Sunday, June 14, 2009

Knock, Knock, Who's There? The Letterman Joke

A Chicago columnist named Mary Mitchell decided to weigh in on the Letterman-Palin war but did so rather clumsily.

While in New York the Palins, Sarah, her husband Todd and 14-year-old daughter Willow went to a Yankee game.

Letterman's joke: An awkward moment occurred during the 7th inning when Sarah Palin's daughter was knocked up by Alex Rodriguez.

In criticizing Letterman for his tasteless joke, Mitchell also thought it important to blast the Palins as well.

She writes:
"Knocked up?" Forget for a moment that the joke was beneath the level of a host who is considered the king of late-night comedy. But "knocked up" is a crass term that reflects a negative attitude about pregnant women.
Is "knocked up" really that offensive a term? After all, a movie by the same name turned out to be pretty popular and well-received, though it did contain a lot of very crass jokes.
And the Palin family seized the opportunity to exploit Letterman's "despicable" joke by claiming the funnyman was talking about Willow.

Well, she WAS the daughter who was at the game. Why wouldn't they assume he was talking her. Why wouldn't anyone?
Letterman, of course, left himself wide open. Because while some people might think Bristol Palin deserves to be the butt of bad jokes, she might just be the most popular teenage mom since Jamie Lee Spears.
Some people being, well Mary Mitchell, I guess.
By dragging Willow into the dust-up, the Palins are again able to divert attention away from the real issues involving their oldest daughter.
Again, it was Letterman who dragged Willow into the dust-up, not the Palins. She was AT THE GAME. Bristol wasn't.

But here is the capper:
Bristol is an 18-year-old unmarried mother who is going through baby-daddy drama. As such, her life mocks the family values conservatives such as her mother preach.
What we have here is Mary Mitchell trying to mock and mischaracterize conservatives and their so-called family values.

One of those values, especially among pro-life conservatives, is that if your teenage daughter gets pregnant, you don't throw her out of the house or rush her to an abortion clinic. What you do is deal with the situation in a loving and life-respecting way. As far as I can tell, that is what the Palins have done.

If liberals want to seize on Bristol's pregancy as evidence that abstinence-only school programs don't work or something like that, I suppose they are free to try. It might even be reasonable for them to do so, if Bristol had no other sort of sex education, which for some reason I doubt. But certainly the other sort of sex education that has been taught in the lower 48 states over the past 30 years, the kind that taught kids about "safe sex," and the specific techniques to engage in it, didn't do much to stop teen pregnancy, as it exploded during the 70s, 80s, and 90s.

But to claim Bristol's pregnancy and her actually having the baby, makes a "mockery" out of her family's values is so lame it could almost be a Letterman joke.

4 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

But Letterman DID NOT KNOW that Willow was the daughter at the game. The joke was obviously based on the assumption that it was Bristol "abstinence for everybody but me" Palin at the game.
The fact that it turned out not to be Bristol is being used to falsely condemn Letterman.

Bristol IS NOW FAIR GAME because after the election she has put HERSELF out there with exclusive pictures with her baby in People magazine and coming out publicly on her own as a policy advocate.

I don't recall you or the other right-wingers defending Monica Lewinsky's honor.

If the Palins where in the "lower 48", they'd be living in a trailer park.

June 14, 2009 at 2:53 PM 
Blogger Spencerblog said...

"But Letterman DID NOT KNOW that Willow was the daughter at the game."

And how anonymous knows this is because anonymous is David Letterman. How else could he know what Letterman knew or did not know?

"If the Palins where in the "lower 48", they'd be living in a trailer park."

The anonymous Left gets classier and classier.

June 14, 2009 at 10:22 PM 
Blogger steve mcdonald said...

if they were liberals, they'd be in the white house and praised.


where's randal when we need him?

June 15, 2009 at 3:56 PM 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Anon:

Monica Lewinsky was a trampy slut who was fooling around with a married man. There is a difference, except for libs like you.

June 15, 2009 at 8:04 PM 

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