Dan writes:
Those of you who think it was okay for [David Letterman] to use a puppet A-Rod to screw a puppet Bristol Palin in Yankee Stadium, I want to hear it justified.
Okay then. I justify it this way:
This is what comedians do — particularly those who are charged with topical humor on a nightly basis.
You can argue that the joke wasn’t funny, that it was mean spirited, that it was politically motivated, that it was sloppily constructed, that it attacked an innocent “child,” etc. But those are critiques of the joke, not reasons the joke shouldn’t have been attempted. For good or ill, Bristol Palin’s pregnancy long ago became a public event, and it is part and parcel of the “Sarah Palin” construct Letterman was taking aim at.
What is interesting to me is that, ordinarily, teenage pregnancy — and tacit acceptance of same — is tied to the left. Which is to say, the left generally doesn’t snipe at teen pregnancy as a problematic moral condition.
Here, however, the joke relies on the suggestion that Bristol Palin’s pregnancy maps with her snowbilly trashiness, while simultaneously rubbing against the perceived morality of her mother — and, by extension, any and all Republicans (who, for better or worse, are tied in the public consciousness to the kind of “family values” platform that here is being ironized).
The joke was a political one that simultaneously took shots at the rural bourgeois and Alex Rodriguez, a favorite NY media whipping boy.
And so while it may have been unfunny to those with certain sensibilities, the only “justification” necessary is that someone thought it funny enough to make public, and we (thankfully) still have the right to make those kinds of decisions ourselves.
Now, then. Release the hounds!
OUTLAW!
No objections. Letterman is an asshole and I don’t watch him, but I’m not going to go Commiecrat and try to get him fired, either.
Did I leave that part out?
I don’t think A-Rod would want to put it to that Palin whore cause of she apparently doesn’t use protection and won’t get abortions. This A-Rod person from what I understand does pretty well with the more clever, aborty sluts to where I don’t think he has to hit just anything. Also he knows Madonna personally.
What Curmudgeon said.
“Did I suggest that it was okay for her 14-year-old daughter to be having promiscuous sex? No.” — David Letterman
I missed the part where you said this was okay, you know, the straightforward implication that Willow was promiscuous but that he wasn’t encouraging it.
Well, I’m curious to know what is overboard regarding the flack? Freedom of speech (or comedy) doesn’t mean freedom from criticism.
He’s perfectly free to be a complete asshole. And, he’s also well practiced.
So, he says the joke, and I call him an asshole. Ain’t ‘Merica beautiful?
But, that also doesn’t mean we can’t attempt to get our fingers around teh HYPOCRISY of the joke.
I’m way more offended by the slutty stewardess remark, actually. Not from Letterman, because he’s lame and old. But the reinforcement of it from the left and “right.”
Palin is pretty. That is the entire justification for calling her a slut. She is pretty and confident, and that’s supposed to be enough. She’s “sexualizing” her campaign, she’s “milking the MILF,” she’s “trashy.” Simply because she is physically attractive.
This is what is mind boggling to me. She did nothing different than any other politician. She’s just much prettier than Hillary or Nancy Pelosi (or Michelle Obama) and less creepy and more natural than Mitt Romney or Barack.
Her simply standing there is enough justification to slam her as a slut. How is this even sane?
Meh. Comedians making the stand-up rounds in seedy clubs across the nation maybe. That’s what THEY do. DL making gross jokes involving the reputation and virtue of daughters connected to a public figure… uncool. In fact the jokes directed at Palin were pretty misogynistic and tasteless, but sticking with what is beyond the pale, there’s no excuse for picking on the kid.
Although it becomes much more clear why the left is so cool with misogynistic Islam. They really despise women as much as they despise men, don’t they?
Also, what he INTENDED to due (make fun of Bristol) isn’t what he actually did. In reality, no matter who he thought was at the game, the actual person to whom he referred was Willow.
If you hit on a chick because she looks 21, take her home and have sex only to discover she’s only 14 … do your intentions matter? Or, are you still an asshole?
I think I can sum it up succinctly: this was a bad joke told by a comedian who ceased to be funny many years ago but is still trying to maintain his relevance/edginess.
And so we move on.
What Curmudgeon said.
What Carin said too, actually.
Let’s define “okay” here. Legal? Socially acceptable? What does that mean, exactly?
I have and still maintain that this “joke” was a public drawing of a line. A test shot to see if putting certain types into a second class status can be mainstreamed. Whether the “joke” was funny or not, was not it’s purpose, It’s a marketing test.
Brava, Ella.
due= do up there.
Exactly, Jeff. The Letterman Event is a lens on the left that indicts it on at least a few levels. Were it serious, it members would take a look at that.
Curmudgeon, I basically said what you did, but in a more wordy manner.
It’s my way.
The joke shouldn’t have been done because it is unethical, immoral, and cruel. It was wrong to say that, like it is to say many jokes that we giggle at. Sometimes it is the mere wrongness that makes us giggle.
JHoward, that is actually what I find most interesting about this dealo. I could honestly care less about Letterman. What Jeff mentioned about teen pregnancy, and how they are supposed to be OK with teens having sex and making choices. Is it ok, then, to call them a whore only if they get pregnant? What does that say to about black teens and their pregnancy rates? Are they all whores? And, before some troll calls me racist, I didn’t make that up.
I am not sure I entirely believe Letterman when he tries to say he meant Bristol and not Willow Palin. So I guess I can’t really judge too well from that point forward.
Letterman is a creep, a mean creep at that. I find his remarks about a 14 year old to be unacceptable and I want to see some type of backlash, preferably through his sponsors, which include the candy company, Mars. And I don’t care if he tries to justify it by claiming he didn’t mean a 14 year old, but an 18 year old. Both nights of remarks, re: A-Rod and Spitzer, were tasteless, sexist, and, yes, creepy. Letterman is a has been and he is lucky Todd Palin didn’t come after him and whip his sorry ass. Letterman, of course, like all small men, would whine like a baby. He is a coward. He is an abuser. He is petty and pathetic. And he isn’t the least bit funny. He is a sick and angry man.
Oh, and his remarks about Sarah were just downright ignorant as well.
“What is interesting to me is that, ordinarily, teenage pregnancy — and tacit acceptance of same — is tied to the left. Which is to say, the left generally doesn’t snipe at teen pregnancy as a problematic moral condition.”
The same is true of drug use.
But look at Rush Limbaugh, the fat, lazy Oxycontin addict…..
Fucking hypocrites.
“I meant the other one.” Letterman has the right to be an idiot and tell bad jokes, all he wants. I have the right to ignore him totally because he is no longer funny and I can’t stay up that late anymore. Who knows, it might be the nail that will end Dave’s career, such as it is now. All’s well with the world. Good to “see” ya Jeff!
Can we make fun of Rep. Waxman. Not because he is pushing cap and trade, which is scary and bad, not funny. But because he looks like a rat. In fact, he looks kinda scary.
And while comedians make jokes, having an open season on Palin’s kids is not acceptable. Certainly Willow Palin is not Megyn McCain (the later who decided to step into the public limelight, and accordingly is fair game for jokes). We need to keep resisting that. It is the old mafia adage of leaving the civilians out of it. But Jeff’s strategy of turning this against Hillary and Obama makes sense.
LTC John –
I think Jeff’s got that right insofar as the joke was targeted at “Palin’s Daughter” as constructed by the lefty media, not specifically at any one of them (well, Bristol, but really it’s that “snowbilly” girl).
“Comment by Joe on 6/11 @ 11:40 am #
Can we make fun of Rep. Waxman.”
Nostrildomus?
Sure.
http://elkhartreview.com/2009/01/separated-at-birth-we-think-so/
To me the funny part about Letterman sniping at Palin’s wardrobe is this.
“This is what comedians do — particularly those who are charged with topical humor on a nightly basis.”
Excluding, of course, the Teleprompter god (sorry , media-just couldn’t capitalize the ‘g’).He’s so cool and has made no serious errors and is doing everything right, why, how could you do humor about him. (paraphrasing this absurd idea from Gap-toothed grandpa and his writers). This is about the left/media hive’s mission to destroy anyone prominent who’s to the right of William Ayers- particularly the illustrious Governor of Alaska, who gives a lie to their professed advocacy of the dignity and equality of women as she is antithetical to their construct of state mandated control through victimhood status and most critically was a threat to 0dumbo when she was named the VP nominee and gave the Republican ticket an immediate lead in the polls.And of course, being conservative and attractive adds up to make the lefty snots soil themselves.
Even if he was targeting the 18 year old, the jokes were way over the line. I like the Shuster Standard.
sort of OT… but it occurred to me when i couldn’t sleep last night that you need an official outlaw photo, jeff. forget the speedo. even tho you would eat mccain’s lunch in one. no, you need an official outlaw picture portrait. maybe something with a hat. the coolest outlaws usually sport some nifty headgear.
OUTLAW!
And now some nice liberal ladies are claiming that Sarah brought this on herself because she winked during a campaign event.
More at GP
How “sloppily constructed” the thing was gives it away as a not-joke.
Whoever wrote it — and Letterman, and everyone else whose eyes it passed before it aired — didn’t bother to know which daughter was being referenced, or to insert a Yankee who’d even plausibly fuck any of them. The latter is especially significant — to me, as a knows-how-to-write-a-joke kind of guy — because it shows that neither daughter nor Yankee are necessary to the function of the…somewhat joke-like utterance.
If it were about Jeter giving Bristol herpes during the stretch, it would be a damn joke, and I’d defend it as such. Show Palin and Willow, “Where’s Bristol?” + Valtrex or whatever = solid ugly joke, and quit whining.
But what was actually said was less than a joke, dressed like a joke. Neither “A-Rod” nor “[Daughter X]” do anything in it, so its premise relies on no characteristic of either of them, media-constructed or otherwise. They’re just mouth-noises in a shibboleth. “We are not-Palin. APPLAUSE.”
I’ll be by myself over here, thinking this is what matters.
Heh, as the saying goes.
It will no doubt surprise no one that I agree with Jeff — and, at the same time, think he stops short of a full analysis of the situation.
Letterman is fully entitled to make jokes about whatever he thinks his audience will find funny, and the Leftoid caricature of Sarah Palin and her family is funny in many ways. I have no brief for Letterman and never found his show funny or interesting enough to stay up for, but if we’re going to pretend respect for free speech then this is in no way across any sort of line.
What’s interesting about the matter is not a boring old comedian, but the situation itself considered as a test-probe stuck into modern life. The proper comparison, as some have noted, is with Imus.
“Nappy-headed hos” is what the girls Imus was talking about call themselves (where else would a no-longer-young white man have heard it?) and the joke Imus was making depended entirely upon the contrast between the success they’d achieved (which Imus was complimenting) and their denigratory self-characterization.
I doubt very seriously that any of the Palin females characterize themselves as “sluts” or “whores”. If they did, it would be perfectly possible and reasonable to construct a joke that played off that, perhaps even one that included A-Rod. But that isn’t the case. The putdown arises strictly from a characterization that others have applied.
Imus intended a compliment, and got slapped down for infelicitous use of language. Letterman (or his writers — I doubt Dave himself has been able to do his own material for a decade or better) intended an insult, and succeeded.
The proper answer to “it was just a joke, wingers” is “You owe Don Imus an apology.”
Regards,
Ric
But mostly I think Letterman is very old and very very much on CBS and I have trouble understanding how it is he gets discussed. The hoochie what is concerned with the scary scary highly emotive ghosts what have issues has ginormous breasts and NG said she goes to one of the taco places we go to sometimes but not very much because she is anorexic. It’s her new thing. Also she does the thing where she wears a belt over a t-shirt and that’s an odd sort of fashion retardation that isn’t necessarily something that can be easily explained. But still I know why she gets discussed. Cause she’s anorexic but to where she still has fairly largish breasts.
Maybe I can find a picture.
Please
*They really despise women as much as they despise men, don’t they?*
Conservative woman are bad. They deserve to be hate-@#!#ed. Or so playboy tells me.
Ok, so utterly political. Nothing else. Then what? (Besides, of course, ceasing to fetishize Letterman?)
How about:
Why is Obama unwilling to simply sign an executive order prohibiting any release of photographs of wrongdoing by criminally convicted American servicepeople? Why would he, as Commander-in-Chief, allow even the possibility that a court would order the release of these documents and in so doing, endanger the lives of American servicemen and women, rather than put an instant and permanent end to such a possibility?
So, if absolutely everything is to be presumed political, are you and yours prepared to be used and discarded as your turn comes in this way?
google is so neat. Here. I didn’t know she’d hooked up with Jamie Kennedy. He’ll probably be good for her but he’s stupid to date someone he works with what can have him fired.
oh. I thought it was the other taco place. That’s the taco bell we go to sometimes even though there’s a closer one. Actually we’ve just gone there twice.
NO. It’s not ok, Ric, not ok to pick on the kid.
I resent the “joke” and resent being told that no anger is appropriate ’cause Dave is groping for laughs on TV. It was a cheap joke and YMMV on whether it was funny. I don’t care if it’s funny, I don’t care if it’s TRUE.
At least JeffG is now allowing a ghost of a hint the obvious, which he at first dismissed; that the joke is a political joke, taking aim at, or at least laughing at, Palin’s “values candidate” cred. And he must admit that to make the political point Dave used a kid who ought to be out of bounds as a target.
I cannot imagine someone wanting to date Jamie Kennedy. But, thanks for the link!
Except, as you point out, there’s no equivalency between events.
I say the correct response is to roll out their morality scale and ask them to get on it. I say the secprog religion of utter unpinned postmodern relativity is what’s to question.
Huh, SarahW, I had thought that it was always understood as a political thing whatever else may have been going on. The question seemed to me to focus on which what where to place ones emphasis in response?
I think Sarah is on the mark. Think of it as an editorial cartoon. We have some experience with similar controversies what are seemingly endemic to that medium but I think you can adapt those dynamics for when perverted CBS old people start talking about sex with little children.
On the other hand, as was noted in Dan’s Clarifies post this morning, Letterman himself has not taken explicit notice of the political purpose of the thing, since that would be too much a drawing aside of the curtain revealing the little man at the control panel.
Like with that Mark Foley guy, you mean?
I like how the Leftist like to distract from the overall idea by arguing over whether or not the vote was directed at Willow or Bristol, as though that matters in any way. And they completely ignore comparing them to a hooker.
What I am trying to gently point out to you is that the equivalency is not in the jokes, and that those of you (like SarahW) who object to the joke on whatever grounds are handing your asses to the Leftoids.
The equivalency is, or should be, in the reaction. Criticizing Imus while giving Letterman a pass (or complimenting him!) shows the same clarity of moral purpose as attending a protest against torture while wearing a shirt with a picture of Ernesto Guevara on it.
Regards,
Ric
Of course. The “Sarah Palin” construct, to which the Bristol pregnancy is a very well-known trope. Which is why I fully believe Letterman wasn’t taking a shot at Willow. In fact, were Trig a girl, I’d find it easier to believe he was taking a shot at Trig than at Willow.
And that’s the point of the analysis I offered: I’m describing how the thinking behind it went, and I’m justifying it based both on that thinking AND on the intended audience (who, as I noted yesterday, fancy themselves hip, but are in fact the recipients of sloppy easy jokes that require very little of their intended audience. It is, as psycho correctly notes, and which I thought I’d made clear already, a test for who-we-are-not; which is why I wrote yesterday that the joke is being aimed primarily at YOU ALL).
I never said you couldn’t be angry.
But I resent being told I must.
Yes. I “at first dismissed” that. Uh– huh.
Actually, what I dismissed was that it was a “rape” joke. I stand by that interpretation.
No, I have to do no such thing. For all the reasons I’ve ACTUALLY noted, which seem to differ from what you believe I’ve argued.
Write this date down, it’s the first time I’ve actually disagreed strongly with Jeff G., who is a minor god.
Jeff sez: “This is what comedians do — particularly those who are charged with topical humor on a nightly basis.
You can argue that the joke wasn’t funny, that it was mean spirited, that it was politically motivated, that it was sloppily constructed, that it attacked an innocent “child,†etc. But those are critiques of the joke, not reasons the joke shouldn’t have been attempted. For good or ill, Bristol Palin’s pregnancy long ago became a public event, and it is part and parcel of the “Sarah Palin†construct Letterman was taking aim at.”
No.
While part of the comedian’s function is as creator, another part must serve as editor/self censor. It was the wrong context in which to tell that joke – just like a reasonable comedian would never tell “the Aristocrats” on the Oprah Winfrey show.
That joke should not have been attempted. So not only was Letterman classless, he was also stupid.
About what? Her right to be outraged?
Who’s arguing? She has that right. She’s wrong, however, if we take the argument the other way and she insists everyone else must be outraged, because that assumes everyone else is looking at the joke literally.
The “joke” was “funny” for the same reasons that identity politics are valid.
It brought the show attention, got a laugh out of whom it was intended to get laughs from, and has now served the further purpose of showing “right wingers” as “once again” “humorlous” thanks to uptight “values” — at least in the minds of many.
For a quick joke, he’s getting an awful lot of pub and mileage out that “wrong context”…
We don’t have to agree, though. I said that O’s speech was a good speech per se, which gets me pretty much lumped in with Ed Morrissey and Camille Paglia, saying that it was historic but not historical. I’m still fine about being mini-Godlstein.
The joke wasn’t funny — in my opinion. But it doesn’t need to be “justified,” either.
More properly, at Y’ALL.
The exact equivalency, if you really want one, is with the “Rastus and Liza” genre of anti-black jokes (“I warsh heah evah Tuesday”) I heard and passed on in the late Fiftes and early Sixties South.
