fighting against “censorship” by the right since . . . Gawd. The dawn of time, or something like that. Maybe back when there were right-wingers who advocated something akin to censorship. I believe I was six months old or thereabouts.
Look: I still haven’t seen Letterman’s apology, but I’m glad he managed to proffer one that, at least on paper, sounds like an apology as opposed to a “fuck you; I meant to call the 18-year-old Palin girl a whore, not the 14-year-old.”
I don’t know whether it’s going to get me to renew my T-Mobile contract rather than switching, but it was still the right thing for him to do.
And that doesn’t mean I’m in favor of censorship. It just means I don’t feel like subsidizing people who make nasty, sexist remarks about teenaged girls for the “crime” of having mothers who are politicians, or the “crime” of having kids out of wedlock . . . a la Letterman himself. I had thought that we were beyond that, as a society . . . outside of the Neanderthal confines of Letterman’s studio.
One of the most annoying things about this is that it isn’t any more of a fair fight for Letterman to take on Sarah Palin in the name of sexism than it was for Bobby Riggs to challenge Billie Jean King in the 1970s in some putative “Battle of the Sexes.” In a way, Riggs won that match just by getting a tennis player in her prime to show up. I hope/suspect that beyond some very short acknowledgement of tonight’s performance on The Late Show, Palin will do what’s necessary and simply ignore this pest.
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“All right, here – I’ve been thinking about this situation with Governor Palin and her family now for about a week – it was a week ago tonight, and maybe you know about it, maybe you don’t know about it. But there was a joke that I told, and I thought I was telling it about the older daughter being at Yankee Stadium. And it was kind of a coarse joke. There’s no getting around it, but I never thought it was anybody other than the older daughter, and before the show, I checked to make sure in fact that she is of legal age, 18. Yeah. But the joke really, in and of itself, can’t be defended. The next day, people are outraged. They’re angry at me because they said, ‘How could you make a lousy joke like that about the 14-year-old girl who was at the ball game?’ And I had, honestly, no idea that the 14-year-old girl, I had no idea that anybody was at the ball game except the governor and I was told at the time she was there with Rudy Giuliani … and I really should have made the joke about Rudy …” (audience applauds) “But I didn’t, and now people are getting angry and they’re saying, ‘Well, how can you say something like that about a 14-year-old girl, and does that make you feel good to make those horrible jokes about a kid who’s completely innocent, minding her own business,’ and, turns out, she was at the ball game. I had no idea she was there. So she’s now at the ball game, and people think that I made the joke about her. And, but still, I’m wondering, ‘Well, what can I do to help people understand that I would never make a joke like this?’ I’ve never made jokes like this as long as we’ve been on the air, 30 long years, and you can’t really be doing jokes like that. And I understand, of course, why people are upset. I would be upset myself. And then I was watching the Jim Lehrer ‘Newshour’ – this commentator, the columnist Mark Shields, was talking about how I had made this indefensible joke about the 14-year-old girl, and I thought, ‘Oh, boy, now I’m beginning to understand what the problem is here. It’s the perception rather than the intent.’ It doesn’t make any difference what my intent was, it’s the perception. And, as they say about jokes, if you have to explain the joke, it’s not a very good joke. And I’m certainly – ” (audience applause) “– thank you. Well, my responsibility – I take full blame for that. I told a bad joke. I told a joke that was beyond flawed, and my intent is completely meaningless compared to the perception. And since it was a joke I told, I feel that I need to do the right thing here and apologize for having told that joke. It’s not your fault that it was misunderstood, it’s my fault. That it was misunderstood.” (audience applauds) “Thank you. So I would like to apologize, especially to the two daughters involved, Bristol and Willow, and also to the governor and her family and everybody else who was outraged by the joke. I’m sorry about it and I’ll try to do better in the future. Thank you very much.” (audience applause)”
Please don’t give up like this. It is not censorship when in comes from private individuals. It is only censorship when the government stops you from saying or doing something. When private individuals stand up and say enough, it is the court of public opinion.
Please continue to speak out for Letterman’s dismissal. Let’s prove Cynthia and Sebastian wrong, we can stick to it and get results. I have my letters ready for tomorrows mail, how about the rest of you.
Come on… the future of this country is worth 10-15 minutes a day, isn’t it?
Btw, the above quote was from http://bighollywood.breitbart.com/bighollywood/2009/06/15/letterman-apologizes-to-palin-family/#more-162394
One would think that he would have checked last Wednesday, before he talked about it for five minutes. Or his crack staff would have. Since he was aware of the controversy, did he not read what was being said?
So now he thought that Sarah Palin was alone at the game, or at least there without her daughters. So the original joke about Sarah Palin’s daughter getting knocked up during the 7th inning stretch makes sense in that context?
So if we were to get into Dave mind when he told the joke last Monday, we could add–
Paul: “But Sarah Palin’s daughters were not there.
Dave: “Yes. They were not there. But the joke’s about the older daughter, Bristol. Getting knocked up. During the seventh inning stretch,”
Paul: “Ahh, ahh, ahhh!”
And just what was the intent? We know the perception.
As for the Village Voice: They have supported the Democrats and attacked the Republicans for so long that they appear to have forgotten why, and are no longer responsive to the issues on which their behavior is ostensibly based.