David Edelstein canned

He doesn't look at all the way I pictured him.

I didn't know David Edelstein was fired from NPR's Fresh Air. It's been over a month. I haven't listened to the show in years. It turns out Edlestein posted and quickly deleted a quip on Facebook on the occasion of Bernardo Bertolucci's death, "Even grief is better with butter." But Carradine spawn and TV star Martha Plimpton splashed it all over Twitter.

She tweeted: “All day I’ve avoided noting this man’s death precisely because of this moment in which a sexual assault of an actress was intentionally captured on film. And this asshole makes it into this joke. Fire him. Immediately.”

Why was it her business to note anyone's death?

Maria Schneider had said in an interview years after the fact that she "felt a little raped" after a sodomy scene in Last Tango in Paris. She made it clear that she was not actually raped. Edelstein never read the interview and Plimpton didn't either, apparently.

There were TWO scenes in the movie in which butter was used as a lubricant. Maybe Edelstein meant the other one.

According to a statement from NPR, "Today we learned about film critic David Edelstein's Facebook post in response to the death of film director Bernardo Bertolucci. The post is offensive and unacceptable, especially given actress Maria Schneider's experience during the filming of 'Last Tango in Paris.' The post does not meet the standards we expect from Fresh Air contributors, or from journalists associated with WHYY or NPR. We appreciate the apology David posted, but we have decided to end Fresh Air's association with him, and have informed David accordingly."

Edelstein's "joke" was kind of disgusting. It was a reference, but did it qualify as a joke? What was funny about it? Maybe if Bertolucci's death had somehow been butter-related.