Regards,
Ric
Okay. Let’s try some similar jokes about Obama’s daughters. Since they’re just jokes and all. This IS a humor site (at least partly).
“For a quick joke, he’s getting an awful lot of pub and mileage out that “wrong contextâ€â€¦”
Are you saying that was intentional? Okay, if it was, then he wasn’t stupid, it was a cynical classless attack on a young woman for personal gain, rather than a joke. I’m guessing even Letterman would rather be thought of as stupid rather than as slimy, though.
Addendum:
Were I the type of person who held a certain cartoonish views of “conservatives,” I’d likely think the joke edgy and outrageously brave and funny.
Instead, I’m happy to point out that those who found the joke funny have revealed themselves as entirely shallow and — gasp! — maintained by the very same bourgeois sensibilities they believe themselves so above.
The irony is delicious!
— which, now that I think about it, maybe the joke was funny after all — though not for the reasons some seem to think.
I objected to the joke? I object to the handling of the aftermath, Ric, which I find a useful if disgusting expose on left morality and reason. What I’m trying to point out is that adding equivalency — replying Imus to the Letterman question — fuels the already high asymmetry that is the L v R dynamic. It’s pig-wrestling.
I’d never ask for a retraction for the Imus crucifixion in the same context that Letterman should be accountable. Letterman should be accountable by way of his code of ethics standing to inspection and reason, which they will not. As you’ve pointed out, Imus couldn’t be expected to do as much because what he said was entirely passive and then was used as an out of context cudgel to support the spectacular emptiness of many or most progressive values.
No, it should not. In fact, it cannot by nature be equivalent, even as the equivalency does not exist in the bogus Imus v Letterman red herring. It is the nature of a lie to do what a valid and sound principle simply cannot.
That is true, but the individual defenses must and will be no more equivalent than the fraud of attempting to paint equivalency all over both initial events.
I understand your point, Ric, but it’s the one that must go further, sad to say.
They’ll have to have something to do with skipping classes at Sidwell-Friends and shopping in London instead, OCBill.
By “justified,” Jeff, I’m simply asking them to explain how it’s supposed to tickle. Because doing so brings them face-to-face with what it is that’s on the end of their fork.
Yeah, I kinda want to take the fun out of it for them.
It needn’t be intentional to have worked that way.
It was intended, first of all, for not-you to laugh at. It was intended, that is, as a joke about YOU.
Given his audience, he need not justify making a joke about not-them.
Cynical? Letterman?
Not really a stretch.
And thankfully, I haven’t seen or heard anyone calling for the government to take Letterman off the air. So, all critics of Letterman are respecting freedom of speech. It is, instead, some of the critics of the critics, crying about freedom of speech being violated because some dare exercise their rights in expressing displeasure with Letterman, who disrespect the concept, as they corrupt something designed to limit government control into one that is to eliminate any form of social control. Freedom of speech then becomes not the hallmark of a responsible people, but license for an adolescent people. The former is valuable, the latter is execrable.
I saw a replay of that part of his monologue. I agree that it was not funny, and that it was in extremely poor taste, and that it could easily be called vicious in its callousness. However, all it was was a “Look at these chillbillies who are not you, aren’t they stupid, isn’t it nice to be so much better than they are?” kind of joke. Or non-joke, whichever.
Stacy thinks you might be the next target, Jeff. I’ll point out TBogg’s hateful rhetoric.
Jeff, You pooh-poohed my arguments to the effect that the joke was anything more than a superficial juxataposition of pop-culture memes. I brought up the political implicaitons.
I was there, You were talking to me.
Not to put words in your mouth, but weren’t having it. Also I think you might well have been responding, when you first piped up in your own post, to complaints about the political motives of Letterman and/or his writers made in Dan’s, when you pointedly remarked that he was just riffing on pop culture memes with whatever was topical and handy.
It must follow that it’s not alright to use a child’s sexual reputation to make a political point about the parent. You SHOULD admit that, if “have to” makes you feel all contrary.
To conclude my argument, NK.
OK, I’m gonna come across as “feminist” here, BUT the joke relies on the old standard that any woman “WE” don’t like is a slut. No matter who she is, what her accomplishments, what her marital status, or her sexual proclivity, or even her age–she’s a SLUT.
And I’m fucking goddam tired of that.
Sure, Dave has the “freedom” to say whatever he pleases, and his moron audience has the right to laugh, but I’m just fucking sick of it. And I’m especially fucking sick of it coming out of the mouths of the “enlightened.”
The part about that that bothers me most, cranky-d, is the implication that you’re vile enough that I think it’s fine to slap your kid around. You know, because that probably will bother you more than being slapped yourself.
You remember that comedian of the comment section. I felt the same way about him.
I think Sarah is on the mark in that this is a discussion of the boundaries of political discussion and raping children when you are old and on CBS and you’ve spent your life on a piffle tv show and you’re about to die and you’re bitter bitter bitter.
This is the CBS/Viacom what owns the Daily Show and Showtime and really is very very … adroit at making you not know which is the dirty socialist news part and which is their dirty socialist not news parts. Letterman may be a sad old man what is relegated to the dirty socialist not news parts and what has inappropriate thoughts about young girls but he does it with a political inflection what is the exact same political inflection as the dirty socialists at MTV networks and Showtime and hey did you ever see Stop Loss?
Fuck these ones I think and when you talk about mileage what is generated within Viacom CBS and it denigrates Christians or Republicans or just nice people generally, you’re not talking about a singular event you’re talking about a moveable dirty socialist feast where Letterman just was hosting it this week.
RACIST!
You’re perfectly entitled to voice your displeasure, JSchuler.
I will not be silenced!!
True enough.
Problem is, the pig wants to wrestle, won’t take no for an answer, and will block you when you try to walk away.
Regards,
Ric
Elizabeth I was a slut. Catherine of Russia was a slut. Marie Antoinette was a slut. Name the president’s wife–crazy slut. Nancy Reagan–slutting it up with Sinatra. Jackie Kennedy–absolute SLUT! Sluts here, sluts there. Pelosi. Boxer. Palin. Miss California. You don’t like her for whatever baseless reason, SLUT. Freedom of speech, everybody! Rejoice in the creativity of it!
I wasn’t having your high-dudgeon.
Was this before or after I discussed the political facets of the joke — that the joke was on YOU ALL?
I might have “pooh-poohed” whatever implications about rape and women you proferred, but I certainly didn’t pooh-pooh the idea that the joke had a political component — in fact, I explained it as primarily political. The pop-culture stuff has to do with the creation of the “Sarah Palin” and “her” family that the joke relied upon.
You can keep trying to tell me what I wrote, but it’s right there. As was I.
Dan, I agree that the kids should be off limits, and that attacking the kids is a very good way to make their parents more upset than if you attacked the parents directly. However, that ship seems to have sailed a long time ago if you are a Republican politician.
That does not make it right, and I’m not saying that it isn’t worth fighting for. I just think that it’s a standard “joke” that once again vividly demonstrates the double-standard the left applies to these matters. I would probably attack it on those grounds.
See that doesn’t work for me cause the joke is always on us ones. Always always always.
Joke? Maybe the true test is whether you’d repeat it the next day. If you did, would anyone laugh? If you used two other names, Jack and Jill, would this even be considered a joke or is it only sort of a joke because Letterman told it to his laugh track … er … audience. I agree, it’s more like a political cartoon. Funny if it fits teh narrative, unfunny if it doesn’t. I’m neither angered nor amused. Meh.
“It needn’t be intentional to have worked that way.
It was intended, first of all, for not-you to laugh at. It was intended, that is, as a joke about YOU.
Given his audience, he need not justify making a joke about not-them.
Cynical? Letterman?
Not really a stretch.”
Quite agree. But to put my point in your immeasurably better terms: Letterman’s stupidity was in that by taking this course in order to appeal to the not-yous, he continues to make himself more and more unfunny.
Sort of like the annoying drunk at the party who keeps doing more and more unfunny things in an attempt to get everyone to laugh, until he is so much of an annoyance that he is shunned by everyone, and winds up spending the rest of the party trying to tell jokes to himself.
And that’s what Letterman is doing, I think. And for a comedian, that is stupid.
“Elizabeth I was a slut.”
I was too, Elizabeth.
cranky, that’s pretty much the point of everything that I’ve said on the matter, beginning with post one.
ushie, the preferred term here is “hoochie”
Then we agree. Can we have pie now?
Marco —
Like you, I’m disappointed in Letterman for using his considerable comedic talents on such low rent political caricature.
If it costs him a large section of his audience, it was stupid. If it doesn’t…
PRAGMATISM!
Nor will I. Now who wants some pie?
Damn you, cranky-d. Damn you to dessert hell. I wanted to offer the pie first…
I like pie. When I was younger, I would have liked me some of that Palin pie! Pa dum bum!
I really like what C. S. Lewis had to say on this (through the demon writing to Screwtape):
Damn, next time you decide to link me, Dan, please don’t link me way down in the comments of a thread about boffing teenage girls, OK? The paranoia is already bad enough without me having Chris Hansen nightmares.
I was thinking red velvet cupcakes. They’re remodeling my Ralph’s. It’s very exciting. Faux hardwood floors in produce tells me they value me not just as a customer but for who I am inside. I get my produce in the barrio though but I can still walk around Ralph’s produce if I want. I wonder if my shoes will squeak. And I can’t find anything but the cupcakes are still in the same place. I hope they do a big overhaul of the deli cause it’s been the same since they opened and it’s mostly crap. A lot of variety of crap and Whole Foods is not close by so I’m stuck with it. Mostly I just get those chickens they roast. The ones where it comes in parts not all together where you have to cut it yourself.
Heh, He can see Bristol Palin From His Studio (h/t maguire).
Merely one among the many meta-themes shuffled to the bottom of the deck is the shear stupidity sitting in plain view in Letterman’s apology.
I observe, Jeff, that you have been willing to add my specific “more than mere joke” argument, roughly in the same terms I expressed, that you did not specifically allow before – essentially that undermining her “values” candidate cred was the big fun.
To do this, they attacked the kid. Her sexual habits. Her virtue. Her reputation. And any Palin daughter would do for that joke, and any Palin daughter did.
The writers had read that Willow was on the trip. They had not read that Bristol was on the trip. They wrote the joke using the pressers they read.
I might accept Dave’s “mistake” if he had not immediately repeated it the next day, and implied Palin’s daughter was prostitute-like enough to attract the whore-hound nose of Elliot Spitzer. What it is, is that they didn’t care who they maligned, Bristol or her proxy, so long as Palin’s family is diminished in respectability with a crude joke.
It’s beyond low. Maybe that’s why my dudgeon seems high for the occasion.
I hate when someone’s dudgeon gets high without me.
I’m with you, Sarah. I feel that my dudgeon is legit. I don’t think I’ve seen David Letterman’s considerable comedic talents in 20 years. But then, I don’t watch that crap.
Ah, Screwtape! If only I’d had the presence of mind to choose that for a handle.
It comes on at an inconvenient time I think. That’s a time when you can read stuff or have sex with someone not fourteen and still get to bed early or play video games or maybe talk on the phone.
I am offended by the laziness of the joke and how well-received it was by Letterman’s audience. “Sarah Palin’s daughter” + “knocked up” = funny.
I am also offended by the first term of the joke which differs in a significant way from such a term in an equation like “Bill Clinton” + “cigar” = funny.
Well, I can see progs slamming a white kid, despite her being female, but isn’t A-Rod off off limits, being of Hispanic ethicity?
I don’t care about political rectitude, but it seems like brain surgery would be simpler than figuring out which individuals merit scorn.
“Heh, He can see Bristol Palin From His Studio (h/t maguire).”
Brilliant.
The left have already severely damaged my outrage meter. I guess that means they are winning.
Will we know they’ve won when we find ourselves outraged at ourselves before our betters have even had a chance to point us out to us, cranky-d?
Hey, wasn’t it CBS that fired Imus after Baracky said he ought to be fired? Yeah, it was.
Jeff G, my statement was in regards to several of your commentators, not to your post. Personally, from reading the arguments here, I sense only a difference in purpose between you and those who are arguing with you. Some are more concerned with civility, while you, if I get this right, are more concerned with using this to unmask the intellectual bankruptcy of Letterman’s supporters. It is not an argument that I am particularly interested in, as if one side were to “win” and convince the other, the world would be a poorer place. Instead, what I find that needs to be confronted is the idea that exerting non-violent social pressure (which naturally excludes government regulation, as all such regulation would have an element of violence to back them up) to manage behavior makes one a “Commiecrat” or some variation. Libertarianism may be a decent philosophy of government, but it makes a terrible personal code of ethics.
Ignatov, I think I was, too. (Calming down, no longer jumping and shaking fist at the thought of ol Gap-Tooth–hey, you know, if we didn’t know who Dave was, in casual clothes he’d look like some redneck old fool who takes NASCAR all serious and curses those dumb broads who text while driving).
Maggie, Madonna is a hoochie. So was my cat before I had her fixed. All that toneless yowling and screeching and writhing. And the cat was a total nuisance, too.
Sdferr: we already have that condition going with the “pragmatic conservatives,” so we’re halfway home right now.
Does this mean Jeff can be as color-blind racist as he wants to be?
Fo rizzle?
Probably not, Prof Cancer, but it does mean you’re not above repeatedly making a jackass out of yourself.
Mr. Caric would be glad to try to get a little of that 14 year old strange, but since that’s unlikely he’s willing to keep trying to trade for grades with the student body he has access to. If only some of them would take him up on his offer he might be a happier person, still a fetid little weasel, but happier.
I still don’t understand how someone that illiterate can get a Phd.
It was in sociology or political science or something, I think.
“Does this mean Jeff can be as color-blind racist as he wants to be?”
?
“Color-blind racist.”
I don’t even know what that…and you teach at a school?!
I suggest you stop sucking your thumb while you type. Might help.
Prof. Caricature is a homophobic racist sexist misogynistic bigot.
So, self-loathing, then?
Sociology, I’d bet. There’s still some rigor in Political Science.
I honestly don’t think he is self aware enough to have an opinion on it.
Christ, Caric, give it up already! There’s nothing to do with race in this thread! It’s sexism, you oaf, which is no doubt why you can’t discern it, you simpleton. Now, give your job to a woman, hypocrite!
121 was for 119
And his doctorate is in history, I am pretty sure.
Rambling thought….
Back in the old repressed days, if one girl in a family got pregnant, any of her sisters and possibly even her cousins and friends would be painted with a red, dripping A and whispered about. Because, you know, maybe they were that kind.
Sexual liberation was supposed to change all that. There weren’t supposed to be any taboos, any slurs against sexual freedom. There wasn’t supposed to be that kind anymore. It’s all natural! All my choice!
But Sarah Palin – dressed in corporate standard suits and shirts that don’t show cleavage, in a respectable and monogamous marriage, with a respectable career – is ipso facto a slut because she’s pretty. Her oldest daughter gets knocked up, and all of her other children, despite their ages, are automatically and dismissively labeled easy.
So strange.
Everything is about race in Caric’s world, Ushie. Everything.
Prof. Caricature is objectively an imbecile.
Really, look at the imagery: slutty librarian, slutty stewardess. In essence, non-threatening authority figures, like little boys who ahve a crush on their third grade teacher.
The left is increasingly looking like sexually repressed, immature impotents who label Palin and her children as wanton whores because of their own unrequired fantasies.
Which totally states the obvious, but the overwhelming stench of repression and desire is even stronger now than the campaign, so I wanted to weigh in.
Ooooh. I get it now. Willow is a slut and might even be thinking about a career in prostitution because her sister had a baby out of wedlock. That is so fucking funny. Gosh, thanks, Jeff.
Kind of OT, but Ella’s post just reminded me of an old story my Dad used to tell. He grew up way up a holler in the mountains, and word got out that some brothers he used to hang out with had beat the hell out of another boy pretty good, so the next time Dad saw them he asked why they did it.
“Black-guarded our sister!” explained the oldest, “Black-guarded her twice!”
I would amend your statement thusly:
‘This is what vulgar, classless over-the-hill comics do.’
There. Fixed that for ya.
I’ve been wondering how long it would take the Leftoids to come up with a shorthand description.
LYBD, it is a fact that black people, tested en masse using every semi-legitimate trick in the book and some that aren’t written down, come out with an IQ of approximately 85 with a standard deviation of 17 to 20. “Whites” (meaning people predominately of northern European ancestry) do 100 on that scale with a sigma of 25 or so; “Asians” (US version, that is, Chinese/Korean/Japanese etc.) get 105, sigma 25. Most of the features of the modern American educational system are designed to dumb it down sufficiently that blacks’ results are the same as non-blacks’, and Prof. Caricature is naturally familiar with that system.
(Note please that IQ is not strongly correlated with success in later life — for which I’m the poster child — but it is strongly correlated with educational achievement. Life success depends much more on environment, particularly families, than on IQ.)
Those who, like Jeff, are more focussed on equality of opportunity than equality of outcome tend to write and present their puzzles at the IQ = 100 or more level, and utterly disregard the ethnic background of their readers. What that means is that a black person needs to be at least one sigma above the mean to “get it” — and since Jeff persists in following that procedure, he is demeaning black people. He is a “color-blind racist”.
Easy when you have the data.
Regards,
Ric
chocolate rain
if you wonder why you’re dumb ric can explain
B Moe, it’s just that Caric is so regularly and insistently a dimwit–and he teaches for a living! There’s your damn problem with academia, right there, in Ric Caric’s classroom.
Every time Caric opens his yap, his students become that much more stupid.
