Sarah Palin on Letterman: The June 12 Today Show Interview

Poor Sarah Palin. Her approval ratings in Alaska have dropped from the stratosphere (in the 90% range) to a more down-to-earth but respectable 54%. I would expect most incumbent politicians' ratings to be stressed under challenging economic periods. I think what we do expect from politicians, particularly those in executive positions, is judgment: knowing when to fight (i.e., over principle) and when to let things go (jokes by late night comedians). Sarah Palin seemed to recognize that last September when she said, "You see this? You think this is just baby fat, right, from having [my son] Trig four months ago. No, it's some thick skin in there also." Yeah, right...

A Brief Retrospective of the Letterman-Palin Exchange

On Monday evening, David Letterman made a number of jokes focusing on Sarah Palin's recent visit to the city, including a trip to see baseball at Yankee Stadium: a signature Top Ten. But the principal controversial jokes were in the monologue: "One awkward moment for Sarah Palin at the Yankee game. During the seventh inning, her daughter was knocked up by Alex Rodriguez!" In Tuesday's monologue, he quipped: "The toughest part of [Palin's] visit was keeping former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer away from her daughter.";

On Wednesday, Sarah Palin issued the following response: "Laughter incited by sexually perverted comments made by a 62-year-old male celebrity aimed at a 14-year-old girl is not only disgusting, but it reminds us that some Hollywood-New York entertainers have a long way to go in understanding what the rest of America understands." Husband Todd Palin adds, "Any ‘jokes’ about raping my 14-year-old are despicable."

That evening, Letterman made the following comments:

We were, as we often do, making jokes about people in the news and we made some jokes about Sarah Palin and her daughter, the 18-year-old girl, who is — her name is Bristol, that’s right, and so, then, now they’re upset with me.These are not jokes made about her 14-year-old daughter. I would never, never make jokes about raping or having sex of any description with a 14-year-old girl. I mean, look at my record. It has never happened. I don’t think it’s funny. I would never think it was funny. I wouldn’t put it in a joke.

I’m not necessarily proud of these jokes. We do stuff all the time and our objective here is to get a laugh, and thank God we don’t have to go to The Hague and the World Court to defend them. It’s a joke and that’s all it’s supposed to be. Am I guilty of poor taste? Yes. Did I suggest that it was OK for her 14-year-old daughter to be having promiscuous sex? No.

The June 12 Today Show Interview

Friday  morning there was a Today Show interview of Governor Palin with host Matt Lauer.

MATT LAUER: Can we talk about...this feud this week with Late Show host, David Letterman–

GOV PALIN: If we must.

MATT: I know. There’s been a feud this week with David Letterman over...some jokes about your daughter in particular...

GOV PALIN: ...And then I found out later the comment that was made about statutory rape of my 14 year-old daughter, Willow. Knowing that crossed the line...

MATT: Since David Letterman is not here – let me just say he did not mention Willow by name and then he went on to say he was not referring to your 14 year-old daughter, I do want to read this statement –

GOV PALIN: Matt, I would say that you and anybody else are extremely naive to believe that very convenient excuse of David Letterman’s. It took him a couple of days to think of that excuse. Uh…no, he wasn’t talking about my daughter who was there with me at the game – the 14 year-old. He was talking about some other daughter. I think that is a weak excuse...

MATT: Governor – at the end if your statement you said that: a joke like this contributes to the atrociously high rate of sexual exploitation of minors by older men who use and abuse others. Now, it was a joke. It was probably by most standards in bad taste but can you really connect the dots to criminal activity the way you did in that statement?

GOV PALIN: I connect the dots to a degrading statement made about young women and that does contribute to some acceptance of abuse of young women...

MATT: When you were asked about if you might appear on David Letterman’s Show to hash all of this out, your spokesperson issued a statement that said: The Palins have no intention of proving a ratings boost by appearing on his show. Plus it would be wise to keep Willow away from David Letterman. I would like you to explain what that meant. Are you suggesting that David Letterman can’t be trusted around a 14 year-old girl?

GOV PALIN: Hey, take it however you want to take it...

