Bite your tongue
So, last week David Letterman made a joke about New York Yankee Alex Rodriguez raping Sarah Palin’s 14 year-old daughter. I have to say, the joke was pretty funny. It was really directed at A-Rod and his womanizing, and I could not help but laugh at that. However, the joke was pretty damn inappropriate too. Letterman should have refrained from that zinger, given the young girl’s age and her status as private citizen. It would not have been much better if he had been referring to Palin’s 18 year-old daughter either. She is still a young lady outside the public forum. But he did not refrain, and from there we have the drama.
This type of thing seems to be happening a lot more nowadays. Someone in the public says something in jest or joke, and winds up paying for it with their…well it depends.
It seems Letterman’s slipup is over and done with. He apologized somewhat insincerely and Palin accepted. Today Letterman still has his job, and rightfully so. Dave did not have enough humility to deliver his apology without being cute, but he was sorry he offended anyone, and he acknowledged wrongdoing. He is unlikely to make a similar gaff in the future.
Don Imus was not so fortunate. What Imus said last year about the Rutgers women’s basketball team was also meant to be funny, and also offensive to young ladies undeserving of lampoonery. But unlike Letterman, Imus was fired. He should not have been. Imus faced much more heat than Letterman, and his apology was way more sincere. Imus too would have learned from the ordeal, and been trustworthy in the future, but he did not get the chance. For both men, it is their job to tell jokes. And raunchy somewhat controversial jokes are often the funniest. We reward our television and radio personalities with good ratings if they push the line of decency. So why are we so unforgiving when they accidently cross this line?
Some asked where Al Sharpton was last week, implying that he should have defended Palin like he defended the Rutgers basketball team. But Al is an activist in the black community, and it is perfectly reasonable that he only take up issues that relate to his community — which the Letterman controversy did not do. It was funny to see little reaction from N.O.W. and other women’s groups, where lately pro-choice issues are more important than anything else relating to the advancement of women.
The MSNBC primetime zealots, the View girls, and a few other TV commentators scoffed at Palin’s reaction. But Palin had every right to be upset. Think if your daughter was a one-liner in an A-Rod joke. Still, I am glad they did not fire Dave. He can thank Palin’s unpopularity for that. Besides, anyone who mocks A-Rod is worth keeping on the air.
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Letterman’s comments were not about “raping” Palin’s daughter… they were sexually explicit… and maybe slightly inappropriate… but I think it’s an important distinction to make.
I respect what you are trying to say, but sex with a minor is considered rape. There is video of the comments, so the distinction can be made by the reader/viewer.
We have become such an incredibly prudish society. Of course his remarks were inappropriate: that’s one of the main wellsprings of humor. If the remarks had been appropriate they wouldn’t have been funny. The jokes weren’t about having sex with a minor, consensual or otherwise. They were about A-Rod. The multiple inappropriateness of sex with the daughter magnified the dig at him. People who don’t want to hear inappropriate comments shouldn’t listen to Letterman, as he said in his “apology.”
This controversy has not been of much interest to me, I’ll admit, but I do very much look forward to the same finger-waggers who today argue inappropriateness is the wellspring of humor–for the record, I agree it is ONE of the tributaries at least–offering the same defense when some late night host makes a joke about [insert scumbag’s name here] knocking up one of Obama’s daughters. Oh, wait, that joke would NEVER HAPPEN.
Please, spare us. Coming from people as humorless as Obama supporters, the lectures on what does and does not constitute humor isn’t even in the same zipcode as sincerity.
Interesting point. So let me think. Why wouldn’t the joke be as funny about an Obama daughter? Maybe there’s something about the self-righteousness of Palin’s moral views contrasted with the sheer amoral physicality of the scumbag du jour. But really the politics of the joke wasn’t what intrigued me. I keep thinking about Aristophanes, writing for actors who delivered his lines while wearing giant phalluses. He was a conservative, Aristophanes, but he used sexuality to make his points in the theater, and the society set that space apart for him and his colleagues. Granted Letterman is no Aristophanes, but he should have that space dedicated to his efforts, that “theater” where the rules of appropriateness are suspended, whether the joke is about Palin or Obama.