... but I have to agree with [choke, gasp, gag] Sarah Palin.
I don't watch David Letterman, but I think somebody would have to be living under a rock not to have heard about the comments he made about Sarah Palin's daughter earlier this week. It is completely unacceptable. The reason I'm posting this is that I expect that at a later date some of the more conservative people I know will claim that this didn't bother me and no matter how much I might protest that it did, without dated proof that I wrote it, they won't believe me. So this is a "for the record" post.
This morning, Gov. Palin made two points in an interview on the Today Show which I had to agree with. First, she talked about how, during the most recent campaign, Obama asked that people keep families off limits. Mostly that has been respected, but not in the case of the Palins. I think that families, especially children, should not be mentioned at all and, if they are, only in the most benign manner.
Back in the early '60s, I remember a joke that mentioned a president's child, which I thought was pretty cute at the time and still do. I believe it was Stan Freberg who said that Krushchev had called the White House on the red phone and every problem between the US and USSR was solved within five minutes. Then Caroline called her daddy to the phone.
That's a cute joke that doesn't in any way denigrate the child, but rather was a comment on the presidency and referred to families everywhere. Letterman's jokes were very pointed, no matter which of the Palin daughters he was referring to.
Sidenote: I do wonder about some of Palin's supporters who are up in arms now and whether they were similarly up in arms when Rush Limbaugh compared the young teenage Chelsea Clinton to a dog. (Limbaugh lamely claimed that the incident was an accident when he was called on it, rather like Letterman's lame excuse of referring to the older Bristol Palin instead of 14-year-old Willow.)
The other thing I agree with Gov. Palin about is that this kind of joke contributes to an atmosphere where the denigration and abuse of women is somehow acceptable. It is an attack on all women, and especially on younger women. As bad as the personal attack on the Palin daughter (whichever one he meant) was, I think this is more serious. But not surprising.
2 months ago
5 comments:
I'm with you. But y'know, Letterman quit being funny a long time ago. When his show was new, I recorded it every night so that I wouldn't miss it. Now, well, you know the story -- he's no longer a hungry boy and his humor has turned kind of mean.
Damn. I hate this.
Not sure I agree with you there, but I just found your interview from way back in January. Thank you.
I mean maybe we should have mean broadcasters on the left as well as the right, and they sure can be very popular and very mean on the right.
I understand what you are saying, Marc, but I tend to be self-centered enough to think that we on the left are better people than those on the right. Besides, the problem, as I see it, isn't that it was Sarah Palin's family that was on the receiving end of the "joke". It's that a young woman who made no decision to be in the public eye was being attacked. (Politicians of any stripe are fair game, as far as I'm concerned.) The other problem is that I see it as an attack on all women, especially young ones.
I've been thinking about this more since I wrote it and I really find it offensive that it is considered funny when a young woman gets "knocked up." I probably am more sensitive to it than other people are because being "knocked up" was what caused the death of my only child.
Mm OK,but this rather cruel joke was a reflexion upon what many people viewed as the Palin family's moral hypocrisy. If you preach "family values" and they break down in your own family, I think you should accept all the criticism that comes your way and cetainly not try to spin it into a polital advantage.
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