Orlando Jones Apologizes for Advising Liberals to 'Kill Sarah Palin'

Tweeting that liberals should “kill Sarah Palin” wasn’t as funny as Orlando Jones thought it would be, so the comedian-actor-former 7-Up pitchman has apologized for offering up the offensive advice.

our editor recommends

Orlando Jones Tweets Advice to Liberals: 'Kill Sarah Palin'

PHOTOS: Box Office Politics: The Movies and Stars Dems vs. GOPers Love (and Love to Hate)

“This has gotten way out of hand,” Jones wrote on his Facebook page, referring to reaction to his Oct. 22 tweet that stated: “Libyan Rebels kill Gaddafi, if American liberals want respect they better stop listening to Aretha & kill Sarah Palin.”

On his Facebook page Thursday, his apology read: “I pray that no harm comes to Governor Palin. I’m not a political pundit and I certainly don’t believe in murder. I think laughter is great medicine. I’d love to elevate the conversation but no one seems interested in that. So I’ll keep on going for the smiles even when I miss by a mile.”

The apology is a reversal since he first said when pressed about his tweet on Tuesday: “My job as an artist is to hold up a mirror to society. I do not decide how people feel or react to that… I offer no apologies.”

PHOTOS: Democrats and Republican's Favorite Movies

Reaction to Jones’s tweet has been fairly muted among conservatives. One of the first outlets to report it was Big Hollywood, whose editor wrote Thursday in a follow-up piece that they “didn’t make a big deal of the original tweet,” just used it “as yet another example of the glaring double standard at work among our entertainment class. Wake me when some brave artist ‘holds a mirror up to society’ with jokes about killing Michelle Obama.”

Most outlets covering the story – and Jones wrote on his Facebook page that they were doing so only to to draw “attention and ad dollars" – condemned the artist. “What a twit,” wrote the Chicago Sun Times, which quoted a secret service agent who wondered how “a public person like Orlando Jones would be so stupid as to make any kind of suggestion – joking or not – about killing a politician or other high-profile individual.”

International Business Times, though, stuck to the left-wing meme that Palin isn’t an innocent victim of violent threats because, after all, she put crosshairs on an electoral map that somehow resulted in the shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords in Arizona.

PHOTOS: Actors Who've Played Politicians

“If Jones owes an apology to Palin, how is it that Palin got away with her own murderous call with no apology whatsoever?” an IB Times reporter wrote Thursday.

Palin, no stranger to seeing celebrities express their disdain for her and her family, didn’t respond to a request for comment, but she asked The Hollywood Reporter in June: “What would make a celebrity … so hate someone that they’d seek their destruction, their death, the death of their children? What would make someone be so full of hate?”