What seems fairly clear to me is that Letterman and/or his writers didn't know WHICH daughter they were talking about, and thought it was Bristol when it was in fact Willow.
Conservatives, including Palin,
should be laughing out loud over Letterman's joke. After all, they're most often the ones who are so damn eager to appear like cowboys and rebels in how much they dare to defy "political correctness" (or their imaginary notions of it)!
http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0609/Palin_Screw_the_political_correctness.html
(Haha! Dang, I just used The Google to find one of the MANY times Palin has used some form of that phrase [politically correct, correctness, incorrect, etc.], and that example is from
just a few days before this whole Letterman thing happened!)
So, I'll say Letterman went too far if they drop their use of the term "politically correct" (and all variants of it) from this point forward. Because I'm fed up with their abuse and manipulation of the term for the lamest, most self-serving stuff.
And double haha because - I know you won't believe me, but it's true - apparently I wasn't the only person to notice this cognitive dissonance on Palin's part; someone's written a damn good article about it:
http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/archives/2009/06/the_phrase_poli.php
and they provide some good reasoning as to why this is a lot of stink over not a whole lot; here's an excerpt:
"It started on Monday night, when on his CBS show David Letterman made a couple of Sarah Palin jokes -- which, as anyone with a television knows, is par for the course in late night TV. At first rightbloggers focused their wrath on Letterman's Top Ten list, trying in an ordinary way to squeeze some outrage out of it ("Did Letterman just call Palin a hooker?").
That probably would have been that, but a few of the brethren swung over to a joke from Letterman's monologue, in which he referred to "one awkward moment for Sarah Palin at the Yankee game" -- a permanent-campaign appearance with Rudolph Giuliani -- "during the seventh inning, her daughter was knocked up by Alex Rodriguez."
This got a laugh and some applause from the studio audience (and some mildly sour, Bristol-defensive comments from rightbloggers -- at first), and Letterman moved on. But citizen journalists began to research the joke, and Jim Treacher found that though "At first I thought 'her daughter' referred to Bristol" -- as presumably the tickled audience thought as well -- "The thing is, that joke isn't about Bristol: Palin brought her 14-year-old daughter Willow to the Yankees game with her."
Now, at this point an ordinary person might think, okay, Letterman must have missed that detail in the day's events. Treacher did, and the audience probably wouldn't have approved the joke so heartily if it were about a kid. Still, living in this PC age as we do, it might be a good idea for Letterman to clarify his joke for the easily offended -- as he did the next day, insisting he did indeed mean Bristol Palin, and even admitting for good measure that his joke was in 'poor taste.'
We now take leave of what ordinary people might think and descend into rightblogger world..."
Good article!
And, of course, there's already a stupid campaign to try to get Letterman
fired over this!
FO's right-wing ranters will want to be sure to sign any and all petitions here and order their t-shirts right away:
http://www.firedavidletterman.com/