MATT: Well, but is that not perhaps in bad taste, also, Governor, if you’re-if you’re, you know, suggesting that a 62 y/o man...couldn’t be trusted.

GOV PALIN: No, it’s not in bad taste. Hey maybe he couldn’t be trusted because Willow’s had enough of these types of comments, and maybe Willow would want to react it him in a way that maybe would catch off guard. That’s one way to interpret such a comment.

MATT: He’s tried to explain this. Does he owe you an apology?...

GOV PALIN: Here’s the problem, Matt – the double standard that has been applied here. One, let’s talk politically, the double standard. First, remember in the campaign, Barack Obama said the family’s off-limits – you don’t talk about my family...

MATT: ...I’m not sure that you can be so easy say that he’s gotten away with it. I think he will pay some sort of a price for this, Governor, because I do think that a lot of people feel the joke was in extremely bad taste. Does he owe you an apology as opposed to just the explanation he’s issued?

GOV PALIN: He doesn’t have to apologize to me. I would like to see him apologize...for contributing to that..thread ...that makes it sound... okay and accepted and funny to talk about statutory rape.

Analysis

Governor Palin's response is breathtaking in audacity, a clear departure from reality as to the joke and its implication, utter cluelessness to the disproportionate nature of her response, and an unconscionable smear of a man's reputation.

In my opinion, she knowingly is politically exploiting Letterman making a mistaken inference that Bristol Palin attended the game. In all probability, he simply heard or read that Sarah Palin attended the game with her daughter or otherwise got confused between the Palin daughters. In the above family photo  from last year's campaign, Willow is the daughter on the left and Bristol is the daughter on the right. I personally think that there is a strong resemblance between the sisters.

Indisputable Fact 1: There have been plenty of PRIOR jokes made by comics about Bristol Palin, some of them simply referring, with respect to Sarah, "her daughter" and "her knocked-up daughter". See Conan's joke about the hockey game below. None of these resulted in a similar vitriolic response. Letterman's June 8 Rodriguez joke is totally consistent with these other jokes, implying whom Letterman was referring to in the joke was Bristol, not Willow.

Let's consider the fact that David Letterman, as well as other comedians, made jokes about Sarah Palin's pregnant daughter Bristol last summer. In an post entitled "Comics Crack Wise on Palin's Pregnant Daughter", Sheila Marikar says, "Teen pregnancy: If you can't prevent it, you might as well make it a punch line...Pundits from all over the pop culture world are sounding off on the pregnancy of Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin's unwed daughter... Bristol Palin's become the butt of a lot of jokes." She goes on to mention Kathy Griffin, Conan O'Brien, Jimmy Kimmel, Joan Rivers, and Glen Beck ("white trash" joke), and also lists the following two jokes:

• "Gov. Palin announced over the weekend that her 17-year-old unmarried daughter is five months pregnant. And you thought John Edwards was in trouble before! Now he has really done it." -- "The Tonight Show With Jay Leno," 9/2/08
• "Here's good news, ladies and gentlemen: The Palin family crisis that we were talking about on Sunday and Monday, that has been solved now and, today, the baby is being adopted by Angelina Jolie." -- "The Late Show With David Letterman," 9/2/08

You think that maybe, if Sarah Palin was being consistent and fair-minded, she might have objected, with the same tone of indignation last year, about Jay Leno's joke about Edwards having sex with her daughter, whom at that time was a minor?

Here are selected some other ones :

• "And we're learning more and more about Governor Palin. Apparently her daughter's name is Juno." --Jay Leno ["Juno" is the title of a well-known movie about an unwed pregnant girl.]
• "Sarah Palin is going to drop the first puck at the Philadelphia Flyers' hockey game. Then Palin will spend the rest of the game trying to keep the hockey players out of her daughter's penalty box." --Conan O'Brien
• "Did you see Governor Sarah Palin on the cover of Newsweek? Look, she's holding a shotgun. Holding a shotgun. This picture was taken right after she announced that guy would be marrying her pregnant daughter." --Jay Leno
• "Bristol Palin, remember Bristol Palin? Sarah Palin's knocked up daughter? Well, apparently Bristol and Levi broke up. Bristol said she wants her baby raised free of ignorance and backwoods superstition. But you can't stop Mom from visiting." -- Bill Maher
• "In an interview with Fox News, Gov. Sarah Palin's daughter, 18-year-old Bristol Palin -- remember Bristol Palin, who had the baby? Well, she talked in the interview. She said, 'A year ago, I never would have thought I would become a mom or that my mom was going to be chosen to be a vice presidential candidate.' Oddly enough, both things happened because some guy failed to take the proper precautions." --Jay Leno

