SHAMMITY'S DECEPTIVE AUDIO CLIP

On his radio show today, Sham played a clip of Alec Baldwin urging people to stone Henry Hyde. I thought this might be from Saturday Night Live and asked about it on NewsHounds. Commenter MICHELLE found that it was from Conan O'Brien's show in 1999. She linked to this Salon article and here's the relevant part:

That's not funny!
Can't anyone take a joke anymore? Apparently not.

Alec Baldwin has been severely flogged in various quarters for a satiric riff on the Conan O'Brien show in which he called for Henry Hyde to be stoned to death. In a Page 1 piece in this Sunday's New York Times examining why Hyde sharpened his resolve against the president, the congressman is said to have been more upset by Baldwin's schtick than by revelations about his decades-old extramarital affair.

Former Conan producer and head writer Robert Smigel tweaked those outraged by Baldwin's satire in a letter he sent to the New York Times op-ed page:

"As an occasional performer and writer for 'Late Night with Conan O'Brien,' I would very much like to weigh in with my employer, NBC, with my condemnation of Alec Baldwin's mock attack on that show on Congressman Henry Hyde. Mr. Baldwin exercised poor judgment in expressing mock rage and a mock desire to see Mr. Hyde and his family stoned to death, as Mr. O'Brien mock rescued him with an oxygen mask as the audience laughed and then mock cheered ... I wonder how Mr. Baldwin would feel if someone mock suggested that he be stoned to death as part of a mock angry comic routine. This kind of routine could easily be taken seriously, especially by people who have only had it described to them by conservative commentators ..."

"The lesson is simple ... stoning ... a controversial politician like Henry Hyde is not the kind of thing that should be joked about. It should be brought up seriously on shows like 'Crossfire' and 'The McLaughlin Group.' As its feasibility was discussed besides issues like a protracted lying-about-sex trial, it would fit in comfortably with the current level of political dialogue."

Smigel's over-the-top letter never ran, but some Times editors reportedly got a kick out of it.

SALON Jan. 14, 1999
Susan Lehman's Media Circus appears every Thursday.