If you are of the approved type of illiterate you get tenure.
Hey, so
Dave Letterman, saving for college or rehab?
hahahaha millions of $$$ for rehab, bail, legal fees, crashed Maseratis and heroin addled visits to Malibu booking is the future. Because that is par for the course when dad is an asshole with too much money…. hahahahaha
It was a joke. No such thing as too much money…hahaha
I mean what could be funnier than dad paying the Crips to keep the vatos from EME going all Eliot Spitzer on his offsprings overused ass? Talk about your seventh inning stretch hahahahaha
There is no way in hell he was knowingly joking about her 14-year-old, and anyone who believes that is a dishonest charlatan. When you thrust you family into the public eye and make it the cornerstone of your supposed appeal, you will get blowback. Get over it. More evidence the right is increasingly populated by politically correct wimps. And liars for that matter… again, no way in hell he’s making a joke about Willow.
When was the last time you ever saw someone leave a little girl alone with David Letterman, Mr. Plumber?
Do try to keep up, JTP. Rephrasing a conclusion already reached, albeit in more inflammatory terms, neither endears you to us nor displays any particular excess of intellect.
Regards,
Ric
except she was the one at the game. oopsies!
I keep thinking they must just all look alike to Mr. Letterman.
No. Some of them have hair down there and some don’t, maggie. David Letterman knows what’s what.
All females? Explain’s his wife’s ugly mug.
Oh, was that a low blow?
I’m also curious about how Palin’s family was made a cornerstone of her appeal. Did they have a photo spread in People? Interview on Extra?
That was future comedy. Done now. and some kinda funny. Humor travelling in time and showing up tasteless.
I hate it when I make mean jokes about stupid ignorant people and they don’t even have the chops to make my joke funny.
Hey, how was I supposed to know the kid was 14… I’m sorry my joke was early by a few years… I mean crap, the steroids will probably have made A-Rod A-Limp by then…. wah ha ha ha
I see that the president attended last night’s Yankee-Red Sox game with his religious mentor, Rev. Wright. One awkward moment occurred for the president when Rev Wright started rolling pennies down the first base line, trying to distract Kevin Youkilis.
Maggie, to be perfectly fair (I hate it when that becomes necessary) Palin’s family is a strong point of her appeal. In fact, one of the main reason the Leftoids have to deal with a stereotyped construct is that their heads threaten to explode if they ever consider the reality.
Sarah Palin is a Republican. Womyn are supposed to be good Progressive Democrats.
Todd Palin is a manly man with a manly occupation; nevertheless he seems quite cheerful and accepting that his wife’s occupation is much higher on the social scale than his. But all manly men are part of Teh Patriarchy, dedicated to preventing womyn from achievement.
Sarah Palin has several (three?) children, the latest of which has Down’s Syndrome, and seems perfectly capable of handling her duties as Governor despite child-care difficulties. Good Progressive womyn are supposed to abort their babies to prevent career difficulties, especially if they might have medical problems.
Todd Palin apparently participates wholeheartedly in child-rearing. Patriarchal manly men don’t do that; they force the womyn in their lives to do it all.
Bristol Palin is an unwed mother. Winger dupes of the Patriarchy are supposed to be disgusted with that, call such girls “sluts” etc., and cast them out. Instead the Palin family has been supportive.
There is more, but you get the idea — the whole Palin family is a direct challenge to the Leftoids’ notion of what such a family should be. Just one aspect of that, the legions of womyn who left child-bearing off until later and now have psychological problems with that, cannot be borne in any way and must be rejected in toto.
Now, in point of fact, down here among my gap-toothed redneck neighbors, Palin’s family looks a lot more like “us” than anything found within the DC beltway. I know lots of families where the woman makes more money or has a more powerful job than the man; unwed mothers are all around, and they get family support; men in manly occupations — firefighters, welders, construction, and the like — tend more often than not to have wives who are teachers, managers, or other higher-status jobs. This is the real appeal of Sarah Palin, and from the Leftoids’ point of view it must be countered. Too bad they have so little knowledge of how things go that much of what they do to (putatively) counter Palin’s appeal turns out to be counterproductive unless addressed to the choir.
Regards,
Ric
My favorite irony of recent times is when my friend commented online about Palin’s “flirting” and “sex appeal” being a distraction from politics, and how it wasn’t appropriate behavior in a “serious” candidate.
The irony is that her user icon on that particular board consisted of Teh One! in his bathing trunks, captioned with “HAIL TO THE BEEF.”
To her credit, she realized the disconnect when I brought it to her attention. Probably means she’ll be kicked out of the cult soon…
I love the cowards like JtP.
JD, you understood what that commenter was trying to say? I thought it was some kind of parody.
It’s that way across most of the country, Ric. I think Palin’s only chance is to start playing exclusively to that audience. When she gives speeches, give them to us, not the party elites or pundits. When she does interviews, talk to us, not the media hack across the table.
Just talk right past the nay-sayers and directly address the voters. If she connects she has a shot.
Hell, that is probably the only way any nonprogressive is going to have a chance, just completely by-pass the filters and take it directly to the target.
Agreed, B Moe. The hard part about that is that if the gatekeepers know nothing else, they know they can’t let that happen if it can possibly be prevented.
Letterman’s joke — which I agree: he ought to be hounded for it; it was at best crass — is a side-issue. He was simply reassuring the soi-disant Good People that they were doing the Right (err, correct) thing.
Regards,
Ric
OI – I could not translate all of the moonbat-ese, but I knew enough to know that he/she/it/shit is a fucking coward to post its drivel under someone else’s name. That, and it is a twatwaffle, and hates some conservatives.
I’m still baffled how people think Palin sexualized her campaign. Seriously, did these people not listen to their own rants on objectification? If a pretty woman is standing there, minding her own business, and a person immediately starts having sexual fantasies about her, it’s not her fault. And that certainly shouldn’t disqualify pretty woman from having a job aside from whore just because some anonymous person responds to her sexually.
Geez.
And the commenters on that balloon-juice article that Treacher linked to are just messed up in the head. It’s the first time I ever realized that someone seriously thought that “Palin is a c*nt” is a political argument.
“I’m hard like that. Haha.”
Only when he takes the little blue pill his “doctor” prescribed.
Damn Ric,
You’re thought at #148 are right on target, and go a long way to explaining the reason, that are only tangentially political, that Palin must be diminished in the public’s eye. In addition to being a political threat with her ideology, the life she lives is an existential threat to the very ideology that underpins the progressive left…
I got chills readin’ it, bro…
Succinct, insightful, and devastatingly on target, as usual…
Why aren’t you in congress?
Best Wishes
Wash your mouth out with soap!
Regards,
Ric
Ella (#156): Unh huh. Now take a look at the Democratic women’s contingent: Janet, Hillary, Madeline, et. al. (Note that Michelle isn’t on the list — I think she’d be quite attractive if she weren’t such a sourpuss.) Compare them to Palin, who isn’t a raving beauty, just a medium-attractive female. Quod demonstradum erat.
Regards,
Ric
Sorry Ric,
I can understand your reluctance to be associated with such a mediocre bunch of phony-baloney types…
I’m not sucking up, but it’s just that you strike me as one of the aristoi that the founders envisioned would do their part in government, for a time, and then, like Cinncinatus, return to their everyday lives; as opposed to the mosly opportunistic bunch of career politicians we have today instead…
What flavor should I use? Dial, Ivory, or Irish spring..? No lava please, I’d like to leave a few taste buds on my tongue!
Best Wishes…
Jeff, I believe you are spot on and regard this ‘incident’ exactly as it should be viewed. My problem is that the number of people who possess the education and/or experience to view items such as this rationally, is getting smaller, while the double standard for ‘tolerating’ tactless or classless remarks is overwhelmingly one-sided. This virtual monopoly on what is ‘allowed to be said’ has enabled the left to group classless ‘jokes’ with legitimate political discourse by equivocating remarks such as Letterman’s to Rush Limbaugh’s “I hope Obama’s socialist policies failâ€, thereby discarding them both as ‘irrelevant entertainment’. While one may be just that, the other brings up serious issues that are purposely being ‘shut out’. How does anyone get ‘The People’ to seriously think about important issues and events, when the most popular and available medium refuses to debate?
Yeah, right, Bob. If aristoi get their houses repossessed, I reckon I’d fit right in.
Hmm. Maybe I should run for Congress. At least I’d get my loans paid off, right?
Regards,
Ric
You would have to be a Dem to get away with that, Senor Locke.
I think #148 should be polished like a valuable little thing and put to where many peoples can read it. Because it is very compelling to where I had more goodwill towards the Palins after I read it and usually I don’t get all too excited about those ones just cause it’s always seemed that their narrative is the sort we definitely want to flavor Team R but not necessarily to hold up as any kind of template. And I think some people would urge the Palin model be applied rather too ubiquitously.
Might work, Bro!
Ric, the problem with guys like us is integrity. Walking the walk that we talk up; which sometimes doesn’t square with choices we’ve made along the way, and the effects they’ve had, in our lives…
There have been times I’ve actually considered running for office; especially so when I lived in the peoples republic of Maryland, where I was constantly fed up with the Democrats running the show. However, as much as some chapters in my life story are eminently “marketable”, so much more embarrassing are some of the episodes of what I like to call “my mis-spent youth”…
Nothing I did ever precluded my securing a top secret security clearance; but then again, the investigators are happy as long as you admit to everything that has transpired, and that it can be verified.
So, I’m no psychologist, but I think one might scold us for holding ourselves to too high a standard…
That’s poppycock though. I simply would be mortified for my wife and family were they ever called upon to vouch for, or explain, the escapades of my mis-spent youth; I sense that same sentiment in your reply…
Never fear though, the good Lord forgives us our shortcomings, and will provide for all our needs; have faith bro, ignore the storm for it shall pass, the boats gonna get to the other side just like He promised…
Best Wishes
Knock yourself out, happyfeet. I can’t even profit from attribution.
It’s not that we want to hold it up as a template, but if people see it as a template — and they do; I’ve had many of my neighbors and customers remark on it — it ought to be useful.
Trouble is, the people at the top of the Republican Party at the moment are from the same demographic as Letterman. They’re just as horrified by the snowbilly pretender as any Dem.
Regards,
Ric
happyfeet,
I concur whole-heartedly, and think Ric should send it to Jonah G. at the National Review, American Thinker, and any other place where it might be widely disseminated…
Or maybe we all should just post it to every board we all know…
Bob,
Yeah. All’s well, and if it isn’t, it’s one day closer to God.
Regards,
Ric
It’s very very good and resonatey and for real I think at the very least it should go into Ric’s pub account to where it would be linkable.
My little brother just lost his job directly cause of the dirty socialists. I’m not at all happy about it either and these dirty socialist, they’re on my list now.
*socialists* I mean … meanwhile, I have to go check on a Barack Obama voter’s new baby kitten what he left alone with his cat. I will be back later.
Don’t do anything rash, hf.
Hasta mañana, y’all.
I’ll consider recasting #148 as a Pub post tomorrow. I wish Jeff would put a notification of Pub posts on the main page, á lá Hot Air’s “Green Room”. It would tempt me to post there more.
Regards,
Ric
Yeah, that would be a good feature, but notify me and I’ll link.
Ric,
IRT 148, I salute you as well
Semper Fi
Danger
Ric – If you are going to do that, you should also include that one about same sex marriage, which I believe was comment #132 or #133.
Above, SarahW seems almost as pissed at Jeff as at Letterman. If the dudgeon needs to be high, could it be directed properly at least?
JeffG: “Here, however, the joke relies on the suggestion that Bristol Palin’s pregnancy maps with her snowbilly trashiness…”
If you take the snowbilly characterization of the Palins as a starting point, then I agree that the joke plays off that and is “what comedians do”.
But the outrage is really rooted in our own powerlessness to foist off that leftist-imposed characterization. It outrages us that the Palins were constructed to be hicks, the we were completely impotent to stop it, and that we are expected to sit by and watch the assholes gain leverage because, hey, the snowbilly meme had already been planted.
Not bh – good to not see you.
It’s just CBS demonstrating strong follow-through on the award-winning Couric interview I think in which Katie established Palin as a Dumb Bitch. Letterman elaborates on Katie’s work by stipulating that the young daughter of the Dumb Bitch is a Wanton Whore what craves her some Rodriguez cock.
Come Home to America’s Most-Watched Network… It’s All Here I think.
Re #138.Comment by Joe the Plumber on 6/11 @ 3:08 pm #
“There is no way in hell he was knowingly joking about her 14-year-old”
Ever heard of plausible deniability?
Hey, JD. If bh was around, I assume he’d wish you luck with the bugs in the wood.
[…] And one more thing: Jeff Goldstein is an outlaw. […]
Do it, Ric. If it’s linkable, that would be nice.
A satisfying display of power is to not only lie, not only get away with the lie. But to make others, against their will, act and speak as though the lie is true. When they know it is not. When you know, they know it is not. And when they know, you know, they know it is not but still must behave in accord with the lie.
Yeah, but don’t use the word “niggardly”. Personal attacks against the “right” people = good. Using a word that the perpetually stupid will interpret as racist = bad.
You observe wrong. The joke was always thus, and I always said as much.
It’s only a big deal because some insisted it was a “rape” joke. Which it simply wasn’t.
What are you thanking me for? I didn’t write the thing, nor did it cause me any belly laughs.
You all can keep on taking your shots at me, but the bottom line is, the joke is what it is. What it isn’t, however, is a “rape” joke — and while I don’t personally find taking shots at the Palin family before an audience inclined toward black-heartedness particularly brave (in fact, it’s quite lazy), I also don’t feel like David Letterman needs to “justify” the joke.
I also believe the outrage here — and elsewhere on the right — has been ridiculously outsized.
[Flippancy] is a thousand miles away from joy; it deadens, instead of sharpening, the intellect;
“So funny, I forgot to laugh.”
Maybe I’m stretching Lewis’ point , but Me, I was almost exclusively nonplussed/deadened by Letterman’s “joke”, as in “groan, there they go again” – Leftoids being boringly infantile, a-gin. For me, Letterman might as well have said, “Tee-hee, Sarah Palin’s daughter went poo-poo on A-Rod’s pee-pee.”
Not discounting other criticisims of the “joke” and the debates going on about them, I prefer to go with simply mocking the “humor” via other images, such as Dan’s bat-ass-fucking of Letterman, which is similarly boring in an infantile way – and making that point very clear – but also has the essential characteristic of something which, otoh, seems to be necessary to the Progressive psyche as an energizer to its very “life”: a basically flippant infantilism in the sense that Progressivism attempts to pass off its lazy or inherent infantilism as humor, empathy, judgment, analysis, science, morality, and “intellect”, etc., which seem to be equally flippantly received by most ot the cult members.
Of course, this might be giving the Progressives too much credit as to even being able to be flippant in the first place. Maybe they really can’t do anything other than to operate as infants, and that’s that?
Couple late thoughts…
You know, I’ve listened to Letterman’s offending opening monologue twice whilst reading these comments. I think I’m offended more at his joke relating to Sotomayor’s broken ankle not healing (because Rush Limbaugh needs her pain meds, @ about 5:00) than the Palin remarks. Because Sotomoyer’s ankle really won’t heal very well; she’s been an insulin-dependent diabetic since the ’60’s. The chances of A-rod knocking up either Palin child is infinitesimal; those healing issues for diabetics, a guaranteed problem.
Oh, and Ric Locke, your demonstrated cache of wisdom is truly remarkable.
So, the consensus seems to be that the playing field is without a goal line on the left side, and the one on the right side can be scored on by flinging righties children through by their genitals.
Is there anyone still wondering why there are so few principled classical liberals willing to run for office?
Nope. No call for high dudgeon here…
Hey, putdown comedy works for the majority of people who listen to Letterman (and to anyone who watches TV, really) if it’s topical and timely. Just so happens that the best oxen to gore today are us.
I think this is one of those places where we need to push back. Unfortunately, it’s pretty clear that the left no longer realizes there is a difference between entertainment and news.
Okay. Well then I’ll be off and let you all carry on with the festival of outrage.
Just don’t say the word “Letterman” around me any more. I don’t want to hear it, and your saying it will be the same as raping me in my ear.
Is there some kind of problem here, that we disagree on this, Jeff?
It seems remarkably ironic to me that people might now be coming to protein wisdom to not understand what someone said and how it operated.
pw has just been cockslapped by OUTRAGE!
Jeff,
As a parent, how would you find those jokes if made at your childs expense?
I ask because I think Todd Palin’s parental perspective is valuable and I support him in his right to be pissed.
Here’s the way it seemed to play out:
Sarah Palin and her daughter 14 yr old daughter Willow are in NY for a charity event for autism and get invited by Rudy Guiliani to see a Yankee game.
Letteman’s writers are dumb and don’t do their homework. Letterman is lazy, so he tells the joke “Palin’s in town, Yankee game, daughter knocked up in dugout” without looking at it long enough to realize that the 14 year old is the one at the game… and Lettermans problem is the set up of the joke can only be for the daughter at the game.
Todd Palin probably would have wanted to gut Letterman like a moose if he’d been clear he was joking about 18 year old Bristol, but when Todd Palin took in the context: “Hey that is my 14 year old girl out there at the game, douchebag” he rightly called it out as a joke about the statutory rape of his 14 yr old daughter. Otherwise Mr. Palin would have had to make an illogical (and still unaaceptable from a parents point of view) leap to “Oh, Letterman probably really meant to slam my 18 year old who wasn’t even at the game”.
Letterman is an asshole anyway, but there was no walking back on this one.