Indisputable Fact 2: It is true that Willow Palin, not her big sister Bristol, attended the game with her mother. However, the evidence is overwhelming that Dave Letterman simply made an unchecked assumption that the daughter attending the game was Bristol. It is NOT, no matter how many times Sarah Palin, or Kool-Aid drinking media conservatives attempt to assert otherwise, a case of intentionally aiming a joke at a 14-year-old girl. This is clear for the following reasons:

1. David Letterman has made multiple PRIOR jokes about Bristol Palin (cf. above two sources) and none about Willow. The established pattern of jokes was about Bristol Palin, and Sarah needs to explain why Letterman or the audience would have meant a different daughter outside the existing pattern of jokes.
2. David Letterman did not name "the daughter" in the joke. Only one daughter has been the focus of jokes by multiple candidates, only one daughter has been featured recently on the cover of a major magazine (People), and only one daughter has done a recent tour promoting abstinence. Even if you buy Sarah's preposterous allegation David intended Willow to be the target of the joke, the audience only knew about one sexually active Palin daughter--they understood it to be Bristol. Letterman would have had to go out of his way to make sure the audience knew it was a different Palin daughter he was talking about, e.g., by explicitly naming her, e.g., "Sarah Palin brought her middle daughter Willow to the game" in a joke setup. Why would he joke about a Palin daughter nobody in his audience knows or recognizes? The audience laughed at the joke; they would not have laughed at the joke if they understood it to be about statutory rape. This is simply common sense.
   
3. Only one Palin daughter has been pregnant. (The joke is about being knocked up.)
4. The person who introduced Willow into the controversy was Palin herself.
   
5. David Letterman has never made a joke about statutory rape over a 30-year career.
6. David Letterman IMMEDIATELY responded to the Palin allegation of a statutory rape joke after it hit the media Wednesday. He didn't back off the other jokes (e.g., the "slutty flight attendant" attire), just the Palin daughter referenced in the Rodriguez joke.
   
7. Sarah Palin conveniently ignores the fact that the other parties to the jokes (Alex Rodriguez and Eliot Spitzer) have had notorious affairs with grown, of-age women, not under-age girls. The joke only works if the sexual activity in the joke is consistent with past known encounters and the viewer's frame of reference. Jokes of grown men having sex with a minor are not funny.
   

Indisputable Fact 3: Sarah Palin smeared David Letterman by explicitly calling him sexually perverted and saying she would not trust Willow to be around Letterman. This is unconscionable; it was deliberate, and Sarah Palin continued to stand by it even after Letterman explained the target of his jokes was Bristol. There is no evidence that David Letterman is guilty of anything more than being confused over which Palin daughter attended a baseball game and making a joke in bad taste. There's no history of any perverse pattern of behavior than Palin reading something into a joke nobody else did.

Indisputable Fact 4: Sarah Palin is guilty of cherry-picking which comedian or joke she objects to. For example, Sarah Palin doesn't seem to have gone out of her way to condemn the O'Brien joke about the hockey team eager to join Bristol Palin in the penalty box. Let me get this straight: Letterman is in "sexually perverted" for suggesting that Alex Rodriguez might have a quickie with her 18-year-old daughter, but O'Brien's joke implying multiple men with her daughter is acceptable?

Indisputable Fact 5: Sarah Palin: IT WAS A JOKE. And all this moralizing about a man getting your daughter pregnant. Tell me, now she's 18 years old, why would it be any different than what Levi Johnston (the father of grandson Tripp) had done? I would argue that the joke implies consensual sex, not rape. Many women get pregnant out of wedlock.

