Aaaaand... David Letterman Is Back In My Top Ten

So I was all hard on David Letterman last week, for making that joke about one of Sarah Palin's daughters, because it seemed to me that it was obviously about the 14 year old, Willow, and not about Bristol, as he claimed, but also because, ugh, why do there have to be jokes at all about the sexual proclivities of very young women who aren't out there parading themselves as sexually proclivitous (?) creatures. But then I kinda changed my mind a bit, because, as someone pointed out, why was Sarah Palin getting away with nattering on about  RAPE this and RAPE that and SEX SEX SEX MY 14 YEAR OLD DAUGHTER SEX SEX SEX and basically just milking this thing - while, I imagine, her daughters cringed, humiliated, in the background - and Letterman getting all the heat? Which, I know - he brought on that heat himself - such is the risk of making dark jokes - but still. It was kinda gross to watch Sarah Palin make a circus out of her daughters' sexuality, which has been part of the problem all along, no?

ANYWAY.

Letterman apologized - sincerely - so it's all kinda moot. I'd like to think that he did it just to shut Palin up, but apparently his mom chastised him for the joke, so.

His mom should be proud.

(Video no longer works because, you know, CBS is all territorial and shit. Am looking for an alternative.)

Source

Comments

[ms martyr]

Now a hotel chain has pulled their advertising from CBS and some whack job is calling for Letterman to be fired.

I absolutely cringe any time Palin is mentioned in the news because she is such a media whore. A class act would have either ignored Letterman or accepted his apology and moved on. But not "our" Sarah (I live in Alaska - pity me) She will milk this for all it's worth, and then some.

[Trish]

Every time I click on the link to hear Letterman's apology (or other links) all I hear is some music and I can't get rid of it. Are other people having this problem as well? Make it go away!! The same thing happened when I tried to click on another post as well. By the way - I love me some Letterman!

[Jane of Seagull Fountain]

I think maybe David Letterman's picture is now in the dictionary under "classy."

(Also, we may not agree on much, but I kind of have to love someone who uses words like "proclivitous")

[Sarah]

No that is not the "apology" I had heard before, THIS one certainly seems sincere, good for him for taking responsiblity and handling it in a straight forward and classy manner(although I think whoever probably wrote it is geting canned). I truly think that now, Palin should just drop it.

[Sarah]

Sorry I meant now...I had heard his first supposed apology that didn't really sound sincere but this one was very well said and like I said seemed very sincere.

[Sarah]

It might be the new mamapop radio feature on the right hand side of the site...

[cara]

Dear Mamapop Overlords, contributors and other purveyors of goodness:

Please make the radio stop auto-playing. It is worse than myspace. While I can get behind most of the music choices, I really don't want them to suddenly start blaring at me 15 seconds into the page. I'm sorry to be a curmudgeon but here's my deal: I listen to pandora all day at work (uh, and also on my "breaks", which is when I read mamapop) and the volume for the mamapop radio is ten times the soothing pandora and it's kinda jarring to suddenly hear something else.

thank you.

[Whit]

This whole thing seems really stupid. There's no way he meant the younger girl, the people that jumped to that conclusion are all wearing tinfoil hats.

If anyone should be upset here it's A-Rod.

[www.google.com/accounts/o8/id?id=AItOawkXifuue5q8EIuWgZN8JESPJyUsaTGXaqM]

I have the unfortunate distiction of living in Alaska and having watched SP do her thing for years and years and years. She will always find a way to keep her face on the screen, often at the expense of one of her children. When she was on tv a lot more, last fall, she was not nearly so eager to complain about inappropriate jokes... http://www.huffingtonpost.com/shannyn-moore/top-10-reasons-sarah-pali_b_215468.html

She is nothing if not a master of being politically advantageous and it is just going to continue. Sigh.

[Mom101]

Maybe it's a NY thing? But I'm with Whit - when I first heard the joke it was clearly an A-Rod joke.

And an A-Rod joke only works if it's Bristol.

The end.

Unless you're Sara Palin in which case it is never the end because she will milk this until the next election she gets to blow for her party. And that would be just fine with me.

[Marmite Breath]

HBM wins for using "hard on" in the first sentence. Oh, I know it wasn't meant that way, but oh well :)

[Sweetney]

The auto-playing was a defect of IE -- the browser, not our site. I've added some code which should have cleared things up.

[Sweetney]

honestly, i think it's horrible that he apologized again. because it suggests palin had a leg to fucking stand on -- that there WAS, in fact, something for him to apologize for. But there wasn't. PALIN should've been apologizing for being such a relentless, attention-whoring dumbass. I'm sorry, Letterman did NOTHING WRONG. that he apologized again is humiliating to him and vindicating to her, and in my opinion that's fucking wrong. INFURIATING. GAH. [bangs head against wall]

[JenB]

I missed the second apology - but I will agree (without seeing it) that he ALREADY DID! GAH!!!

[Marinka]

I'm not a Palin fan, but it skeeves me out to have a 60 year old man making sexual jokes about children. Even if he meant Bristol. Being of legal age to consent to sex doesn't make her any less of a child.

[Sumo]

Fuck. I've tried to put my thoughts on this together for both of these posts and can't do it without going on a diatribe. Short version: I agree with Sweetney for so many reasons. I'll just say that he had to apologize not because of any rightness or wrongness, but because he is too high profile of a face for too big a show on too big a network. Can you imagine him apologizing for a joke like that 25 years ago on the old Late Night show?

[Alyssa]

That clip makes me cringe with discomfort. Why oh why is he prostrating himself before the likes of Sarah Palin? I never thought the joke was any more out of line than anything else he says on a nightly basis, unfortunate that he was mistaken in the identity of the daughter, but how obvious was it that he WAS mistaken? Gawd. I wish he had ignored the Alaskan beauty queen. And word, the joke seemed directed much more at A-Rod than the Palin kid. He's Letterman. Get over it. I'm sure her daughter would get over it a lot more quickly if it went AWAY more quickly.

[Shannon]

Actually, Marinka, it DOES make her less of a child... because she is NOT a child. She is legally an adult, and in fact is the mother of a child of her own. At 18, you are no longer a child, whether you act like one or not, and whether your Mommy wants you be an adult or not.