(With a footnote from Andy Webb) A threat to David Letterman by a blogger on an Al Qaeda message board is being investigated by the New York Police Department and the FBI. The talk show host and comedian had joked about Al Qaeda leaders killed in US attacks, reportedly prompting the Letterman threat.

TV funnyman David Letterman gets fan mail all the time, plus crank notes and the occasional threat. They can make good grist for the next night’s show. But his latest viewer missive is a little creepy and a lot darker.

Someone calling himself Umar al-Basrawi posted a death threat on an Al Qaeda message board called shumukh al-Islam.

Because of jokes Mr. Letterman has made about Osama bin Laden and Muhammad Ilyas Kashmiri, another Al Qaeda leader killed by a US strike in Pakistan in June, Mr. Basrawi in essence put out a contract on the host of CBS’s “Late Show.”

“To the righteous Muslims in America: Isn’t there a man among you who can cut off the tongue of this lowly Jew and silence him forever?” he wrote. (Letterman was raised in the Presbyterian Church, but never mind.) “He showed his evil nature and deep hatred for Islam and Muslims.”

The New York Police Department and the FBI are looking into it.

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(Editor’s Note: PCA Teaching Elder Andy Webb of Fayetteville, NC posted the following status on his Facebook page on Thursday: Can someone explain this to me? Robert Spencer, Pamela Geller, Melanie Phillips, Daniel Pipes, Hirsi Ali, Franklin Graham, Countless Politicians, Cartoonists, Authors, Theologians, Evangelists, Pastors, and Converts from Islam are daily being threatened with death by Islamists, and yet it only becomes newsworthy when David Letterman is threatened??)