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Letterman/Palin: An innocent mistake not yet admitted to?

Jun 12, 2009 In The News, Politics, That's Hot

One of the big dust-ups in the news lately has been between David Letterman and Sarah Palin regarding a joke he made about her daughter. I think it can be chalked up to an innocent mistake, if he’s willing to make the admission.

If you’ve been hiding under a rock this week, a line during his June 9 monologue referenced Governor Palin’s recent trip to New York City with her daughter. While in New York, they took in a New York Yankees game, about which Letterman joked, “an awkward moment occurred for Palin when during the seventh inning, her daughter was knocked up by Alex Rodriguez.”

Dave’s defense has been that he was just making a joke about her 18-year-old daughter, Bristol, who made headlines last fall becoming an unwed teen mom, and since making jokes about people in the news is his job, he hasn’t done anything wrong.

The problem is that Bristol wasn’t in New York with her mom; Gov. Palin was accompanied by her 14-year-old daughter Willow. The outrage, therefore, isn’t the pregnancy, but at the implication of statutory rape.

Accusations and rebuttals are flying all over the blogosphere, some relevant, some not. Depending who you’re listening to, either Gov. Palin’s a bad mother who’s asking for it by having her kids out in public life with her, or Dave’s a perverted old man who gets his jollies making fun of abusing young girls.

A popular adage states, “never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.” My own humble opinion (which could easily be flat out wrong) is that Letterman never intended the joke to be about Willow, and he and his writing staff just assumed that it was Bristol in New York without doing the appropriate research. Since that’s not the defense Dave’s using, we can’t be certain of that, but it seems to make more sense to me.

What’s your take? Comments are open as always, as long as you’re nice.

This entry was posted on Friday, June 12th, 2009 at 4:36 PM and is filed under In The News, Politics, That's Hot. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
  • (i hope this makes sense, i've been awake far too long. palin just hits a nerve with me. so many reasons, it's a combo platter - she's just like nails on a chalkboard to me, so i have to reply. :D)

    first, the tidbit that her 14-year-old was with her in NY *did* indeed make her outrage make more sense. so i can see now why she said what she said.

    it wasn't an obvious well known tidbit upfront because, let's face it, who cares. i watch cable news all the time; and even i don't pay attention to politicans' entourages. oh i'm sure she *thinks* all eyes are on her at every media opportunity, so no wonder she'd be outraged, assuming everyone knew the daughter with her was the 14 year old, blah blah, i'm boring myself with this. so, there's that.

    but in defense of the letterman camp, -- i'm a latenight talk show nerd, i'm sure palin is not, so she took it all too seriously -- there's a level of artistic license along with the irrelevance of details when it comes to late night joke premises, so that's how that game goes. regarding these joke setups, dave also had one where palin went shopping - which she also took offense to because it didn't happen in real life.

    i didn't even consciously know or remember that she *had* a 14 year old daughter. i think the average person's memory of her family is that there are a bunch of random interchangable/unidentifiable kids, and then the one 18 year old that got pregnant. any insinuation from the palin camp that the comments were aimed at her 14 year old are preposterous. (let alone anyone knowing/caring who was with her/not with her on this trip.)

    what bothers me the most is her harping on this fabricated idea of "statutory rape" - that makes me uncomfortable. her poor daughter/s, for that. no one ever said anything about rape. it's obvious what was implied by the jokes (her legal age, well known kid is promiscuous, and spitzer & a-rod are as well = 2 jokes in one)

    (sorry to burst your celeb bubble ms p, the only kid we remember anyway is the one that got pregnant!)


    and on top of it all, letterman doesn't even write his monologue jokes (i know someone on twitter who freelances for him for that very cause); he might have okayed it, but when the spin gets out of control to the point where he's being called a pedophile, that is ridiculous. it just makes her look very attention starved. she's actually reminding me a bit of dina lohan lately. yikes!
  • Christine
    It's now went from "getting pregnant" to "rape." Todd and Sarah definitely know how to put words into other people's mouths. Letterman said nothing about Rape.

    http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,525800,00.html

    "Palin's husband, Todd, echoed her sentiments, telling FOXNews.com, "Any ‘jokes’ about raping my 14-year-old are despicable. Alaskans know it, and I believe the rest of the world knows it, too.""
  • PJ
    How is this news?? Did she really think it was about Willow? I hate to say it, is she that dumb?
  • guest
    Campaigns are over. Please stay out of NY and run your own state. It's NYC that's how people are treated. Get over it and move on. How many times has Hillary and/or Chealsey Clinton been made fun of don't hear of them complaining. If you are a public figure you need to learn to let jokes just happen. Picking a fight with a comedian proves you have nothing else better to do.
  • Christine
    Guest: Bingo! This is just another way to stay in the public eye.

    I will bet you there are more than 100 insults that were hurled at Chelsea when she was a teen. No comedian ever apologize for those insults or innuendos.

    Grow a backbone and move on.
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