+ years of solid material (including some really good political & social commentary) and counting.