Some jokes told by CBS late night host David Letterman apparently angered a radical jihadist so much that a post on an al-Qaeda-related website is calling for US Muslims to harm Letterman.
The call for an attack on Letterman came after the July 8th opening monologue for the “Late Show” in which Letterman joked about al-Qaeda selecting a successor to Osama bin Laden, who had been killed in a US military operation in Pakistan. The new leader was Ilyas Kashmiri. “Well, guess what: He was blown up by an American drone. It wasn’t going to work anyway, because they got off to a rocky start with this guy. He botched up the story of Paul Revere,” Letterman joked. That was a reference to the ten-current incident of former GOP vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin bungling an explanation of Revere’s role in the US Revolutionary War.
“Is there not among you a Sayyid Nosair al-Mairi … to cut the tongue of this lowly Jew and shut it forever?” said the post this week by a person who uses the name Umar al-Basrawi and regularly contributes to the Shumukh al-Islam website. The reference was to El Sayyid Nosair, who was convicted of the 1990 killing of Jewish Defense League founder Meir Kahane.
Letterman, a Presbyterian, was described in the online rant as “one of the scum of Jews, one of their pigs,” and part of a “Zionist” conspiracy.
The CBS host is on summer vacation and the Late Show is in reruns. Police in New York are aware of the threat, as are those in suburban Westchester where Letterman lives. A police source told the New York Post that Letterman may be assigned a police detail when the show resumes production.
RBR-TVBR observation: No doubt Letterman will have a joke or two to tell about this when he returns with new shows. Nonetheless, such threats are not to be taken lightly.