He’s a coward who could never tell Todd Palin (or any parent) to his face without bodyguards and a film crew that “hey, I botched the joke about A-Rod knocking up your daughter… I meant your other daughter… wanna come on my show?”
Yeah, right after I rip off your ears, stuff them into your newly empty eyesockets and feed your tongue to my dog then we’ll shake on it
Sure, Dan, to push back is part of the game. We have to speak out, to a degree. I’ll do it because I’m still annoyed at Letterman’s treatment of McCain (NTTAWWT) and his proto-leg-shakiness for Obama, during the campaign. We own him that.
It’ll run it’s course quickly I think. Unless Todd slaps him silly in a couple weeks. Or A-Rod (where’s he at on this, anyways?).
Letterman letterman Letterman Letterman Letterman Letterman. Well, at least you’re not 14 Jeff.
FESTIVUS! Are there hats?
Are there ear drops that one can take to help with the damage caused by an ear rape?
Well, I would like to look on this as an opportunity to club lefties over the head with their own hypocrisy stick, but I find the precedent of joking about political opponents children in sexually compromising ways too morally disgusting to gin up any joy at the prospect.
I suppose I’m too old fashioned, prudie, and un-hip for these enlightened times.
Carry on.
What would poor Willow do without you telling her she’s just been raped, Sarah?
Oh, there goes your rapeutation.
Someone get Rickles on the horn, this one has major talent.
So, if you frame some utterance as a joke, no matter how ugly, it’s not really that big a deal. Is that what this means? I guess it took the internet to make this discovery, then.
I’m sure Willow knows a very well known TV personality voiced a sexual fantasy involving her to the whole world without Sarah’s help.
But that’s OK, it wasn’t really about her, but her sister, and it wasn’t really even about her sister, but a caricature of her whole family, and by extension everyone that voted Republican last election.
Also, all her classmates in school will make that distinction too. We know how nice they all are, I’m sure…
Yes, of course, Dan. Nothing loaded about that formulation.
RISE AND FOLLOW! TOGETHER WE WILL WASH THE WORLD’S MOUTH OUT WITH SOAP!
Well, lee, because her classmates won’t make the distinctions, we should probably outlaw the adults’ right to make them among themselves, after the late news.
I can’t see how that can go wrong.
Yeah, nothing at all. But, for the sake of argument, can you show me a “joke” that really does cross the line, then?
I don’t happen to have a “joke” book “handy,” “Dan.”
Let’s just impute motives. No big deal here, nothing Sadly, No! wouldn’t do. It’s not really directed at her; just some twisted idea of her. Don’t know why she gets upset.
Could someone please show me where Jeff said he supported the joke or said he thought it was funny? I must have missed that.
However, I did hear him explain how to turn it around for political use. I did hear him say, if he was in a similar circumstance, he’d call the network and raise hell.
Why the OUTRAGE with Jeff? For fuck’s sake.
It’s not like she ought to care what David Letterman says. She should know better. He’s a buffoon. That’s his shtick.
I remember tons of M. Culkin, Michael Jackson jokes. I don’t remember the same outrage then.
Non sequitur, Jeff, You know what I argued against – though I admit that was an attempt at joke rape.
Maybe if no one complained, and just laughed and laughed, maybe young females would get beat up on a lot by network TV hosts, have jokes made about their sexual reputation and virtue. Likened to prostitutes, etc. I think its beyond the pale to do that to make a political point with humor, even if its funny, even if its true.
I think we could probably agree that there is no need to outlaw any sort of jokes, and also that Letterman is kind of a cock for making that particular one. I don’t think it is necessarily bad policy to insist that the children of famous people, or any people really, be out of bounds. Not illegal out of bounds, but more of tut-tut you are a real cock for that one Dave sort of out of bounds.
Ooh — first Sarah with the NK dig, now Dan busts out the Sadly, No!
Well done! Jeff is on the run!
What astonishes me is that so many of you fail to see Jeff’s point (and mine, from a slightly different persepective).
David Letterman is an asshole. That’s how he makes his living — making putdown jokes and generally being an asshole.
When you focus on the outrageousness of the joke, you are giving Letterman props; in effect, supporting his assholery. I would bet $5 I can’t afford that (a) more people have seen the YouTube clip of Letterman’s joke than have ever watched his show, and that at least a third of them never heard of David Letterman before this business blew up. You can’t buy that sort of publicity at any price.
Yes, pushback is necessary. But the whole tenor of this discussion from the POV of SarahW and SteveG is (a) subsidizing Letterman’s career and (b) (and not incidentally) validating the putdown of Palin.
Get a grip.
Regards,
Ric
You can complain all you’d like. All I’ve said is I think the response has been ridiculously outsized — and that the joke is now working on the level where it’s all about you.
YMMV.
I just want to understand who’s entitled to get their indignation on under what circumstances. I find it all confusing.
I didn’t say anything about outlawing anything.
I’m just condemning the idea that political candidates children are fair game. It used to be a universal truth. Now I guess it’s an unrealistic expectation.
This society is in deep shit.
Funny thing is, people keep dragging this back to Willow. I’ve said — and will continue to insist — that the Palin daughter who was the referent in the joke was Bristol.
You are all entitled to get your indignation on.
I’m sure keeping a 3 second joke in the news for 4 days has done wonders for Willow. Really. Your outpouring of support for her well-being is just what every 14 year old girl in Jr High craves.
Yes. It would astonish me if Letterman, or his writers, knew Willow existed. Bristol, yes — Sullivan doesn’t entirely labor in vain. Trig, certainly, and at least partly from the same source, but Trig isn’t a likely subject of such a joke. The only one the joke could be meaningfully about in the Leftoid context is Bristol.
Regards,
Ric
And if it prevents David Letterman, or some other highly paid jerk, from thinking it’s cool to do this, it’s not worthwhile, right?
Look who you’re dealing with.
Shit, Bristol’s baby daddy went on some daytime talker, did he not? Like it or not, Bristol’s saga became part of the 2008 election story. The caricatures of the Palin brood are what the left — pathetically — continues to go after.
Express your distaste. Then move on and let them hang themselves with it.*
*not intended as a death threat. NK!
Jeff, re: Culkin/Jackson show me the political attack leveled at the parent through the sexual reputation of the kid.
You’ve just assured that they think it cool to do this.
Maybe now they’ll take it back to private talk or smaller public venues. But make no mistake. They can see just how well the joke worked.
Why would I do that?
Just take it isn’t very OUTLAW.
C’mon, psycho, jump in with a bit of metawisdom about the hopelessness of everything.
Who said “Just take it”?
fx: throws up hands
Sigh. Jeff, I sure wish I was close enough to offer you a beer.
Regards,
Ric
That seems to be pretty much what it boils down to. Do you think NOW would ever have felt compelled to make a statement that demonstrates the underlying incoherence of the left, if people hadn’t made a big deal out of it?
I sure could use it, Ric…
totally not caught up yet, but this made me think of something:
and I suppose is related to why Palin is perceived as being flirty. She smiles.
I thought I remembered reading something a few years ago about how men tend misread women’s smiles as flirting. this is the closest thing I could find:
Done and done.
JeffG – you take LETTERMAN’s word for it that he specifically meant Bristol? A: still not kosher B: I don’t buy it.
Maybe the first joke, I’d accept the explanation. . Not the repeated “mistake” the following night.
Ric – the writer’s knew, I don’t think Letterman could name any of the Palin daughters without a cue card. Because the joke was written off of the press releases and current events – and Willow was listed as accompanying her mother on the trip, and Bristol was not. They would have literally read that the daughter with Palin was Willow. THey would not have read anything to the effect that Bristol was on the trip. But by using “daughter” they get to use the one in town as proxy for Bristol. They didn’t care, they just treated the girls as interchangeable.
NOW made a statement about this in order to set up future statements against the right, then have this condemnation to point back to to show how even handed they are.
For Letterman, being attacked by NOW is a boon. He’s a comedian: he’s supposed to piss people off from time to time. For NOW, it’s also a boon, for the reasons noted above. And it cost them very little.
But now we’ll have our speech further scrutinized, and we’ve aided PC, with the help of NOW — all because we felt compelled to out OUTRAGE one another.
Just take it isn’t very OUTLAW.
Neither is this contrived rape nonsense.
JEffG – You’re the one drawing the analogy between the Palin daughter smear-jokes and Culkin.
I think the referent in Letterman’s worm and pus filled head may well have been Bristol (or Letterman may be lying)… but out in the real world the only Palin daughter attendee of the game referenced could only be the 14 year old.
Since Letterman in his language was imprecise, lazy, and an asshole/lying crapweasel, I choose to interpret his remarks through my own lens and my intent here is to conclude that Letterman is a lying coward who should have his ass kicked by Willow’s Grandpa. Because I can.
I want to play ask the mullah here:
As a new convert to a more vigorous form of the religion of peace I’d like to know how one handles this type of situation.
Clearly one should immediately stone both the little trollops for bringing dishonor upon Allah (or me, whichever comes first I forget) which of course I did before 8th inning commenced, but am I allowed honor killing to avenge the insult placed against me by Letterman? Or maybe just take cash settlement?
Me, I’d like to see whatever outrage there is focused on twisting CBS’s nuts on this. If they can fire Imus, they can fire Letterman. It’s only fair.
So, how do we get Al Sharpton on board?
And so it comes down to this: that pointing out abuses isn’t in our best interests, because doing so will result in our being censored. We mustn’t go too far in representing the double standards, because in calling attention to them, we call attention to ourselves.
Yep, three cheers for the sausage king of Chicago.
Not as cynical as you Jeff. Sometimes wrong is wrong and a person should call it out. I don’t particular care about the “side” that wins, you don’t attack kids to get the adult.
I can see everyones disgust at the episode, and personally think that it was in poor taste…
That said, perhaps it’s time to re-focus this outrage on the up-coming cap-n-trade scam vote, or the health care vote, or any of the fascist agenda that O!&Co are moving on…
Kepp this one, with all of the fallout, right and left, in a back pocket to bring up as an example when convenient; of course using the important points uncovered in these discussions about the larger meta-narrative that the whole episode was predicated on. The one Ric outlined in #148…
At this point, a discussion with a leftist would devolve into arguments over the sincerity of Lettermans apology. And that’s an argument that would be impossible to ever win because it’s too subjective…
Just my two cents
Yeah, this is pw though. We don’t dig lazy interpretation. Well, we didn’t, back in the day.
I’m gonna go with the latter. the former might have flown until after Monday’s A-Rod/slutty stewardess cracks and the ensuing OUTRAGE, he doubled down on Tuesady with the Spitzer joke. He (by which I mean the writers) couldn’t have not known on Tuesday that the kid in tow was Willow, not Bristol. I think they’re going for edgy with plausible deniability. And by “they” I mean Letterman, who, it’s been a long time since he’s been funny.
Letterman’s joke would be like Obama ordering the carpet bombing of Seoul and then protesting that inside his head he was thinking Pyongyang…. which explains the new policy of a teleprompter being carried along with the nuclear war football by the Pentagon aides.
Actually, I noted this yesterday, before Letterman offered his apology.
Maybe Letterman just doesn’t read the right wing blogs.
Because it involved a child and intimated at sexual improprieties.
Maybe were Culkin a girl…
Heh, you think because of this, we’ll have our speech further scrutinized?
As in, if no one had made a murmur, it wouldn’t have been? Really?
It seems some of us feeling deep offense, and, in my case anyway, dread of where acceptance of this is going, is offensive to you. Like that reaction is beneath an intelligent person. What do you think the reaction to it should have been? Is it really only worthy of a tongue click and an eye roll before pretending it never happened?
bh, I meant everything I said in the Letterman Fallout post, below. I don’t think I was being naive, or over-reacting. Based on the same evidence, people can arrive at different interpretations, different conclusions, and still be arguing in good faith.
David Letterman is a comedian like flamboyant homosocialist Jeff Immelt is a capitalist. You don’t get a meaningful on-air role on the CBS broadcast network by being edgy or challenging or interesting. They call it the Tiffany network, you know. That’s cause it’s very very fragile. They have a message and what your wholly pedestrian geriatric ass is gonna to do is parrot it up to and including jocularity about raping little Christian children with steroidy baseball player cock.
Precisely. Except for the fact that I never said pointing out abuses isn’t in our interests.
Making the rest moot.
So I guess by “precisely,” what I really mean is, “I never said that, and I wish you’d stop trying to pretend I did.”
I don’t think Letterman should be fired. I thought the same thing of Imus. When you tell jokes for a living and especially when you do so every day, your are going to cross lines that you maybe you shouldn’t. That said, I don’t think there is anything wrong with doing everything possible to drive home the point that you should think more than twice about equating the teenage daughter of a politician to a whore.
You miss the point. NOW will have a bi-partisan track record, so the next time they come up with a new “hate” term toward women, they’ll have the ammunition to argue that they are not motivated by partisan political considerations.
I’m saying the outsized outrage was the wrong way to fight this battle.
Re: the Spitzer joke. That was aimed more at Spitzer than at Palin’s daughter. At least as I see it.
I think NOW didn’t need the rights outrage to accomplish what you say they have.
And I think you are being too cynical. The outrage wasn’t outsized, it is sincere.
Dan, I was agreeing with Jeff’s and Abe’s irritation with adding RAPE to the joke’s offenses. To be clear, that wasn’t based on your posts.
It reminds me of the reaction to Playboy’s stupid hatefuck post. I’m all ready to comment on how I’m ticked off and then suddenly there are fifty screaming morons telling me that hatefuck objectively equals rape. Which is odd, because it’s never been used that way in normal speech that I’m aware of.
I’m not allied with screechy hyperbole, I’m just not, it’s one of the things I most dislike about the left.
I gotta weigh in with Jeff here. “Slutty…” is an eight-year-old calling someone else names.
Sticks and stones and all that…
Sarah says that you don’t go after the Mom through the kids. And she’s right, but I don’t really see this as that.
Frankly, it was dull thinking people who tried to make a joke. Just a joke. Crass, stupid, political, yes, but a juvenile and dumb joke.
Outsized is not OUTLAW!
Ok, haven’t been around all night (busy drinking a bottle of wine), but I HAVE to see how Caukin got into this debate.
251 – Jeff, except they are distinguished, Sexual improprieties + child is not the whole of it. The chief distinction is that one is not a political attack, using the offspring of the target as ammunition. There are other ways to distinguish between them, that aren’t immaterial, like the fact that Jackson was actually suspected of pedophilia, accused of abusing or having suspect relationships with young boys, and had an actual and rather obsessional relationship with Culkin that drew notice of all.
The Palin daughter stuff is all concocted and you just shouldn’t play with a girls reputation and virtue like that. It’s wrong.
And you betcha the “girl” part matters, if you live in the real world.
I’m sure it’s sincere, lee. But it’s moved beyond that.
How is Jeff’s position incongruent with the the right’s recent preventive smackdowns of Rush’s and Beck’s fulminations? Expedience, it’s what’s for dinner; digest it.
(hic) half bottle still consumed.
Sarah —
Really, what in the hell are you talking about?
SarahW,
Respectfully, I think you might be reading too much into or giving too much credit to a bunch of dumb writers. I don’t think the writers are smart enough to have the intent you accuse them of. They ain’t the brightest or most developed bulbs in the house…
And, fwiw, my lefty troll agreed that Letterman was out of line.
What is my position, cynn? I’m eager to hear what it is I think. Hell, everybody’s doing it. Join in the fun!
I’d like to know what Cynn’s talking about. I mean, after a bottle of wine, I think we can see eye to eye, ifyouknowwhatImeanandIthinkthatyoudo.
Oh, and html fail up there at 8:50. But, in my defense, it’s 10:57 here.
I’m with #196. WHERE IS A-Rod on this? Has anyone thought to get a quote from him? Is the intimation that A-Rod WOULD impregnate a 14 or 18-year old somewhat of a RAAAACist comment? Or has Alex been involved in some cretinism that I’m not aware of, thus making him a target for the Gap-Toothed One.
I think I just have my own sort of I think it’s a marketingish feel for this one and it’s way less strategical than your one Mr. Goldstein. I think creepy old man on CBS with child rapings to be discussed is different. It’s new. It’s new in a time of great great … what they’re calling “change.” Chit chat about raping the nice Christian lady’s children on CBS is a surprising and serendipitous quintessence of the change what Barack Obama’s America represents. I really do. All that’s missing is a theme song.
How the dirty socialists and their media triumphed to where our little country is now a shameful dirty socialist shithole in the making is cause what they knew was sometimes it’s okay for people to just feel the moment. Thinking is for free peoples what have a marketplace of ideas.
David Letterman and CBS and raping babies. How did we get here, Mr. Soros?
oh. I forgot to say “I think” at the end of the quintessence of the change what Barack Obama’s America represents part. I’m that upset.
There was no child raping. And Willow was never called a whore.
So Lt York, if your paper published a letter to the editor joking that your young daughter is turning tricks at your house, and he’s tired of all the scuzy Johns in the neighborhood, no big deal right?
Sticks and stones.
Bush lied, Jeff.
Even after applying the shtick filter, that’s still crazy ass hyperbole.
Is the local letter-to-the-editor page typically framed in comedy monologue form, lee? And is Lt York’s daughter and her pregnancy part of a presidential campaign narrative?
Otherwise the comparison doesn’t seem apt.
Different forums, different standards.
One is a forum for political commentary, the other is an “entertainment/variety show.”
It’s a joke. Just like in South Park when the cartoon of the Virgin Mary spurt blood onto the cartoon of the Pope. I’m a Catholic, but I wasn’t outraged.
