I have stayed away from this for a week, but feel compelled to comment at this point.
If you aren’t aware of the issue that has come up concerning David Letterman and the Palin family, you can get detail here.
Last night, Letterman issued a non-apology:
“All right, here – I’ve been thinking about this situation with Governor Palin and her family now for about a week – it was a week ago tonight, and maybe you know about it, maybe you don’t know about it. But there was a joke that I told, and I thought I was telling it about the older daughter being at Yankee Stadium. And it was kind of a coarse joke. There’s no getting around it, but I never thought it was anybody other than the older daughter, and before the show, I checked to make sure in fact that she is of legal age, 18. Yeah. But the joke really, in and of itself, can’t be defended. The next day, people are outraged. They’re angry at me because they said, ‘How could you make a lousy joke like that about the 14-year-old girl who was at the ball game?’ And I had, honestly, no idea that the 14-year-old girl, I had no idea that anybody was at the ball game except the governor and I was told at the time she was there with Rudy Giuliani … and I really should have made the joke about Rudy …” (audience applauds) “But I didn’t, and now people are getting angry and they’re saying, ‘Well, how can you say something like that about a 14-year-old girl, and does that make you feel good to make those horrible jokes about a kid who’s completely innocent, minding her own business,’ and, turns out, she was at the ball game. I had no idea she was there. So she’s now at the ball game, and people think that I made the joke about her. And, but still, I’m wondering, ‘Well, what can I do to help people understand that I would never make a joke like this?’ I’ve never made jokes like this as long as we’ve been on the air, 30 long years, and you can’t really be doing jokes like that. And I understand, of course, why people are upset. I would be upset myself.
“And then I was watching the Jim Lehrer ‘Newshour’ – this commentator, the columnist Mark Shields, was talking about how I had made this indefensible joke about the 14-year-old girl, and I thought, ‘Oh, boy, now I’m beginning to understand what the problem is here. It’s the perception rather than the intent.’ It doesn’t make any difference what my intent was, it’s the perception. And, as they say about jokes, if you have to explain the joke, it’s not a very good joke. And I’m certainly – ” (audience applause) “– thank you. Well, my responsibility – I take full blame for that. I told a bad joke. I told a joke that was beyond flawed, and my intent is completely meaningless compared to the perception. And since it was a joke I told, I feel that I need to do the right thing here and apologize for having told that joke. It’s not your fault that it was misunderstood, it’s my fault. That it was misunderstood.” (audience applauds) “Thank you. So I would like to apologize, especially to the two daughters involved, Bristol and Willow, and also to the governor and her family and everybody else who was outraged by the joke. I’m sorry about it and I’ll try to do better in the future. Thank you very much.” (audience applause).
Now, the thing that is MOST wrong about this is that Letterman is so tone-deaf that it took a WEEK of criticism before he really understood that he had done something wrong. But even then, he doesn’t recognize that he made a mistake – it’s everyone ELSE’S fault for their PERCEPTION of what he said. He still contends that it would have all been OK, if the Palin daughter that he joked about was 18 years old, instead of 14.
But almost as bad – and certainly worse, from certain perspectives – is that Letterman felt that it was not only OK and fair to make sexual jokes about the children of a political figure, simply because he, and his hyper liberal audience, disagree with the parents’ politics.
And not making sexual jokes about the children, but the parents as well.
This is the state of civil(?) discourse in the United States today.
If you disagree with someones politics, you are free to malign them, and smear their character, in ways that would have led to an invitation to a Duel 200 years ago, and a beating by the persons relatives even 100 years ago.
But today, public figures in general, and Conservatives in particular, are considered fair game for slander that would have landed people in court for defamation of character even 30 years ago.
And why are Conservatives in particular subjected to this kind of gutter commentary and “comedy”? Because they tend, as a group, to praise basic values such as chastity, traditional marriage, and traditional family values. Any black mark in their personal lives (such as a teenage daughter becoming an unwed mother) is seen as proof of hypocrisy, and becomes an open license to besmirch and smear the parent, as well as the entire family.
Which really is the point, from the perspective of the Left. It is necessary to tear down their opponents on a personal level, to level the playing field, since Leftists believe that their are no standards that should be defended. The left believes that all lifestyles are equal; that morals and ethics, and standards of conduct are simply local eccentricities, and none are worthy of being help up as superior to another.
But it’s really really hard to make jokes about political corruption, or sexual misconduct, about a group of people who feel that there is nothing wrong with either issue.
So a Governor of a State of the Union becomes a “Slutty Flight Attendant”. And Letterman doesn’t feel that he has to apologize for that.
So, no, Letterman still doesn’t get it.
But I am not calling for a boycott of his sponsors, or for his termination. But I think what he should be compelled to do is spend a week living with a Conservative family. For Letterman, and for that matter, most of the people on the left that think like him, that would be the cruelst punishment of all, becuase they just might come to understand that Conservatives are people too, and worthy of some modicum of respect.
That we can disagree, without dehumanizing and demeaning those that we disagree with.
