The always feisty David Letterman made headlines again for some off-color remarks about Sarah Palin (whom he likened to a "slutty flight attendant") and her daughter, Willow, who accompanied her to a Yankees game. Obviously mistaking the 14 year old Willow for Palin's other newsmaking daughter - the 18 year old unwed mother, Bristol - Letterman joked that Alex Rodriguez "knocked her up" during the seventh inning. To make a crude joke about a legally of age mother and a fourteen year old child are two entirely different things. Obviously, the comments were denounced almost immediately by Palin and Fox News, among others. I love Dave as much as the next person, but please Dave - don't give Bill O'Reilly and the rest any more ammunition when it comes to defending Sarah Palin. And as hilarious as it may seem to a man, unwanted pregnancy is no joke!
1 comments:
This is a complicated free speech issue. As a democracy we need to let our comedians have full rein to push the envelope of what society considers acceptable. Remember how valuable comedians like Letterman and the cast of Saturday Night Live were during the election last fall in saying what we all knew to be true about President Bush and some of the candidates -- things journalists couldn't find a way to say within the strictures of mainstream journalism?
Censor the comedians, fire them for crossing the line from time to time, and you lose part of what makes America such a grand and special experiment in democracy. And by the way, don't think for a second that some of Palin's outrage isn't the result of what happened to her image last year at the hands of comic performers like Tina Fey and Letterman.
Ever the craven politician, Palin can't limit herself to criticizing Letterman for what he implied about her daughter, she tries to indict other "Hollywood-New York entertainers" who she claims don't understand what "the rest of America understands" -- once again, as if she is the spokewoman for mainstream American values. Palin could have spared her daughter, Bristol, any public embarrassment long ago by either rejecting the GOP vice presidential nomination or by not bringing the pregnant teenager to the convention and putting her in the middle of the media spotlight.
http://weblogs.baltimoresun.com/entertainment/zontv/2009/06/letterman_palin_daughter_jokes.html
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