Letterman seriously sorry for 'bad' Palin joke

Late night talk-show host David Letterman. CBS photo

If Sarah Palin had a penis (as she secretly wishes), she would be feeling several inches longer today.

The maverick-wanna-be governor of Alaska has always struck me as somebody who thinks a bit too highly of herself, and bringing David Letterman to his knees can only feed that narcissism, if you ask me.

Sorry, I call it like I see it, and I saw more of Palin I would want to see in a lifetime during the presidential campaign and multiple debates last year. My mind's made up.

After a week of controversy over a joke he made in his show about one of Palin's daughters getting "knocked up" by a baseball player, Letterman said Monday it was a lousy joke, no matter how you cut it, and that he's sorry--for real.

Still, the late-night host insisted that what upset some people was the misconception over which of Palin's daughter the joke was about. He explained that the risque joke thought by some to have targeted Palin's underage daughter, Willow, was actually referring to 18-year-old daughter Bristol.

By the way, what's up with those names? The first one seems taken from a Lord of the Rings-like saga or Fleetwood Mac song, while the second one calls forth visions of a pink Pepto Bismol bottle or Bristol-Myers Squibb pills. Sorry my friends, but that's what these names do to me.

Letterman told viewers that it was "a coarse joke...a bad joke," noting, however, that he never thought it was about anybody other than the older daughter, "and before the show, I checked to make sure, in fact, that she is of legal age, 18."

What irks me about this situation is that it was Palin who assigned the joke to her younger daughter, not Letterman. She was the one who perverted the joke, wasn't she?

Clearly, the joke was about the older daughter, who got pregnant at 17 and had a baby. I can't help but think that Palin conveniently interpreted the joke to be about 14-year-old Willow just to use it as a springboard to make a big and calculated stink about jokes too liberal for her taste and, in her opinion, bad for American values.

Sarah Palin charged Letterman with "sexually perverted comments made by a 62-year-old male celebrity." And Todd Palin issued a statement last week that said "any 'jokes' about raping my 14-year-old are despicable."

Please tell me that people can see thought this bullshit. This right-wing ass--yes, IMO she proved she's an ass during her race to the White House--simply wants to get the liberal Letterman out of the way.

She couldn't win against Obama, so she's taking on a talk-show host. Lame.

Letterman said Monday: "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."

If the joke had been aimed at a 14-year-old, "I would be upset myself," he added.

"It doesn't make any difference what my intent was, it's the perception," the late-night veteran told his audience. "And, as they say about jokes, if you have to explain the joke, it's not a very good joke...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."

Uh...no Dave, it was her fault. Correct me if I'm wrong, was she or was she not the one who brought the younger daughter into the equation?

"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," he concluded.

Meanwhile, inspired by Palin, a conservative group is demanding CBS fire Letterman. Are you fucking kidding me?

*sigh*

Here's the thing: if the joke targeted my daughter, I wouldn't find it funny, so I can understand her indignation from that point of view. However, (a) I haven't chosen a public life, while she has pursued one relentlessly, (b) I don't have a daughter, so I can't truly relate, and (c) I don't care what she says, what I see is not a woman speaking from the point of view of a concerned mother but a politician hoping for a second change.

Source: The Associated Press, CNN, E! Online, US magazine
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