Concluding Remarks

In my opinion, Sarah Palin is politically exploiting the situation and is using her own daughter Willow to that end. All Letterman did Monday was refer to "her daughter"; it is the Palins whom through email releases and interviews repeatedly make reference to 14-year-old Willow, and Sarah herself repeatedly put words in Willow's mouth during the Lauer interview (which I edited out of the abridged transcript above). All Sarah Palin had to do was simply issue a statement like "The daughter who attended the game with me is a minor, and I find Letterman's joke offensive." Less is more. Instead, Sarah Palin responds to a bad joke with an unconscionable, over-the-top smear of David Letterman, reading something into the joke that simply wasn't there. This simply is out of bounds for any reasonable adult, never mind a politician whom just last year ran for a position a heartbeat from the Presidency.

I am not here defending a joke which even David Letterman himself admitted Wednesday was in bad taste and probably should not have taken place. I think what he said was not enough, was not a proper apology, but I also thought it was obvious that it was the whole purpose of Letterman's invitation to the show was to give an apology in person. For Sarah Palin to turn down the invitation was certainly in her rights but lacks grace, class, and judgment. I think the disproportionate nature of her response is indicative of some troubling personality flaws, and I can't help wonder if she is so thin-skinned over a single joke, how would she emotionally handle, say, a minor international crisis?

As to the "double standard" on joke-telling (Obama vs. Palin), give me a break. Is Sarah Palin suggesting that the former First Twins, Jenna and Barbara Bush, were also targets of risque humor from David Letterman? That is purely pathetic as well as an inherent contradiction on principle: Are we really talking about establishing joke quotas on comedians? I make Sasha and Malia Obama jokes all the time; it's just a matter of a little creativity. For example, here are some original ones just off the top of my head: "Sasha and Malia want to be czarinas when they grow up, just like their Mommy." Or this one: "Sasha is dreading her Dad having the talk with her first date. By the time he finishes, it'll be past her curfew..." Or "Malia doesn't think the ears that come with Mr. Potato Head look real enough, like her Daddy's." How about: "Sasha and Malia are demanding a hike in their allowance, saying 'It's good to spread the wealth around..'" Here's another: "Obama was playing a game of flash cards with Sasha and Malia. He was upset about their answer to one of the questions. He said, 'Joe BLANK' and instead of saying 'Biden', they yelled out 'the Plumber'!"

I also think all this self-righteous moralizing over comics contributing to the spread of sexism is absurd. When David Letterman and other comics lampoon the promiscuous sex lives of Bill Clinton, Eliot Spitzer, Alex Rodriguez, John Edwards and others (by the way, many of them Democrats), they aren't really aiming to tarnish the reputations of the women whom consent. It's interesting to note that Sarah Palin is willing to seek allies in feminist organizations with which she normally disagrees on matters of policy simply to pursue this irrational vendetta against David Letterman over a single joke, which Letterman has already conceded was ill-considered.

I have real issues with Sarah Palin pushing this issue after Letterman went out of his way, devoted over 7 minutes of his show, to discuss it. Letterman did stop short of an apology, but I think that's what the offer of a visit to his show was all about. She should have taken the high road, and she didn't.

Sarah Palin is trying to blame everybody else in the world for the consequences of decisions she herself has made. She is an adult, responsible for her own decisions. Sarah Palin knew when she accepted John McCain's invitation to be on the ticket that her family would be in the national spotlight; she knew that Bristol was pregnant which would get significant attention, because of her own policy positions on sex education. Sarah Palin could have kept Bristol out of the national spotlight and didn't; in fact, Bristol has been on a tour promoting abstinence, which is her mother's policy preference, and has made the cover, by herself, of People magazine. That makes her a public figure. These jokes would not be happening if Sarah Palin herself had been more discreet, keeping her children out of the spotlight. The problem is that Sarah Palin wants to have her cake and eat it, too. She likes the good things that come with fame but dislikes the negative stuff.

I have now written a number of posts about Sarah Palin. The incidents of this week now make it clear that not only does she lack the necessary knowledge and skills to lead, but also the temperament. I am calling on Governor Palin to resign for the benefit of the Republican Party and the people of Alaska. I would encourage other qualified conservatives, including Democratic conservatives, to compete against her if she seeks reelection or election to an alternate office.