Wanda Sykes Has Zero Regrets for Calling Limbaugh a Terrorist, Wishing Him Kidney Failure

August 22nd, 2009 8:11 AM

Comedian Wanda Sykes is back in Washington this weekend for two shows at the Warner Theatre. Randy Shulman of the local gay magazine Metro Weekly interviewed her and found not one iota of regret for calling Rush Limbaugh a terrorist and wishing his kidneys would fail at this spring’s White House Correspondents Dinner. Instead, she complained that people who loved the harsh jokes were hypocrites for laughing then and disapproving later:

METRO WEEKLY: Do you ever worry about stepping out of bounds, about doing a joke that’s gone too far?

SYKES: I don’t worry about it. My barometer is that I don’t want to be mean spirited – just to attack someone for the sake of doing it. If you started it, I have a right to go after you. If you did something, I can go after you. But I want it to be about what you did and not just a personal attack or something.

MW: Which is where Rush Limbaugh comes in. You leveled several vicious – and I would agree in his case completely earned – jokes in his direction at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. You got some flak in the press for it. Looking back, do you regret saying those tings about Limbaugh?

SYKES: Not at all.

MW: Do you feel the resulting flak was justified in any way?

SYKES: I missed the flak because I wasn’t even watching television over the next few days. We’d just got back home and I was focused on the babies. I heard there was a lot of flak. [Are we really supposed to believe this line?]

But I wouldn’t change anything. I just know a lot of people were in the room, and they were all laughing, so I think there’s a little hypocrisy there – people covering their ass.

This exchange suggests that Metro Weekly's headline was wrong: "For Goodness Sykes." There was no goodness in those jokes.