Are Political Satire & Sarcasm The Same As Freely Expressed Death Threats?

David Frum is a former speechwriter to President Bush and appeared on today's Rachel Maddow show. Below is a segment from today's show. To summarize, the interview went in a direction that Rachel Maddow had not planned to take.

That is putting the conversation mildly.

A large portion of it was taken up by discussing the verbal attacks shouted against Obama that people have been making at McCain and Palin rallies. And, that satire and sarcasm about McCain-Palin has pretty much the same ugly tone as shouts from the Joe Six-Packs out there saying, "kill him" when referring to Obama. (??)

Mr. Frum says he doesn't know what exactly the people have said at these rallies because he was not there. I guess he hasn't been watching video shown on TV lately. Nor does he seem to have the time to learn how to respectfully interrupt his host by saying, "excuse me" before doing so.