On Letterman and Palin - Democratic Underground

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Fri Jun-12-09 04:33 PM
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On Letterman and Palin

Political behavior doesn't normally rankle me, but this dust-up between Sarah Palin and David Letterman has made my hair stand on end.

In case you have been busy carrying on with more meaningful activities in your life, you may have missed Letterman's Monday program in which he took a few jabs at Sarah Palin's - and her family's - expense.

http://www.youtube.com/v/j5g8kE_g-YA&hl=en&fs=1&

So Letterman made a joke about Palin's daughter? He doesn't say which daughter, so let's do some quick logical work: The joke insinuated that Alex Rodriguez (why hasn't he complained, Sarah? Answer me that...) "knocked up" her daughter. So, making a quick memory reference to Palins in the past who have been "knocked up," daughter Bristol comes to mind. And there - HA! - the joke is about Alex Rodriguez knocking up Bristol Palin!

Joke told. People laugh. Time to cut the lights and go to bed.

But not for Saint Sarah. The Narcissist from Alaska, our Merkle from the North, found an opportunity to stir up dirt and feed off the ensuing chaos. This mother of five who paraded in front of beauty pageants as a young woman, winked like Bambi at the camera during her Vice Presidential debate in 2008, made female victims pay for their own rape kits in Alaska, and opposes abortion rights, is now posing as the feminist champion in support of young women's "self-esteem."

Sarah, get real.

I will not reprint her press release following Letterman's Monday show, but in that release Sarah raises symbols that do nothing but aggravate public discourse: sex with under-aged children, rape, pedophilia, misogyny, and older male perversity with young women. Her Barthesian cacophony raised so many troubling specters that the Republican pitch-fork patrol immediately went to work for their dear "victim" Sarah. The claim? That Letterman was joking about Alex Rodriguez raping her 14 year-old daughter, Willow.

Yes, 14 year-old Willow, who - while the actual attendee at the Yankees game with Sarah - is not the recent Palin who got "knocked up."

Bergman and Luckmann write about the religious nature of ideological conversion - once you become a group member, it becomes a part of your personal identity. Within this "conversion" process you adopt the symbols that define the group as your own, and reject those symbols (and people) that do not comport with the group's belief system. This also means adopting that group's definition of reality, even if that reality entails tainted logic.

And thus, this defines the Republican partisans who, pitchforks raised, are repeating Palin's disingenuous and twisted manipulation of Letterman's joke. Letterman wasn't making a joke referring to Bristol's teen pregnancy, they are shouting, but about statutory rape with a 14 year-old. Really? Let's think about this: David Letterman, who has been in broadcasting for more than 30 years, who recently dedicated (http://popwatch.ew.com/popwatch/2009/02/david-letterman.html) an entire program to apologizing to the mother of the late comedian Bill Hicks for cutting his act from the show before his death to pancreatic cancer in 1993, who once castigated radio jock Howard Stern in 1995 for (http://media.www.dailypennsylvanian.com/media/storage/paper882/news/1995/07/27/Resources/Column.Tragic.Humor-2178298.shtml) wearing a T-shirtthat mocked the Simpson murder trial, who keeps his own child, Harry, well out of the public spotlight, apparently now has the ethical nature to consciously make a joke about the statutory rape of a 14 year-old girl.

This is the reality in which Republican partisans are - must,rather - operate. Within the Republican world-view, the only way their criticism stands is if Letterman and his writing staff actually, truly, thoughtfully wrote such a crass, despicable joke. That they would be so socially unconscionable to air the joke and defend the joke thereafter. That's what must be true within Republican circles, even if Letterman himself explained - and many of us outside of those circles understood well - was a joke at the expenses of Alex Rodriguez and 18 year-old mother Bristol Palin.

So the drumbeat to oust David Letterman - himself a cultural institution - is on high tempo. They are screaming and clamoring for Letterman's ouster. They're calling him a misogynist and even a pedophile. What they don't understand is that Letterman, at 62, is an inherently wise individual and, having interviewed people since his guest-spots on Carson, knows how the Saint Sarah's of the world operate. He's not a victim, and he won't become Saint Sarah's victim so easily.