Jokes just aren’t that big of a deal to me. He was trying to be funny in a forum where you expect him to try to be funny. He pushed a little too far, and a large group of people don’t find it funny. Ok.
But it is a joke, delivered during a time and forum when he is supposed to be joking. It was juvenile, crass, tasteless and a whole bunch of other stuff.
But it’s just a joke. meh.
that’s still crazy ass hyperbole
Yes. Yes it is. But we’re still no closer to a theme song.
Mr. Treacher says
oh. 170,000. That is many.
Is that all you want? Done.
It briefly appeared that you were taking the moderation nanny position toward your righty brethren but on review it appears you have felt the crab pinch your toe and you have the good sense to get out of the water.
Oh. Well if Treacher Tweeted it, I surrender.
That’s like having it carved in fucking rock by the finger of Yahweh.
I figured you’d know me better by now, cynn.
that’s way tooo long for Twitter, Jeff.
I think my horoscope said people would be cranky today, but damn.
267, what you brought up. You started it.
Last I saw, Brad Penny was drilling him in the ass.
I’m just saying. And what I’m not saying is that you or Mr. bh are wrong. I’m just not where you are. NOW just busted an on-air CBS personality for talking inappropriate sexual trash about a little girl. Agog anyone? I am.
Fine, it was all a dream.
I hope Jeff considers creating a spin-off blog.
Arod, when asked about Palin replied that he doesn’t know who she is.
#268 Lt. York You might not have seen the remarks that prefaced that last one, Lt York, but what I’ve been saying is along the lines of “they didn’t care, any Palin daughter would do” to proxy for “that slut daughter of Palin”. By Tues they’d heard the complaints, but they still used generic “daughter”. Bad form and uncool.
“…WHERE IS A-Rod on this?
Last I saw, Brad Penny was drilling him in the ass.”
Drilling him with what; the bat, the ball, or, well, something else…
“Arod, when asked about Palin replied that he doesn’t know who she is.”
Yeah, but I’ll bet he knows who Brad Penny is…
Fine, it was all a dream.
I hope Jeff considers creating a spin-off blog.
What was a dream and I don’t get the part about a spin-off blog. I for real never said anyone was wrong cause me I was expressing about the atmospherics from an oh shit this is so not a good day for CBS in like an a lot unprecedented way perspective. Not anyone as far as I can tell has really shown a lot of appreciation for that aspect.
I live for oh shit this is so not a good day for CBS. These days are few and far between.
I started no such thing, Sarah. I found another set of jokes that featured an underage prop. I asked where the outrage was. Suddenly I’m being asked to map that joke onto the Palin joke in terms of its politics.
If its the politics of Letterman’s joke that bothers you, say so. Right now you’re all over the place.
I think if you click on my 170,000 link you’ll at least get my perspective more better. That part’s not hyperbolic at all. It’s exactly what it is, and growing.
Oh. I hadn’t realized they’d given Treacher a spot at Hot Air, too.
I will now happily retire.
The 300.
Seems the perfect one to go out on.
No question they are full of it, backpedaling and spinning to try to hold off and diffuse a pr bomb.
But to me, it’s just too much.
I’ve told a joke or two in my day that didn’t go over well…didn’t mean it that way, but I’ve done it.
Now Letterman is a mean-spirited little man, so he doesn’t get that pass.
But it was just a joke…
Got more important things than that to worry about for any length of time, like the rule of law, property rights [can you say “fucked over bondholders?”] and the biggest joke of all on us, Obama.
That’s just the Green Room. It’s … I don’t know what it is. Experimental.
fuck…sorry jeff
no going out on the 300 cause of
Echo-Chamber Wisdom?
more crap I don’t have time to read, mostly.
When you wake up tomorrow, Jeff, you’ll be running a bed and breakfast in the northeast. I’d like to apply for the slow handyman job. If not, I’m thinking I could be the other brother with the same name as the other brothers.
You had a good run, captain. That’s worth something.
“Oh. I hadn’t realized they’d given Treacher a spot at Hot Air, too.
I will now happily retire.”
Jeff G.,
It’s a forum much like your pub, where other bloggers who don’t work for MM can submit posts…
It seems to me to be a bid for traffic, as opposed to the pub where folks can discuss topics that may, or may not be, front page items…
I’m sure they’d post anything you wrote in that forum as well, if that was what you wanted…
That’s nice, lee.
In a thread where 240 of 300 comments disagree, I’m now accused of demanding lock-step agreement. Perfect.
The end.
It’s a lot like having a spot at the Pub. You could get one for the asking.
Hey, lee, I’d say fuck off but this is your blog now. Have fun.
I thought Eliot Spritzer and whores were on an unbroken continuum… or is that just the divorce lawyers talking?
I demand to know who pays Willow’s allowance.
Eliot Spitzer would if he could (live through Grandpa’s ass whuppin…)
Sarah Palin’s daughter wore a NY Yankee cap for 1/2 an hour, which amortized over the expected life expectancy of said cap equals Palin owing at least $1 for the gift… and if she doesn’t pay the tax, then she is whoring out her child for ballcap rental. Which is so Wasilla meth crazed hillbilly as to be instantly credible….
Steve G:Sarah Palin’s daughter wore a NY Yankee cap for 1/2 an hour, which amortized over the expected life expectancy of said cap equals Palin owing at least $1 for the gift… and if she doesn’t pay the tax, then she is whoring out her child for ballcap rental. Which is so Wasilla meth crazed hillbilly as to be instantly credible….
Oh, now that’s funny…
Jer? For real I don’t understand.
What was a dream and I don’t get the part about a spin-off blog.
I’d presume that the dream was that people actually understood everything Jeff has written here while they were nodding in agreement. The spin-off comment follows from being disabused of that.
Ah, no. That was in response to “not bh”, who has been bitching that everyone doesn’t agree with you.
I myself recognize the point of a post titled “rising to the challenge”, and appreciate that you were welcoming the debate, as always.
It’s funny, this is like one in a million where I actually have a different viewpoint where I can actually debate with you, which is why I took exception to bh acting like it’s a crime.
Sometimes I’m too pithy, my bad.
You know, I am affronted by Jeff’s lack of affront, especially having gone to bat for a less widely broadcast but in many ways analagous ill-treatment of his own family, used for the purposes of mocking his life and diminishing his work. ( And on DL, was WORSE, direct creepy off-color cracks about a daughter of Palin’s, over a course of two days, and including a lot of offensive mysogynistic hostility to Palin and her daughter. Sure comedians tell jokes at the expense of others, but this was sexual humor about a young girl, not really famous in her own right, and not attacked on her own merits.
I’m more affronted when he implies that because he feels nothing, the genuine disgust and anger I feel is either puffed up for effect, or based on misunderstanding.
To exaggerate is to weaken, but I am actually mad about the Letterman cracks. They were wrong and you don’t make vulgar sexually oriented cracks about the daughter to laugh at or tear down Palin or the respectability of her family.
If you didn’t know that the Spitzer joke was implying that joke-Spitzer took the girl for a prostitute, you didn’t get the joke. The joke wasn’t that Spitzer is a perv. It’s that he’s a perv who likes prostitutes, so haha when Mom has to fend him off of slut-daughter.
I haven’t actually cried rape, but it was a detestable joke to make about Palin’s daughter in any case. Uncool, bad form. Even if funny. Even if true, ( which of course it was neither of those).
I don’t think that’s what’s happening at all though, Abe, bh. SarahW in particular has been very careful to delineate what her concerns are. No none is really arguing are they that on some level what we are all discussing is Mr. Letterman’s mean-spiritedness and what does it mean. I think it’s fair to say that there was a reasonable expectation in America not long ago that you could turn on CBS and that some late night piece of shit was not gonna talk about your little girl getting fucked at a baseball game.
There’s several levels this works on, not just an intentionalist one. When people are using your name and child rape in the same sentence I think it’s a given that an intentionalist stance is not holding any great sway in the argument at the moment.
Maybe there’s some feel that the anti-intentionalistical aspects were original to the comments here. No. Check out my 170,000 link. What exactly Letterman meant to communicate about how Sarah Palin’s daughter might could get fucked by Alex Rodriquez at that baseball game had gotten lost long before this thread and what that means is a lot more multifaceted than an examination of Mr. Letterman’s intent. I guarantee you there are many peoples at CBS today that are not particularly concerned with resolving question of Mr. Letterman’s intent.
The dirty socialist media got caught wrong-footed today. Whether you think that’s fair or not it’s a singular enough occasion that it sort of bears looking at it from different perspectives and maybe seeing something in it that you didn’t already know I think.
resolving *the* question of Mr. Letterman’s intent…
But I don’t understand how this isn’t a good day.
There was a reasonable expectation not long ago that you could turn on NBC and not find their newsmen sucking the president’s cock. Much.
What also I don’t understand is why my 170,000 link is now only finding 148,000 hits.
really? cause I just clicked it and there’s 889,000. are you in China?
I just finished watching the newly-released-on-DVD “Gran Torino”. To tie that in with this latest hmongous dying Letterman not-all-joke jokey toke-a-joke fallout thingy…
(hey, WTF happened at 300? Whom is this ‘Treacher’ you speak of?)
Oh. Gran Torino, the tie-in…
You go, Todd.
Yes! And that’s my point I am inarticulately trying to make, Mr. Pablo. This episode thisng involving the late night guy and the young girl is a sort of distillation of oh crap somewhere we’ve gone terribly terribly wrong and that’s something that doesn’t really demand articulation… just the sense of it. And that sense of we’ve gone terribly terribly wrong if shared by enough people may be the only thing you hear rattling around when you shake Pandora’s box anymore.
oh. google is mysterious. Until we understand it better maybe you shouldn’t make eye contact.
it’s too late, but I shall try not to make any sudden moves.
SarahW has been very careful to be insulting. lee has just been confused since he’s been here. ‘feets, you want to make peace, I get that, but it is what it is.
[…] got a point, inasmuch as one wants to err on the side of speech rather than […]
this. It’s all I got. Please please please.
What makes you think I’m confused bh? That I don’t agree that this isn’t a battle worth suiting up for?
Did Jeff designate you as his personal body guard and ass kisser? You seem born for the job.
lee, it’s your blog now. Start cranking out the funny comments and posts.
Start… now!
Well, I expressed my anger at Letterman on Day 1. On Day 2, reason began to cloud my senses. Today, well, I think Letterman needs to be forcefully addressed by the those directly affected. Hint: their names aren’t my names.
It was never your blog to give away, was it?
It’s better to be the first Darryl, he got to play in Blade Runner and now Tru Blood. Is there a role for the slow handyman’s assistant? That has been my role mostly in life.
Be well bh.
Okay. Fine. If others aren’t going to hold back, why the fuck should I?
Jeff took offense and made that offense known to the dickhead who gave the offense. I don’t recall saying the Palins couldn’t (or shouldn’t) be upset or offended. I don’t remember saying Sarah or anyone else can’t be offended. I do, however, remember saying that it is doubtful Letterman knows who the hell Willow Palin is, and that the joke was clearly aimed on the local level at Bristol in order to embarrass Sarah and, by extension, poke at social cons.
Too, when NK attacked my family, I don’t remember trying to turn it into a national cause. But I do appreciate your bringing that up over and over again, Sarah. Next time, how about just dropping Pat an email and letting him know you’re worried about me.
Your entitled to your outrage. But if you understand the joke to be about the rape of Willow, you are getting outraged at something Letterman didn’t intend.
Kinda like getting outraged over an arc.
Who is “you”? Clearly, Letterman does, and it is a reflection on him and those who laughed — a poor reflection, I believe, for reasons I’ve tried to describe.
Unfortunately, my descriptions are cast as endorsements of the particular joke. Again, the joke was lazy. But Letterman has every right to make it. Palin’s daughter’s out-of-wedlock pregnancy is an important part of the media-generated “Sarah Palin” construct, one that Letterman relies on for cheap, lazy laughs.
You have your reaction. I’ll have mine. And I’ll point out why I think certain hyperbolic reactions strain credulity.
Spitzer sees any exotic Other as a prostitute, goes the internal logic of the joke. If his tastes ran to the trashy end, even better (for the Letterman’s sake).
The daughter is acted upon by Spitzer. The mother intercedes on behalf of the daughter to keep Spitzer at bay. To take that joke in any way literally — like the preceding joke, it used Sarah Palin for its setup (“she was shooting rats from a helicopter”), but the joke is REALLY on New York — is proof that these jokes are not on the Palins anymore, but rather on people like you.
As I said before, having NOW condemn you, as a comedian, is a GOOD THING. For the rest of us, however, having NOW condemn speech is a bad thing.
It was funny to those who laughed.
And frankly? I would rather not having you decide what is or isn’t funny.
Darryl,
Any room at the inn..? I here it’s gonna be kinda cool there this summer, ‘cuz of the global warming…
You all still have that cute little blond there..? And that inkeeper fella, who used to be a psychologist in the big city..?
I could use a little couch time myself…
Thanks, geoff. I’m thinking a couple steaks with you and JD are still in order in July. Buddies before blogs and all that.
Hey, oddly enough, lee might be starting to understand. Extrapolate from your last comment, lee. You might get around to it eventually.
Jeff, I am so turned on by your offensiveness. I need a piercing, or something.
It’s not whoopsidaisical that Letterman’s writers took their shit all over Sarah Palin and her little girl just after she’d received positive notice and a lot of attention for an interview and Letterman’s writers aren’t paid to know when shitting on Sarah Palin is an agenda item and David Letterman just wants his fucking check so I seriously doubt we’ve gotten very close at all to the actual story of what just happened or at least I don’t know how you can say that we have with any degree of confidence.
She’s still here, Bob.
Oddly enough, she says it’s very cold at night. Something about a wink, wink, nod, nod.
I took her to mean the crazy oregon lady not the nk one.
bh, I’ll(we’ll) be down for that.
“And frankly? I would rather not having you decide what is or isn’t funny.”
It really does boil down to that…
It’s a joke, and that fact should provide some kind of limit, at least, my outrage.
Oooh Darryl,
Say no more, squire; know what I mean?
“…to my outrage.”
Oh. Well her use of NK upthread muddied that, then.
But in the case of Fr*sch, I did nothing but showcase her nuttiness and laugh — at least, until I felt it plausible that she actually might be unstable enough to do harm. At which point I took legal action.
I didn’t contact her work, nor did I ever ask anyone else to do so.
And of course, I very much doubt anyone thinks Letterman poses a real physical threat to Palin’s daughter. So that lovely analogy fails, as well. But again, thanks for bringing it up!
It’s a typical Letterman monologue joke. I’ve been a Letterman watcher for many years, and lately, the funny has not been there, just on autopilot. More than likely, the writers sought to make hay out of the Palin being in town. Was it funny? To a Letterman viewer, it’s kind of a canned laugh. Was it out of line? To a certain extent that if you poke fun at Willow/Bristol, then Sasha and Malia should be fair game as well.
I can’t work up enough outrage to care anymore, because the media elites have been doing this for so long.
Seems to me that the outcome of all of this outsized outrage is that we’ve ‘shown our ass’.
For a long time what has passed for edgy comedy has been, to parapharase what psycho wrote way back at #33, “They’re just mouth-noises in a shibboleth. “We are not-whoever it is we hate. APPLAUSE.â€
Bush blows – WOOT! Palin’s a stupid c*nt – WOOHOO! Ronald RayGun – HAHAHA!
It’s not particularly clever. Nor funny. And those in the echo-chamber know that — but by laughing along they prove to themselves and to each other that “they” are smart, they “get it”, they’re not “one of them”. That’s the only point of the “joke” anyway. And when we get all crazy outraged, we show them our ass.
I think its best to ignore the purveyors of this crap. Otherwise we waste our time, and, more importantly, our credibility.
I just want to go on record that it wasn’t me who mentioned a dubiously tenured professor, Eliot Spitzer, and energetic colonic cleansing in the same thread.
If the Palin’s were Jews I’d push the blame on them, but hillbillies are so damn f****** elusive… West Virginia, Wasilla… all start with W… just like George W Bush does
I don’t get though how you can invoke “an important part of the media-generated ‘Sarah Palin’ construct” and not see that there’s a pretty nifty ‘David Letterman’ construct being generated what just maybe might prove a cautionary tale for the dirty socialist Barack Obama-fellating homos at CBS and beyond. I did my part I like to think.
lee, I think there are now other commenters here who need your special form of denouncing.
Not saying your confused or anything. Just saying that you don’t have an ability comprehend what you read.
your=you’re, but, hey, I denounce myself, strongly.
hey I was oblique as I could be and I didn’t weigh in on any merits it’s just that I think what SarahW was trying to say is that there was an intent that was malicious what exists apart from the strict parameters of the David “child rape is teh funny” Letterman’s “joke” what he told. That malice a lot took a form that you’re more familiar with than most.
That “David Letterman” construct has been around in one form or another since before late night comedians were doing Reagan senility jokes. Might have started when “Aristophanes” was giving “Socrates” shit.
I say we all burn our copies of The Clouds.
I usually don’t comment on these outrage of the day type pieces involving celebrities, But Letterman creeped me out enough that I can’t help it. The whole Democratic rebellion against Hillary Clinton got a little creepy, and their reaction to Palin was super-creepy. And just when you’re wondering why the attacks don’t stop now that the election was over six months ago but it doesn’t stop—it gets worse. It’s long ago stopped being merely partisan, but it has lately transcended the outrageous straight into the realm of the creepy. Likewise, in my book Letterman has graduated from being an asshole to being a creep.
…and a tool.
Oh I get it bh.
You’re the shit. Met Jeff in person. Hang out with the regulars. In person.
