Topic: NewsBusters
In a Feb. 19 NewsBusters post, Noel Sheppard arrogantly appoints himself the arbiter of what is decent and what is not regarding references to Sarah Palin. Reacting to statements by Andrea Fay Friedman, the actress who voiced a woman with Down Syndrome who made a crack about Palin on an episode of "Family Guy" -- she found it funny -- Sheppard responded:
Of course, Friedman is entitled to her opinion, and is to be commended for responding to the Palins' concerns.
However, as neither she nor her family were the target of this joke, she is not the arbiter of decency; as much as she had the right to participate in this farce as an actress, the Palins have the right to be offended by it.
It's not until an update to his post that Sheppard notes that Friedman has Down Syndrome.
Sheppard's role as self-appointed moral arbiter is a bit hazy -- as we noted, he found nothing with Rush Limbaugh's use of "retard" (or any of the many other vulgarisms Limbaugh has engaged in).Meanwhile, Sheppard's fellow NewsBusters are fallingover themselves trying to ignore Palin's hypocrisy on the issue; Kyle Drennen brushed off calls for Palin to resign from Fox News in protest of "Family Guy," which airs on Fox Broadcasting, by asserting that 'Fox News has no connection" to Fox Broadcasting -- ignoring that the two are owned by the same company (as the mutual use of "Fox" would seem to imply).
