Sarah Silverman's "Retarded" Routine Backfires

Jokes go awry at a conference where the comic served as the keynote speaker

Someone thought choosing Sarah Silverman as the TED conference keynote speaker would be a good time for all.

That someone thought wrong.

The technology, education and design confab invited the comedian to speak at their annual event and got more than they bargained for, including a routine in about adoption in which she repeatedly used the word "retarded"—presumably in response to Sarah Palin's recent crusade against the word.

Or perhaps because she's the kind of comedian who says things like that.

In any case, once she'd exhausted that topic the outlandish star started singing a song about penises...

TED organizer and journalist Chris Anderson responded on Twitter saying, "I know I shouldn't say this about my own speakers, but I thought Sarah Silverman was god-awful."

He wasn't the only one.

Shortly after, AOL co-founder Steve Case jumped on the Silverman-bashing bandwagon tweeting "The sad thing is you're not that funny," to her after she tweeted "You should be nicer to the last person on earth w an AOL account."

In Silverman's defense, however, several event attendees tweeted that she "killed it" at her performance...in a good way.

Either way, we're betting TED will go with a safer choice next year.

John Mayer can probably kiss that opportunity goodbye.