I’m just a dumb ass. So stupid I don’t even recognize my own presumption at not falling down in supplication when told my umbrage at Letterman is outsized.
I should probably just fuck off and quit embarrassing myself, Jeff, and all the intelligent regulars here.
Tell ya what. All Jeff has to do is ask me once. I’m sure he’ll do it if you tell him he should…
I mean, I’m not one of you…”other, other, other brother Darryl”. hahahah (inside joke!)
Are you willing to boycott CBS until the fire him, peter? If not, HOW DARE YOU NOT CARE ABOUT CHILD RAPE!
Don’t forget the birds and the frogs, Jeff.
lee, don’t worry, I denounce myself for getting that joke.
I’ve never met bh in person. Both he and lee have been longtime supporters of this site. I appreciate both of their contributions.
To my knowledge, neither of them has ever sent emails to other with whom I’m quarreling “explaining” my erratic behavior. For that I’m grateful.
Yeah, that’s just a Newhart joke, lee.
Insidery like it was on national television for years.
Funny, though, once you tell me I’m licking Jeff’s ass, I don’t feel so bad saying you’re not very bright anymore.
Not that construct. That’s like saying the media treats Sarah Palin like a “governor.” I mean the “David Letterman” construct where he is a creepy creepy old man what makes dirty dirty sexual sneerings about young girls on CBS and has a lot of misogyny towards Christian womens and CBS looks the other way cause they’re cool with hating the Christian bitches. Ric Locke was very persuasive on this point at #146.
Re: Little Miss Attila’s link.
No, I don’t try to see the joke from Letterman’s point of view. I provided justification for its telling.
You know what’s truly sad about this situation? Our conservative pundits are still talking about Letterman joke thing today when our Dear Leader gave a speech talking up some National Healthcare? Can we say…distraction???
..shall I denounce myself for being a conspiracy nut? lol
Uh, I’ve already touched on that. That’s par for the course in How Certain People Treat “Sarah Palin.”
Letterman is no different than nearly every other prominent lefty comedian on these points. New Yorkers hate hicks. Successful hicks that fly in the face of their caricatures need to be bent to fit the caricature.
Got it.
I would boycott CBS, but it would have no effect as I already/i> don’t watch it…
Except for Football season, of course…
I’m willing to turn the sound down when Marino speaks, if that’ll help…
But I gotta here Boomer Esiason. He wasn’t the greatest in the NFL, but he was a University of Maryland guy…
You see, that makes us Alumni…
I’m out.
lee, hey, I’m sorry. I got pissed when you said I was a sycophant. I took offense and then unloaded pretty strongly.
My bad.
Gitmo…Miranda … Tobacco measure … war-spending bill … BUT THE BIG STORY ON ACTION NEWS TONIGHT: DAVID LETTERMAN AND SARAH PALIN “GET IT ON”!
Bunnies!
Letterman is different cause he gets 170,000 or whatever hits and that’s just the ones associating him specifically with child rape and Letterman had to explain himself and it was lame and everyone talked about it and then MSNBC even used resources to cover for him cause they saw Letterman taking one for the dirty socialist team and also he’s different cause he more than most has both the look and feel of stranger danger.
Actually I said kissing, not licking. And I got the Newhart references, you didn’t get “the joke” after all.
I still don’t understand how this wasn’t a good day.
Doesn’t anyone remember the unwarranted and utter bullshit this nasty-assed Letterman fucktard pulled on McCain during the campaign for going to DC instead of coming on his rancid CBS shithole show? I remember. And fuck him and his predilection for raping children I think.
The whole rape-insinuation angle to the OUTRAGE is dead. It’s completely dead. There is nothing you can do about it, because DL has deniability. Whether he did it intentionally or out of ignorance is irrelevant: the two possibilities are completely equivalent at this point.
In fact, push the issue and he simply ups the ante with a smirking “Well, hell, I didn’t know. How many kids does that slut have anyway?”
lee, I’m looking to make peace here.
Mea culpa. I don’t want bad blood if I misread things. Cool?
Oh shit.
Well I better smoke this bowl then.
Having to deny you said anything about raping children doesn’t go into the win column for who you think it does I don’t think.
Hey, there are no sycophants. What, you think this is LGF?
DOWN DINGED!!!11!!11!!!111!!!!
To Jeff G, and all the commentariat here at PW,
Good night to all, and as Mel said on another thread, Let’s conserve our force for future actions…
All the best, to all you folks
Cool bh.
Thanks, lee. Good man.
Who is this Jeff guy?
Last time I saw his name he was asking me to hit the tip jar and asking me to enroll in some catch wrestling seminar…. free drink included if I recall… no one said there would be graciousness included, so I apologize
good night bh I just made coffee I am disheartened and I will sing a song ok for everyone to reflect on ok here is my song
please BELIEVE me
lately my whole WORLD is changing to where it’;s very dirty and socialist
suddenly you’re here and my life’s BETTER than before
we’re FRIENDS forever
you know that’s how I FEEEL
We’ll STICK togetherrrrrr
please say we gotta DEAL
we’re FRIENDS forever
and when the rest have gone
It’s you who will be there with me
My FRIEND
there.
And also I would like to give a shout out to SarahW and say hey you. Yes. It’s all good I think and I definitely heard you and also I heard Jeff I don’t see that there was a wrong viewpoint what anyone expressed. Sometimes it just feels that way but I don’t have a song about that.
serr8d; Bravo! That was an LOL in RL. :)
oh. I effed up my song but I was trying to go from memory so it would sound more sincere and be more affecting
The JeffG guy is somebody who occasionally posts on your site, SteveG.
We’ll see.
Personally I think we’ve just taken the decidedly leftist idea of PC speech and saddled the right with it.
“At any given moment, millions are struggling with their habit or worrying about loved ones who smoke,” said Obama.
“But those are critiques of the joke, not reasons the joke shouldn’t have been attempted.”
Backward.
Those are reasons that the joke shouldn’t have been attempted.
A critique of the *joke* would concern the interior evidence that no matter what Letterman says, it was only “funny” as a “call-back” from Willow to Bristol and ANOTHER daughter of Sarah Palin getting pregnant. Since he mentioned Sarah Palin as the subject of the joke and the “daughter” as an unnamed generality. (Good thing for him, it wasn’t PIPER at the game that day.)
Call-backs are what make many jokes humorous because they take one thing now, and include a second layer of meaning because they reference some other event in parallel.
A joke about Bristol getting pregnant again doesn’t include this frission so for the joke to work at all as a *joke* the daughter referenced has to be Willow.
Now see… THAT is a critique of the JOKE.
You make it like David Letterman is an individual what said something on behalf of David Letterman. I could not disagree with that more and I think there’s a machine involved and I think at the end of the day it’s still cool beans and very very PC to fuck with the children of non-dirty socialists but not with M’chelle and Barack’s Disneyfied That’s So Raven magazine cover girl hoochie brats.
Jeebus, he already whacked me with a 2200% tax increase in February, now what?
See what I did there?
No. Those are reasons you might not have attempted the joke.
Actually, it’s the familiarity with getting pregnant that makes the getting knocked up by somebody else plausible, and gives the joke its punch. The-we-already-know-whop-she-is part that gives Letterman the permission even to attempt the joke.
Not a very convincing one.
I don’t see it as PC bullshit Jeff. It’s more like you got a right, neigh, an obligation to punch an asshole in the face if he calls your wife a whore to your face. You just can’t let people get away with that kinda disrespect or next thing you know it’s chaos.
It’s more at that level than political correctness I think.
I think it would be good for society to see Letterman crying and apologizing an begging to keep his job, like that Imus person had to do.
“Personally I think we’ve just taken the decidedly leftist idea of PC speech and saddled the right with it.”
I think there is a difference in getting all bent about the Slutty Stewardess joke and failing to voice any sort of censure about a sexual joke made about a 14 year old.
Is it PC speech or civil behavior and public decency?
We can have laws that govern and control our behavior OR we can have good old social disapproval to let people know when they’re messing with someone’s child that they’ve gone too far.
Because some people are just too dim to realize it if they aren’t *told*.
The joke wasn’t about Willow.
eh heh. I think my favorite quote today was:
Where did anyone ever get that idea from?
I GOT IT FROM YOU! I got it from watching you, dad!
I sometimes wonder if anyone reads my comments.
I think the Palins taking offense entirely justified, and were I Todd Palin I’d likely call Letterman out (which would get me banned from Patterico’s, incidentally).
But the Boycott CBS stuff? Calls for Letterman’s firing? All that stuff will come back to haunt us — precisely because this was a COMEDIAN making the joke.
A joke can be funny and creepy at the same time, can’t it?
Ask Emo Philips. Or Carrot Top.
“Actually, it’s the familiarity with getting pregnant that makes the getting knocked up by somebody else plausible, and gives the joke its punch.”
Yeah… because, “she’s a slut” is the punchline to a joke. Though it was number 7 or something… so maybe in some places it really is funny to call someone a slut without evidence of slutty behavior. (And Bristol hasn’t done a thing that Letterman wasn’t proud to do himself.)
Okay. That’s really it for me. I have Burn Notice and Royal Pains tivoed. Duty calls.
Do you know how the Top 10 lists work?
Frisson-wise, I mean…?
“The joke wasn’t about Willow.”
Because Letterman said so?
And yes… I agree that calling for firings and boycotts is really stupid.
He’s just a geriatric spokesmodel for CBS Corp I think. He reads things what people write for him and in the campaign he was the comedian that ran a sustained campaign of unprecedented vituperation against Meghan’s coward daddy. He’s a whore I think, a CBS brand geriatric whore. But he stopped being a comedian when he got himself fitted for his leash.
I want to stop being unsaddled.
If you say so, happyfeet.
Me, I’d wait until Treacher weighs in before declaring Letterman generally unfunny, though.
No. I argued as much before Letterman said a word about it.
We’re talking past each other a lot cause we have very different POVs on this one. I honestly haven’t watched the Mr. Letterman person in … how long is a coon’s age cause it might even be longer than that. You know who had class was that Johnny Carson. Mostly cause he said I retire and then he retired. He’s a hero to me just for that there.
oh. That was deft with the czar search thinger. Our poor little country.
Oblique much?
Later, you might keeping comments hoping I’d come back.
Yeah, best to hang it up.
oh.
ok no I didn’t mean to imply anything there. I used to respect Tina Turner for the same thing but turns out she’s a big liar what lies. When Tina Turner tells you stuff you can’t believe it because she lies.
ohnoes … that’s tears to your eyes funny I think. Apparently some NPR show dragged that out for some reason recently.
Seems a bit shitty lately, though. Doesn’t it, hf?
Like accidentally knocking on the door of your old house and someone new answers and says, “Can I help you?” And you stand there and think how they probably can’t, even if they wanted to.
Maybe a little cantankerous but just cause we’re all still coming to terms with different facets of the idea of futility what we were never familiar with before and our little country is sinking slowly beneath the waves as the dirty socialist tide washes in and so also there is grief and not the kind where you can run out and buy a new puppy this is more of a lost horizons type dealio.
Except it’s really not slowly, how it’s sinking.
I think maybe psycho is here for a reason. To help us better understand how things won’t work out.
That’s probably important, how friends aren’t that way after something weird happens.
psycho is a gift
Speaking of socialist – I’m really disappointed at Obama turning out to be a SINO. De-nationalizing the banks! What’s next?
Take it easy, ‘feets.
you know what’s weird? RTO does. on facebook. and it resulted in some people friending me that I’d done shows with way back when (before I really knew RTO). I’ve been all, “who are these people?” and then I see their picture and figure it out.
You too bh. Tomorrow will be a better day cause Jeff is very good when it’s time to stop and collaborate and listen and then come back with a brand new edition.
Facebook I decided is this decade’s tattoo to where if you value your individuality you will be very circumspect. But maybe that’s just me.
I resisted for as long as I could, but caved a couple months ago. Mostly because it’s about the only way theater people share pictures. and it’s the preferred method of communication for some of my family.
“because it’s an a lot homogeneous experience,” happyfeet explained. “A lot also it’s cause people, sometimes they kind of intimate that my not being on facebook is … inconvenient for them. To be on facebook I would have to pretend I didn’t notice that.”
but happyfeet me is on facebook… I don’t know if this link will work… but I’m there. I keep meaning to play with that more. Also, the twitter thing.
Yup. There’s something very flawed with the way I approach this Internet thingy. I realize that.
oh yeah, RTO noticed your name change just this evening. He’s very observant sometimes.
That was very tricky.
Yeah. That Carson, once he says he’s retired, that’s it. Heroic.
The thing to do is to emulate Johnny. After he left, I hear they let some guy from the studio audience take over. And all was right with the world.
see that’s not what I meant. That’s not what I meant at all. I would never mean that to where I would say it or say it cause why would I cause it wouldn’t be what I meant.
but Carson is a lot classier than this David Letterman person. I think that’s indisputable.
or was a lot classier than this David Letterman person I should say cause he’s retired now. Which, I respect that.
um...
no, I’ll say it. permanently.
Bless his heart.
I’m not getting all the memos.
sorry if I missed your subtlety there. it’s almost 3 a.m. here.
no. I didn’t know. I wonder who else is dead.
ha ha, you could have tried to save it with “that’s what I meant by retired”. anyway, I LOL’d for reals at “bless his heart”. but gotta try to conk out now.
good night – i took off the rest of this week and I can’t remember why really – I got all the laundry done already
Strawman = “It was funny to those who laughed.
And frankly? I would rather not having you decide what is or isn’t funny.
JeffG, I made a POINTED point that the funny is irrelevant, the DL cracks were beyond the pale.
I think I made the distinction you draw between your own family getting drawn into “comedy” about you – the lack of a national audience. But it was public enough. It’s shocking you would sneer at my or any one else anger as prissy high dudgeon when an innocent kid gets dragged into an attack on the parent.
Your entitled to your outrage. But if you understand the joke to be about the rape of Willow, you are getting outraged at something Letterman didn’t intend.
You keep writing as if I have ever said Willow was raped. Perhaps you are directing that at Treacher?
Who is “you”?
“Clearly, Letterman does”, Which kicks him out of the sense and discretion club
and it is a reflection on him and those who laughed — a poor reflection, I believe, for reasons I’ve tried to describe.
Unfortunately, my descriptions are cast as endorsements of the particular joke. Again, the joke was lazy. But Letterman has every right to make it. Palin’s daughter’s out-of-wedlock pregnancy is an important part of the media-generated “Sarah Palin†construct, one that Letterman relies on for cheap, lazy laughs.
You have your reaction. I’ll have mine. And I’ll point out why I think certain hyperbolic reactions strain credulity.
My reaction is pretty genuine and based on a two-day roll of DL on the reputation-virtue jokes about Palin’s daughter.
Spitzer sees any exotic Other as a prostitute, goes the internal logic of the joke. If his tastes ran to the trashy end, even better (for the Letterman’s sake).
HE SEES THE DAUGHTER AS A PROSTITUTE
Okay. Fine. If others aren’t going to hold back, why the fuck should I?
You know, I am affronted by Jeff’s lack of affront, especially having gone to bat for a less widely broadcast but in many ways analagous ill-treatment of his own family, used for the purposes of mocking his life and diminishing his work. ( And on DL, was WORSE, direct creepy off-color cracks about a daughter of Palin’s, over a course of two days, and including a lot of offensive mysogynistic hostility to Palin and her daughter. Sure comedians tell jokes at the expense of others, but this was sexual humor about a young girl, not really famous in her own right, and not attacked on her own merits.
Jeff took offense and made that offense known to the dickhead who gave the offense. I don’t recall saying the Palins couldn’t (or shouldn’t) be upset or offended. I don’t remember saying Sarah or anyone else can’t be offended. I do, however, remember saying that it is doubtful Letterman knows who the hell Willow Palin is, and that the joke was clearly aimed on the local level at Bristol in order to embarrass Sarah and, by extension, poke at social cons.
Too, when NK attacked my family, I don’t remember trying to turn it into a national cause. But I do appreciate your bringing that up over and over again, Sarah. Next time, how about just dropping Pat an email and letting him know you’re worried about me.
I’m more affronted when he implies that because he feels nothing, the genuine disgust and anger I feel is either puffed up for effect, or based on misunderstanding.
Your entitled to your outrage. But if you understand the joke to be about the rape of Willow, you are getting outraged at something Letterman didn’t intend.
Kinda like getting outraged over an arc.
To exaggerate is to weaken, but I am actually mad about the Letterman cracks. They were wrong and you don’t make vulgar sexually oriented cracks about the daughter to laugh at or tear down Palin or the respectability of her family.
Who is “you� Clearly, Letterman does, and it is a reflection on him and those who laughed — a poor reflection, I believe, for reasons I’ve tried to describe.
Unfortunately, my descriptions are cast as endorsements of the particular joke. Again, the joke was lazy. But Letterman has every right to make it. Palin’s daughter’s out-of-wedlock pregnancy is an important part of the media-generated “Sarah Palin†construct, one that Letterman relies on for cheap, lazy laughs.
You have your reaction. I’ll have mine. And I’ll point out why I think certain hyperbolic reactions strain credulity.
If you didn’t know that the Spitzer joke was implying that joke-Spitzer took the girl for a prostitute, you didn’t get the joke. The joke wasn’t that Spitzer is a perv. It’s that he’s a perv who likes prostitutes, so haha when Mom has to fend him off of slut-daughter.
Spitzer sees any exotic Other as a prostitute, goes the internal logic of the joke. If his tastes ran to the trashy end, even better (for the Letterman’s sake).
