David Letterman, The Accidental Pedophile

This past Monday night, David Letterman saw fit to rip on Sarah Palin and the Palin family during his nightly monologue, amongst other things comparing Governor Palin to a "slutty flight attendant". The occasion of his jokes was Governor Palin being in New York to attend a fundraiser for Autism, during which visit she and her family also attended a Yankees game. So, did Letterman comment on the purpose for her visit, or perhaps give Mrs. Palin some props for supporting a worthy cause?

No. Seeing as how his target was a Conservative woman, Letterman was Letterman, and hurled some truly Bill Maher-like vilification at not just Palin, but her daughters and family as well. The Palin family was featured not only in his "Top Ten", but much of his monologue as well. The truly vile part came when Letterman suggested that baseball player Alex Rodriguez and former Governor Elliot Spitzer sexually assault Palin's 14 year old daughter Willow at the Yankee game in question.

Letterman's defenders insisted that when he made the "joke", he mistakenly thought Palin was attended by her 18 year old daughter Bristol, who had a child out of wedlock last year. You'll recall that pregnancy caused much clucking of the tongues by the Morality Police within the Liberal community who were shocked - shocked - at the supposed hypocrisy of the abstinence-inclined Palin family failing to perfectly live up to their own ideals. It was also the comic nugget that Letterman was attempting to mine on his Monday show.

This is one of OffHisMed's favorite cultural phenomenon to observe: The knee-jerk reaction of Liberals to any perceived deviation from moral perfection on the part of Conservatives, so that they might then rhetorically beat Conservatives about their head and shoulders, high-fiving themselves along the way for what they perceive to be their endless cleverness and perspicacity. It is as predictable as the Sun's rising, and as tiresome as Al Gore's compulsion to say the words "Carbon Footprint" on a daily basis.

It was also the single thing that drove David Letterman to tell the jokes, along with his apparent obsession with Palin's teenage girls.

When Letterman addressed the controversy Wednesday night, he stated that he would "never make jokes about having sex of any description with a 14 year old girl". Remember those words for their Clintonesque parsing later. I don't buy that he thought he was referring to the 18 year old daughter as opposed to the 14 year old. Letterman fashions himself an edgy kind of guy, and if his humor isn't pushing the envelope, he isn't happy. It makes sense that Letterman would assume that the promiscuity he sees in the older daughter would be a family trait, based mainly on the fact that Palin herself has borne five children. In Letterman's universe, the other daughters would be thus be fair game as well, since he and every other Liberal "comedian" had already and repeatedly "done" Bristol to death for the past year.

And in making his own defense, how low does Letterman set the bar in absolving himself of charges that he was advocating Pedophilia? In his own words when he defended himself, he suggested it was OK for A Rod or Elliot Spitzer to sexually assault an 18 year old, but not a 14 year old. That would seem to represent the margin of acceptability that Letterman is comfortable with.

Finally, regardless of the age of the Palin daughter he was targeting, in using A Rod and Spitzer as the Stalking Horses for his jokes, Letterman was implying that it was either: a) OK to rape a teenage girl; b) that one of the Palin girls was a prostitute; or c) that it was OK to molest the mother of an infant. Apparently, one or all of these things is OK, as long as the victim is a Palin girl.

Regardless of where you come down on what Letterman's intensions were, it does raise the question: Why is Letterman so threatened by Sarah Palin? I opined some months ago about the motives of Bill Maher who indulged his Misogynistic tendencies: among many nasty jokes he described Palin as a "MILF - Moron I'd like to forget". Nobody laughed at that joke harder than Maher, by the way. I speculated about Maher's Hate Speech, and what drove him to such self-destructive lengths:

http://offhismeds.blogspot.com/2008/11/vagina-envy-and-bill-maher.html

And of course, this is all of a piece in Liberaldom, the most recent example being Perez Hilton's rants against overtly hetero women such as former Miss California, Carrie Prejean.

Bottom line, Letterman's remarks about the Palin family reinforce four things:

1) He's a cheap-shot artist who has lost market share continuously throughout his career. His panicky reaction to these circumstances is to pander to any ever-dwindling audience that he perceives to be his base, and indulging an ever-more politicized style of comedy characterized by personal attacks.

2) He is a misogynist, albeit that he specializes in Conservative women. There is zero likelihood that Letterman would give a Tinker's damn about the Governor of Alaska if the name had been Robert Palin. He might have gigged a Robert Palin a few times, but let there be no doubt: Letterman went for Sarah Palin's jugular because she is a woman.

3) He's got lots of company, including Hilton, Maher, Katie Couric, Tina Fey, Charlie Gibson and Matt Lauer, to name but a few.

4) Letterman, like most uber-Liberals, hates himself. Nobody can turn off their brain 100% of the time, and even Letterman must see the dreadful consequences of advancing the Liberal cause with such slavish devotion. As Michael Corleone so famously said of the Mafia: "no matter how hard I try, they keep pulling me back in". Letterman must surely feel the same way about the Entertainment Mafia that has co-opted him. How easy would it be to flame the dreary delusions of Sean Penn, for example? His audience would eat it up, and he knows it. He also knows he can never go there, however liberating it would be.

When Letterman addressed the controversy Wednesday night, he stated that he would "never make jokes about having sex of any description with a 14 year old girl", but clearly, he did. He might have added the word "intentionally" to his rebuttal, but he didn't. I think that obfuscation is instructive. If Letterman had used the word "intentionally", he would have had to admit he made a mistake. His failure to so qualify his remarks means he's adamant that he did not make a mistake. I'll take him at his word, but the outcome for him is that he has explained nothing.

To compound the weirdness, remember my earlier mention of Letterman's Clintonesque parsing in his rebuttal? First, recall that after he told the joke he was accused of suggesting that other men have sex with 14 year old teenage girls; his rebuttal, however, was that he would "never make jokes about having sex of any description with a 14 year old girl". Why would Letterman feel the need to defend himself - if only rhetorically - about having sex with a 14 year old girl?

If Letterman said either of those things intentionally, he's a Pedophile. If he didn't, he's an Accidental Pedophile. Either way, he's ironically gotten himself on the wrong side of Political Correctness, and it's about damn time.