This would be, of course, the court of public opinion. I've been thinking about this quite a bit lately not because of the foolishness that involved me but, rather, the absurdity of the David Letterman/Palin saga.
That was clearly a case of it being "the singer, not the song".
As a woman I e-know pointed out on one of the million or so threads about the subject, other high profile comedians had made similar jokes about both Palin daughters in the past several months. She asked where people's outrage was then when Leno, Conan and Seth Meyers of SNL had been every bit as vulgar as Dave and each of their shows is widely viewed. Well evidently Dave is seen by the right as being far more left than those three. And that is was made him wrong.
It wasn't that good of a joke and I feel that he was wrong to tell it. Sarah Palin being Sarah Palin lends herself to ridicule. Comedians waited for her to write their material during the campaign and she's still fodder for them now. Her kids, or my kids or your's shouldn't be punchlines. It's just that simple.
So, Dave apologized. We all say things that we regret. I have- not lately- but, I have in the past. When I'm wrong, I do apologize. His apology, while sincere, was far funnier than the joke itself. You have to take comedy in context. Yes, he was sorry that the joke had been misinterpreted by some as being aimed at the 14 year old Palin daughter. But also yes that he saw the absurdity of having to apologize for the PERCEPTION of the stupid joke. Like he said, if you have to explain a joke, it wasn't funny.
It wasn't as bad as the other late night comedians jokes of the same vein. But, Dave had been hard on Bush and he had skewered Palin as well and he had gotten a ton of mileage out of John McCain blowing off an appearance on his show and all that, plus the dumb joke, was just a hanging offense for the thousands of folks on the right who see him as an enemy of the right and the comedic wing of the left. Well, when it isn't Jon Stewart...
As with all issues of our time, every thread on the subject became "US vs. THEM" . Letterman had only recently married the woman he has a son with. This caused some people to declare his child a "bastard" because, after all, if he was going to insinuate that Bristol Palin's child was a bastard...
He didn't do that. No child choses his parents or the timing of their nuptials. Just my opinion here but, no child in the history of the world has been a bastard.
To some it also meant that it was now okay to refer to Michele Obama as a "gorilla"or a "monkey".
I don't know how the connotations or denotations of that came to be but, they had already been doing that anyway. I guess that Dave somehow justified that. It's pretty easy to justify one's own party's asshole behavior when the perception appears that a member of the other party came thisclose to doing the same thing.
So, who says that Dave is a democrat? I've never heard that he said that. He's an entertainer, not a politician. His job is to get as many people to like him as possible. Maybe 5% of his show is the monologue and political humor. It's wise for him to not take sides and come out-as it were- as favoring either side. He makes jokes. He could be a card carrying Republican in the voting booth for all anybody knows but when it comes to making people laugh, it's Republicans hands down that are funny. Dave's just a comedian. If you want to start hanging comedians for bad jokes, start with the Ble Collar Comedy Tour. But leave Ron White alone. That bastard makes me laugh.
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