The daughter is acted upon by Spitzer. The mother intercedes on behalf of the daughter to keep Spitzer at bay. To take that joke in any way literally — like the preceding joke, it used Sarah Palin for its setup (â€she was shooting rats from a helicopterâ€), but the joke is REALLY on New York — is proof that these jokes are not on the Palins anymore, but rather on people like you.
THat joke is on a lot of people by your acccount. Fark it, I’m not having it. Leave the girl out of your prositute-loving local creep jokes.
As I said before, having NOW condemn you, as a comedian, is a GOOD THING. For the rest of us, however, having NOW condemn speech is a bad thing.
I have taken your argument as – if you’re going to be angry, or feign being angry more likely, make the most of it.
The subtext is that DL’s line of humor is fine, it’s really nothing. You should tolerate this sort of daughter-trashing in your society, She’s just a chick, who invited it by being pregnant at 17, or by being the sister of a girl pregnant at 17. But if that bothers you, or you’re going to act all prudish and missish, at least twist the knife by making the left address it in a way that can be used against them.
Left, smeft.
I thought DL went beyond what’s decent, it was uncool and bad form, and he ought to be booed and hissed on principle, no matter how funny or unfunny he is. and good for NOW if comes back in the future and says, hey, don’t make jokes about Obama’s teen- pregnant daughter or her sister, should that reality manifest, I guess they GOT me.
so
1. It was wrong
2. I was offended for reals
3. I told you why and you don’t have to get to WILLOW RAPE to get there
4 I don’t buy DL/DL’s writers as innocent of using willlow as a Bristol proxy
5. Bristol is bad enough
6. I’m sure I’m leaving important things out
Oh crap. Posted that before it was meant to be posted. I apologise for the mess.
———————————
Strawman = “It was funny to those who laughed.”
“And frankly? I would rather not having you decide what is or isn’t funny.”
JeffG, I made a POINTED point that the funny is irrelevant, the DL cracks were beyond the pale.
I think I made the distinction you draw between your own family getting drawn into “comedy†about you – the lack of a national audience. But it was public enough. It’s shocking you would sneer at my or any one else anger as prissy high dudgeon when an innocent kid gets dragged into an attack on the parent.
Your entitled to your outrage. But if you understand the joke to be about the rape of Willow, you are getting outraged at something Letterman didn’t intend.
You keep writing as if I have ever said Willow was raped. Perhaps you are directing that at Treacher?
Who is “youâ€?“Clearly, Letterman doesâ€, Which kicks him out of the sense and discretion club. I think you understood the figure of speech.
” And I’ll point out why I think certain hyperbolic reactions strain credulity.”
My reaction is pretty genuine and based on a two-day roll of DL on the reputation-virtue jokes about Palin’s daughter.
Spitzer sees any exotic Other as a prostitute, goes the internal logic of the joke. If his tastes ran to the trashy end, even better (for the Letterman’s sake).
HE SEES THE DAUGHTER AS A PROSTITUTE
“Spitzer sees any exotic Other as a prostitute, goes the internal logic of the joke. If his tastes ran to the trashy end, even better (for the Letterman’s sake).
The daughter is acted upon by Spitzer. The mother intercedes on behalf of the daughter to keep Spitzer at bay. To take that joke in any way literally — like the preceding joke, it used Sarah Palin for its setup (â€she was shooting rats from a helicopterâ€), but the joke is REALLY on New York — is proof that these jokes are not on the Palins anymore, but rather on people like you.”
THat joke is on a lot of people by your acccount. Fark it, I’m not having it. Leave the girl out of your prositute-loving local creep jokes.
As I said before, having NOW condemn you, as a comedian, is a GOOD THING. For the rest of us, however, having NOW condemn speech is a bad thing.
I have taken your argument as – if you’re going to be angry, or feign being angry more likely, make the most of it.
The subtext is that DL’s line of humor is fine, it’s really nothing. You should tolerate this sort of daughter-trashing in your society, She’s just a chick, who invited it by being pregnant at 17, or by being the sister of a girl pregnant at 17. But if that bothers you, or you’re going to act all prudish and missish, at least twist the knife by making the left address it in a way that can be used against them.
—–
Bottom line,
I thought DL went beyond what’s decent, it was uncool and bad form, and he ought to be booed and hissed on principle, no matter how funny or unfunny he is. and good for NOW if comes back in the future and says, hey, don’t make jokes about Obama’s teen- pregnant daughter or her sister, should that reality
Again, I’m sorry for the poor editing. I’m used my squished comment box instead of a text editor.
Jeff:
Yep. How can that be so hard to comprehend? In order, now folks: Express outrage. Get over it. Let the Palin’s go apeshit on Lafferman, even as they should and is their right and as will hold them up as the folks they are and must be at such a time.
Then merely assist the lying left in hanging itself from its transparent, characteristic hypocrisy and the vapid principles that enable it. There you have an entire universe of rhetorical options and advantages, for crying out loud. This isn’t the hell about Letterman, folks. This is about the freaking left circling its Letterman wagons for a magnitude more of what got Imus canned, et al, et al.
Pablo actually sums it all up quite succinctly in #290, crude as it is. Can’t we comprehend that? Really?
SarahW: It’s not a matter of what is right or wrong. It’s what DL can get by with. He’s working from a caricature of the Palin family which has already been ingrained in the body politic.
The time and opportunity to object to that characterization has expired. Our northeastern elitists passed on defending Palin. The snowbilly characterization is now the starting point for the “jokes” which advance their agenda.
I can’t believe I’m even coming back here (via Memeorandum), let alone chiming in to agree, but….
Jeff, I still don’t like you, but you’re the only person I’ve seen come even close to making sense on this. So, kudos for that, you otherwise irredeemable reprobate.
I can’t imagine Jeff condoning daughter-trashing, etc.
Isn’t he just talking about tactics as opposed to what is right and wrong?
Although I still don’t understand exactly what tactical response, as far as details, he’s suggesting from us — “you all,” as he phrased it.
When I read that I had vision of Jeff drifting off in a Viking burial boat, waving wanly, and suddenly shouting, “Take care! I left you some pie!”
Slept on this topic.
From the perspective on the left the reaction they got is the punchline of the “real” joke. The payoff will be that Letterman will get away with it and nothing happens to him.
An analogy.
To those on the left the “right” is a wild animal, a bear, in their midst. This election chained the bear up. The crowd is still uncertain that the chains are firmly in place. Letterman is the young man using his pointy stick, shtick, (the “joke”) to poke the bear. The bear roars and goes on the attack (Our reaction to the “joke”). This gives the crowd a thrill, a surge of adrenaline, and is what the boy with the stick wanted.
Now we come to two outcomes. The chain holds, the boy is unhurt, the crowd now knows the bear is powerless and can now be attacked at will. Or the chain gives way some, the bear grabs the boy and mauls him. This will not gain the bear the love of the crowd, they will hate and fear the bear more, make the boy a martyr for “the cause”, and they will try to tie down the bear more securely. Perhaps they will decide to kill it while they have the chance.
The real trick will be to convince the crowd that what they see as a bear is a human. That they have been afraid of a human, chained him up, and allowed the real vicious creature to roam through their midst, killing in secret all these years.
Sarah Palin (who has more right than anyone to lead this fight) has come out blasting Letterman this morning; calling for an ‘uprising’.
Interesting how she’s twisting the knife…
There you go, Sarah. Both of you.
I’m sure Willow Palin feels the same way, Jeff.
“Hey, just because she happened to get in the way of A-Rod’s dick, that don’t mean nothin’! Didn’t you see what her mom was wearin’?”
From what?
Just kidding. I’m sure they’d let you post there if you wanted. I liked those videos you did a while back.
Jeff,
Why does the fact that someone pays a given soul to be funny does it license them to be crude and tasteless to a degree taken as hateful agression from one of us common folk(no you are not included in that club)?
Your argument seems that of an effete elitist snob.
Well, count me an “effete elitist snob” too.
Look, it was a comedian, telling a joke in a comic forum. He pushed too far for many people. Many are upset, like Sarah W. SarahW can be offended if she wishes; that is her right. And I understand why she is upset. All the adjectives she uses to describe the joke are likely apt.
But being upset at us because we are not upset, upsets me.
It was a joke, delivered be a jokester, in a jokester’s forum, and for me, this opens the boundaries.
It was bad, uncool, sexist, stupid and all that.
But it was a joke: my outrage is limited by the fact it was an attempt at humour.
Like the South Park Family Guy episode about showing images of Muhammad; it is all either on the table or none of it will be.
And umbrage is limited by that thought…
Additionally, as Jeff noted, this reaction is outsized.
455 posts, when the biggest threat to our liberty is being rammed down our throats by the opposition.
Imagine if we had put all that energy into discussion of how to help derail the Obama Health Care Express.
Priorities…it was a joke, and no immediate threat to our freedom. Obamacare is…
Lt,
Free speech means it has to all be on the table. As always, it boils down to someone’s personal responsiblility to exercise that right with the grace and decorum required by their venue…
As they used to say in tech. writing, match the level of your audience…
And I guess, in a sense, Jeff G. was saying that’s just what Letterman did…
…the ball. Thing is, I’m not sure its supporters have their eye on it either. Seems to me it’s destined to kick up the dirt well in front of the batter.
Can it be….JeffieG has gone sane?
hehe
Here is my synopsis….
From the comments on this TAS thread.
Or you can just spit damn, like the Anger Whiggas.
Anger Whiggas
And I like how you used to put your words in people’s cartoons, Jim.
Putting an equal sign in between two things doesn’t automatically make them equal. And putting something in ALL CAPS doesn’t necessarily MAKE IT TRUE.
Fact is, humor is subjective. And because I firmly believe Letterman was using Bristol as the referent, I don’t find the joke offensive to the point of being even mildly actionable.
I don’t condone “child trashing” or most of the other things I’ve been accused of condoning here given my failure to publicly wring my hands and rend my garments.
I’m through answering any of SarahW’s concerns, because I think at this point she is so engorged with outrage that anything even remotely pointed I might offer in response would almost surely end with a pop, and then a comments box filled with a high dudgeon spatter pattern.
The fact that someone is paid to be funny doesn’t give them license to be crude and tasteless and hateful and aggressive. Because we don’t need such a license here. Thank God.
If his network decides that the jokes MUST be taken in ways many on the right and some on the left are framing them and as a consequence Letterman is fired, then in my opinion he will have lost his job to a misguided, sanctimonious lynch mob — and that the backlash will set back “conservatism” terribly.
If saying so somehow makes me an “an effete elitist snob” — and remember, Dan’s challenge was to justify making the joke, not to celebrate it — than I can live with being labeled such.
Because to me, even that horrific signature beats “humorlous, sanctimonious scold,” which is how history will paint those who’ve grabbed their pitchforks and their torches and put on their Sunday best so that they can show themselves storming the CBS castle.
Why do comedians have license to be comedians? Because we allow such speech. Tolerance comes from not liking speech but conceding that we’ll accept it because it means that when someone doesn’t like our speech, we, too, will be protected from this kind of lynch mob mentality.
Don’t watch Letterman’s show. Burn your Dixie Chicks CDs. Buy a Spicolli poster and use it as a dartboard. Get yourself a life size Nuke LaLoosh cardboard cutout and dress it in a gimp suit and beat it with a whip.
Poke fun back. But seriously — you are going after a comedian. One who I have no doubt hadn’t any idea who Willow Palin was.
And in doing so (with apologies to Dennis Green), you are exactly who they thought you were.
Amemn.
or Amen. Seriously … there are larger issues to be offended with.
I said politicians’ kids are off the table, by which I mean my kids. And Joe’s grown-ass son and daughter.
a comments box filled with a high dudgeon spatter pattern.
hahaha!
Classic, vintage JeffieG!
You dah man.
The underlying problem with this is that I don’t believe Palin can overcome the unending demonization of her by the cultural oracles. They have the power, and she doesn’t have the skillz to turn their jokes and satires back on them. Perhaps you should cut your losses.
What do you think JeffieG?
And yeah, whut he said…..either its all ok to make fun of or none of it is.
he underlying problem with this is that I don’t believe Palin can overcome the unending demonization of her by the cultural oracles.
This is exactly the prime issue I have with all this. Letterman’s joke and everyone’s comments have had the POWER to basically ruin her. No matter what one feels about her, I do think the Letterman and Couric and everyone who made a smarmy hillbilly joke about her have won.
And, here’s the awful thing. They’re just going to do it again, with as much “honesty”, to whomever they feel threatened by. Because, at base, they went after Palin because of the threat she posed.
By your own reckoning, hasn’t the left already sealed that deal? Do you ever read the shit you write?
Jeff is so much better than I at teh splainin’…
I don’t shake hands with the Devil, nishi.
But I also don’t need to wear a hairshirt to remind me not to.
Wasn’t Nishi the one I busted lying about not hating Palin within 5 seconds?
The only reason I mention that is that she was already lying about only hating Palin after a couple interviews. This sentence she just posted here
“The left, (and the sane intelligentsia of the right btw) feared the hopelessly inadeguate Palin would ascend to office as the VP of a 72-year-old 4x melanoma survivor ”
is just a continuation of the lie that they hated her for any other reason than she was running as an R. Nishi you hated her before she even spoke a word or you knew what her positions on anything were. Why continue to lie about it I don’t know.
Thanks, dude! Keep meaning to do another one of those. I did a Spider-Man/Obama one a while back that turned out okay.
By the way, Jeff, a while back a sick, crazy woman make a joke about your kid being sexually assaulted. Would you have felt the same way if Letterman had been paid to say it?
And here I thought you were reading through the entire thread!
No problem. So much verbiage. Here you go.
Okay, sorry about that. I see your point, but can you see why people are speaking up about this? Especially when it’s becoming more and more clear that it’s an attempt to drive Palin out of public life by making it too high a price for her family? It’s thuggery.
Yup, Carin, but my point is the process is inexorable.
That CS Lewis thread at TAS is a reprise of Hilzoy…the thing is, when the process of demonization starts it can’t be walked back.
Like, I wonder, if the incessant demonization of Obama by the right (while understandable under the dictates of human nature) nullifies any ability you have to engage with him to ameliorate his more radical policies.
And Carin is right, it was the threat Palin posed and that the left was powerless and disenfranchised in her selection. Fear, but not in the sense you mean it.
Fear that a deeply inadequate and unready candidate could become president riding on the coattails of someone’s sick grandpa.
The left simply threw the kitchen sink at her under the premise that some of it would stick.
But it won’t stop.
And yeah…I laffed at first…Palin was ridickkulously unprepared and not up to task….but then I got scared too.
I feared her because she would have made a disastrous president, even worse than Bush.
And I fear the power she seemed to have to pith people I respected like Reihan and Jeff.
Remember our big fight was about Palin being qualified to be president, because that was the job application, serving on Day One.
Jeff said she was.
She wasn’t, and that was reflected in the vote.
Jeff,
Could we possibly come out ahead in this by standing up for Governor Palin in the manner that Ric did in post 146 or similarly Dr Zero at Hot Air. Every one I know that has served in Alaska has complimentary things to say about her. And standing up for her is convientiently also standing up for us.
In other words, could there be another way of reaching check-mate. I kind of doubt that anyone will be able to make traction with the Clinton and Obama response angle.
The media is only interested in GOP leaderships reaction to Rush Limbaugh
Oh, and I realize we’re a long way down the thread now, but do remember that what Dan wrote — and what I responded to — was this:
Bristol Palin is not a child. She’s a mother, and as I’ve noted numerous times now, her pregnancy and its circumstances were part and parcel of the narrative of the Palin campaign.
I realize some of you think bringing up Deb Fr*sch’s threats to my son is some trump card you have — hell, you aren’t looking for any explanation of why I think the situations are different, you’re just hoping a feel a little bit of the kind of pain you think the Palins are feeling, as if I deserve that, and you believe it your job to dole out such punishment as a consequence of my incessant failure to maintain the proper conservative level of OUTRAGE — but the two scenarios are not at all analogous.
Further, Fr*sch (who was eventually convicted for another incident, in which she’d become violent) is not David Letterman. She wasn’t delivering a monologue on a late night comedy show; and my son wasn’t a public figure.
Several times now I’ve indicated that I found the joke lazy and not particularly funny. I’ve noted that it shows poorly on not only the persons who wrote and presented it, but on those who laughed — because the laughter was almost phatic. The presumed hip have become so conditioned toward accepting the most shallow of caricatures that they can be made to laugh with very little prompting. Deep thinkers? They’re Pavlovian dogs.
Unfortunately, this reaction is the mirror image of that. A Pavlovian response to OUTRAGE that triggers a right wing sanctimony party.
Do what you want. But if it’s public “civility” you demand at the expense of tolerance in truest sense, your speech will suffer too, one day.
But it is also nothing new. We had a couple of good discussions here a few months back about the reason we have such shitty government is you have to be insane to be willing to endure the meat grinder that our current system has devolved to. This was a bit over the line as far as normal, decent folks go, but it is nothing but the same old same old politics of personal destruction that has been the norm for as long as I can remember if you choose campaigning for office as a career.
So it’s better that a deeply inadequate and unready candidate has become President instead, and an equally inadequate and unready person is still the VP…
But as long as it’s your inadequate, unualified, and unready people it’s ok…
I read your link by the way, sounded to me like CS Lewis was describing the last 8 years of hand-wringing, fanciful Kabuki that the left has been persorming like a street festival; with the help of their fifth column MSM…
I’m not trying to contest the election, I just think it’s a bit soon for you all to begin the re-write of history…
with all due respect
Nice try Nishi. In the little universe you conjure up the Democrats do not nominate a lightweight dilettante, nor does said lightweight name a certifiable buffoon as his running mate.
I try not to….but Shaitan is not called the Deceiver for nothing.
convientiently=conveniently above
I’ve been a supporter and defender of Palin’s for some time, Danger.
Comedians aren’t charged with having integrity. Unfortunately, we have to hope people can see these kinds of jokes for what they are. Expressing your distaste is one thing, and I’ve already said that were I Todd Palin, I’d be looking to donkey punch Letterman.
But these kinds of organized boycotts and the like — over a comedian’s barb, tasteless though it may be — is cultural suicide. In my opinion.
Deep down, I’m convinced Americans are afraid of being told what they can and cannot say. And they’ll defend that on a gut level.
I didn’t think it was a trump card. I just wondered if you thought the two situations were comparable. No offense to you or your family, and I apologize for bringing up a sore subject.
Deep down, I’m convinced Americans are afraid of being told what they can and cannot say. And they’ll defend that on a gut level.
Agreed,
However it would be nice if CBS did a little self-policing along the lines of Don Imus or won’t Americans defend consistency on a gut level as well.
I am pretty sure that Johnny Carson would not have gone this far into the gutter if he were still at Late Night. Leno, Fergusen and O’Brien haven’t approached this level of trash either.
There are any number of things that aren’t new that I oppose. Just because something is no longer unexpected doesn’t mean it’s to be accepted.
I read your link by the way, sounded to me like CS Lewis was describing the last 8 years of hand-wringing, fanciful Kabuki that the left has been persorming like a street festival; with the help of their fifth column MSM…
Yup, ‘zactly. Now the right is powerless, and its their _No_ play.
My point is, the demonization of Palin won’t stop, and also why it was so extraordinarily vituperative.
Of course both sides do it when they are disenfranchised and disrespected.
As this particularily applies to Palin, demonization never gets walked back. So the cultural oracles; the media, hollywood, comedy, the hardcore left, that began the process won’t stop.
And Palin just isn’t skilled enough to disarm the barbs aimed at her.
For example, she could have gone on Lettermen’s show, charmed the heck out of him, turned his joke back on him with a gentle rebuke.
She could have counted coup on him.
She can’t do that….no self-deprecating sense of humor, and …..she is scared I think. She knows she doesn’t have the skillz.
Many comedians have approached this “level.” It just wasn’t your ox being gored.
Yup, but Reihan saw the light finally.
I am still waiting on you.
;)
Anyway, this is pointless. All of it.
The right is going down the same linguistic road as the left. Only thing is, the left wants it this way.
There is only one possible outcome. I guess getting there sooner doesn’t make it any worse.
Bravo!
Wow…the Return of the Classical Liberal Protein Wisdom.
“Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted.”
I agree, Jim, but my point this kind of shit is so entrenched in the system that to wig out on any particular aspect of it can seem, note that word seem there, as disingenuous as the original offense.
I think it would be better to try to figure out how to address the problem as a whole rather than freak out about particularly grievous instances.
497 was a response to 490, got distracted mid post.
Is there no end to Nishi’s cluelessness?
That is exactly what I have been trying to say.
Whereas I don’t see how we can address the problem as a whole without addressing the specific incidents. It would be like fighting crime without stopping criminals.
Wait…do you feel it?
The Force is strong in this one.
I sense An Important Post being written.
Can’t wait.
;)
Y’know, Kate, if “qualifications” were important to you, you’d have run like a rabbit from a machine politician who had never, ever, ever in his life had so much managerial experience as midnight-to-eight shift at McDonalds.
I make a stab here at identifying the cause of your fright.
Regards,
Ric
The problem, Jeff, is that our tolerance does not promote tolerance in return, but exploitation. There’s an exact analogy in the treatment of unlawful combatants under the Geneva conventions. The idea was to provide encouragement to follow the terms of the Conventions: wearing identifying marks, not using civilians as human shields, not carrying weapons in ambulances. The carrot was that you would get the same consideration; the stick was supposed to be that if you broke the rules, then none of those protections would apply to you. By refusing to apply that stick (as in shooting Hamas, AQ, etc. on sight), we encourage the bad behavior.
Similarly, the Left expects a free pass: we should allow them to be a lynch mob, but we can’t. I think having David Letterman beaten in an alley by modern day Sons of Liberty would go a long way towards achieving actual tolerance on both sides, rather than the one-sided “tolerance” we have now.
Ebbs and flows, SDN. Tolerance, though, has to remain constant.
Tolerance, though, has to remain constant.
Also this not only helps tv producers book guests and assign pieces on the pitiful stupid Christian bitches but it lets sponsors know that it’s ok to give their monies to the them.
oh. That second line is more in italics than I was aiming for.
So start a network and book guests who hammer atheists or leftists. Hire Dennis Miller or Norm MacDonald to do your kid’s Bar Mitzvah.
Because it IS okay for producers to book those kinds of guests and for sponsors to give them money.
Of course, if you change the channel…
and it’s all messed up. I do over.
Also this not only helps tv producers book guests and assign pieces on the pitiful stupid Christian bitches but it lets sponsors know that it’s ok to give their monies to them.
That’s what I meant.
This idea that our media merits a reasoned, measured, response betrays no sense of the depth of our media’s betrayal of our little country I think.
#508 has a lot been tried Mr. Goldstein and it’s not working out very well for our little country at all.
Then our little country should try harder. Because to change the way its done would be to change our little country into something that’s not our little country anymore.
Which is the way we’re heading anyway.
Yup. But our media is gay and diseased it’s not reflective of any principle what is worth preserving. There’s no reason at all that journalists and media executives and tv news personalities and such are the new stupid pathetic Christian bitches. We can all revile them equally and shun them and deny opportunities to their children and look the other way when people hurt them I think.
I just suck. And I drank a whole cup of coffee.
no reason at all that … *can’t be* the new stupid pathetic Christian bitches
Severing the thing from its context, I saw a claim made the other day that 9 in 10 Egyptian women have no clitoris and that, I thought, is a damned shame. Course, I’ve no idea whether it’s true or not (how would anyone, I wondered?) Still. Even the thought of such a state of affairs didn’t strike me as very toleranty.
But then I thought, look what we do with journalists.
We are very indulgey about our journalists I think and I try not to have a very large part in that because it doesn’t feel right.
Journalists and the associated media class of which the Mr. Letterman is a tiny part have done a great disservice to our little country. A great violence, really.
Happyfeet, our only recourse is to attempt to make them irrelevant by not watching them.
There is great irony in the fact that who have whole scads of liberals who claim to NEVER WATCH tv. They’re above it, you know. So … the million dollar question is why is there nothing but liberal BS on the tv all the time.
Personally, I think pointing how that Letterman is a liberal asshole is really important, because there are scads of sheep who watch tv (lots of tv) never realizing where the politics in infecting them 6+ hours a day.
The VERY reason I started reading blogs (and writing mine) was because women I knew got tired of me pointing out the political messages that were embedded into their very favorite shows. They didn’t want to hear it. They just wanted to “turn off their mind” and be entertained. How many people are out there like that? Who allow the propaganda rot their mind.
You can not watch them and not watch them and still be subsidizing them in a thousand plus ways and in fact we all are.
Censorship is out and boycotts are pointless. The only workable response to objectionable speech is more speech.
Which, really, I don’t think Jeff is disagreeing with. I do think that expressing outrage is just “more speech” and can’t hurt.
The expression should be in proportion to the intent, though. Which is why my expression of outrage has been limited to telling CBS Letterman should apologize. I will now express that the apology he gave wasn’t good enough. There. I’m done expressing, until something new happens.
Y’all are all weenieheads.
Welcome Sullivan readers. Perhaps you’ll like this post as well.
I agree. When I make my joke about Mike Tyson and Dane Cook double-teaming Malia Obama, don’t object: that’s just what comedians do!
This is such a ridiculous thread of white people arguing.
So whatever happened with the White House dog Chelsea Clinton?
I think I’ve already made that joke, Darren. Only instead of those you mention, it was The Sugarhill Gang, some dwarves, and Shannon Elizabeth.
And man, did I ever hear it over that one.
Jeff G,
Earlier today you said, “The right is going down the same linguistic road as the left. Only thing is, the left wants it this way.”
Are you talking about the twisting of an authors intent to suit the purposes of the reader/listener?
Do you think that the right is heading down the PC speak highway, or listing toward censorship? I can see where you’d get that impression from some of the Outrage! and the reactionary suggestions that flowed from the same?
And, are you saying that we are unwittingly falling into a trap of sorts, or are the proggs unwittingly getting what they want…
I’m just curious. That statement was kind of thought provoking, in that I thought that the right stood for freedom and the right to private property; both material and ideological…
Best Wishes
“There is only one possible outcome. I guess getting there sooner doesn’t make it any worse.”
Jeff,
That seemed a little apocalyptic so I have to object. If you believe in what you are doing then keep doing it. If you are going to make a difference in this world then immediate results should not be your motivating force.
It may be that true that our actions in this part of the world (the Middle East) are only delaying the next attack but I do not find that reason for surrender. Every day that I get a hug from one of my girl’s I treat as a gift. I would give everything I have to extend those gifts by even one day so it does make a difference whether we get there sooner or later.
For my part; I realize that it is important to defend free speech; perhaps even more so when it is speech I disagree with, but I also feel an obligation to defend an innocent party when they are attacked. The fact that Gov. Palin is someone I admire makes it even more personal.
I confess that I don’t always balance those obligations as well as I should but I do serve a Loving God who I am confident will forgive me (after all we would not have needed a sermon if the beatitudes came naturally).
After having some time to reflect I have come to the conclusion that I don’t believe that Dave Letterman should be fired for his comments.
I think he should be fired because he is not funny, his show sucks and I think that Craig Ferguson would do a much better job. I would be much happier if more Americans tuned out from his show leading to that result.
If you are tired of commenting on this thread (and I wouldn’t blame you) I would encourage you to respond to the e-mail I sent you a few days ago via my centcom.mil address
We still have to wonder, I think Danger, just how wide and potentially far-reaching the effects of US policy in Iraq in particular may run in the Middle East, perhaps especially this Saturday morning. Despite the studied neglect that the Obama administration takes toward Iraq and the Bush administration’s strategic aims there, I for one recall that those aims were much broader than merely to strike down Saddam Hussein.
Iran had an election yesterday, said today to have been won handily by the incumbent (and apparent favorite of the mullahs), Achmedinejad. Yet there are reports that Iranian citizens aren’t entirely content to accept the apparent outcome at face value. Could they be looking to the Iraqi’s freedom to vote their minds, untrammeled by state controls such as the Iranian mullahs exercise? I’m willing to believe it possible anyhow. To believe that possibility more likely, for instance, than to expect that Iranians are protesting due to a newfound expectation that their politics had changed suddenly on account of Obama’s Cairo speech infecting them with the soul of democratic aspiration.
The long run may turn out to be not so long in the Middle East after all, though we still cannot say with any certainty. However it may be though, thanks go out to you for your work there now. Be well.
I wonder, would this embroglio have stunk more (and caused even higher high dudgeon) if Sarah had taken Piper to the game rather than the obviously interchangeable tag team of Willow – Bristol?
(This sort of attack is something little Piper has to look forward to when her teen years arrive: these guaranteed doses of Lefty hates and bromides they’ve expertly crafted for her sisters.
I guess we should rise up, and have voice for a squash to this thing, after all.)
Demonization of the opponent is a timehonored political practice. In American Lion, when Andy Jackson was elected he was called an adulter and a bigamist (and that was true!) and Adams was called a whoremonger and a pimp. Like Jeff points out, the attacks on Palin’s messy American family stick like glue because they contradict the pompous holier-than-thou “family values/traditional wisdom” platform of the _soi disant_ conservatives.
Palin gets all pissy and huffy and that just fuels the fun. That kind of counter-attack just reinforces the meme that conservatives are angry and humorless.
Obama was attacked as a terrorist sympathizer and a black supremecist, through his associations with Ayers and Wright, but he skillfully neutralized the attacklines with a combination of humor and thoughtful televised speeches.
Palin could get free airtime absolutely anywhere right now and exploit that to BOTH deconstruct the trashy snowbilly meme AND speak her values on the economy, energy, education.
She’s not doing that.
This thread is like a green shoot of classical liberalism on the nearly dead treetrunk of conservatism.
Jeff has explained elegantly and beautifully exactly what is happening.
STFU nishit. That you and your ilk with the fellating MSM were able to sell 52% of the public a bill of goods does not make it right, proper, or true. You are vile.
“Obama was attacked as a terrorist sympathizer and a black supremecist, through his associations with Ayers and Wright, but he skillfully neutralized the attacklines with a combination of humor and thoughtful televised speeches.”
Nishi, you left out the MSM’s role in in neutralizing the connections that some tried to make between Ayers, Wright, and Obama. Obama is a terrorist sympathizer, both in his past, and even today; witness his speech in Cairo where he drew a weak, and totally fallacious, moral equivalence between the Palestinians in Gaza and the Holocaust…
And During the campaign anyone who tried to dig deeply into the Rev. Wright matter was decried as it being “code words” for Raaaaacism!. Likewise, in addition to the whitewashing of Ayers Past, thaere was absolutely no MSM interest in the close relationship the two had; in direct opposition to what Obama was public claiming…
Which speaks to an even larger and more revealing anecdote that involved both Wright and Ayers. Although the MSM types like to strike the usual; well rehearsed facial expressions and tut-tut the “hypocrisy” of the right, they had no such concerns with Obama. At the same time he was palavering on about transparency and pillorying Hillz for her Tuzla whopper, his entire expalnations of his relationships with both Wright and Ayers “evolved” drastically over time. But, they were more interested in falling all over themselves to see who could gush more over his lame speeches; especially the one in Philadelphia hailed as a new racial beginning in our nation.
All the while there were orders of magnitude more MSM personell assigned to digging around in ALaska than there were investigating what went on at the Chicago Annenberg challenge or the outlandish and hateful views of the pastor of the church Obama sat in for 20 years…
So if your definition of skill involves a large helping of “sit back and wait for the MSM to come to your rescue and pillory your opponents for you-so that you don’t have to be seen as “going negative”-well then in that case I might cede the point you’re trying to make.
“Palin could get free airtime absolutely anywhere right now…”
You’re not serious, right? Representative of much of the media time she might be able to get is her interview with “Today” on Friday; and even there the putz Matt Lauer was trying to advance the same old meme. I didn’t see it myself, and by all accounts I have read she acquitted herself well. But the fact is that she would never recieve the same kind of supportive media soapbox time that Obama did; save maybe for on Fox and as such would be dismissed as a “puff piece” by folks like yourself…
Go read the transcripts of Charles Gibson’s interviews with Obama and Palin. Compare and contrast the two, and let me know if you think you assertion still stands up…
With all due respect
Bob…..you work with what you got.
The media IS biased towards the first black president of a former slave nation. He’s Cinderella at the Ball, he’s Luke Skywalker and Elle Woods.
Them’s the facts jack.
The media might have been wildly excited about Palin if she had turned out to be Alex Owens or Elle Wood…we all love that Cinderella story, look at Susan Boyle.
Sad day, Palin turned out to be Veruka Salt…engaged in petty tyranny and vendettas against her former BIL and Levi….. she just didn’t have the substrate for that Elle Woods moment in the courtroom…Couric was her opportunity to do that.
And she definitely is just not the femme heroine Ric Locke is trying to repaint her as.
She just got used and exploited by the old white guys, either lashed onto McCains side as a stage prop or used as an attack dog for stuff that McCain was too politically cunning to say, like that “palling around with terrorists” schtick.
And look what happens…the crafty old white guy gets invited to the WH by the new president, while Palin gets the shunning treatment even after she tried to reach out to Obama post election.
“Sad day, Palin turned out to be Veruka Salt…engaged in petty tyranny and vendettas against her former BIL and Levi…”
Another meme propagated by the Wasilla media invasion…
You seem to not acknowledge the fact that recently she was cleared of all the spurios charges associated with that “investigation” thatwas, in fact, a political witch hunt by the Alaska legislatures top Democrat; Obama’s point man in Alaska who provided the marching orders to the media cadre…
“The media IS biased towards the first black president of a former slave nation…”
Do you think the freedom that he press enjoys from lawsuits over slander as well as the “gravitas” their reportage has with the rank-and-file individuals, many who are actually apathetic to issues of governance and politics, the latter admittedly waning, demands ethically and morally that they be the objective and unbiased news heralds that the founders of our nations envisioned them to be..?
As opposed to hyper-elite “Tiger beat” fanzine writers..?
Do you think it fair that the media showed bias towards Obama; that they essentially witheld facts about his paper thin track record and paper trail, as well as his boldface lies about his associations with folks whose radical views regular Americans would find distasteful at best..?
Do you think it fair that Obama could count on the MSM to cover the “evolution” of his explanations for these episodes as well as all of the gaffes made on the campaign trail; that they acted essentially as a part of the Obama campaign apparatus…
Do you think that any of that is fair in a nation where a large portion of the population doesn’t see, understand, or otherwise recognoze that bias, but tends to believe what they hear from the press as veritas..?
What do you think Ms. Jenkins..?
I think life isn’t fair, and memes are competitive.
Palin has had many opportunities to show us Elle Woods. She couldn’t do it.
All she has shown us is Veruka Salt, CIP her attacks on Levi.
Palin never even tried to evolve explantions for Troopergate….she talked around it when she talked at all.
She never took control of the narrative.
And she was cited by the ethics commission on abuse of office.
Our Founders had no vision for the fourth estate.
The media is free market capitalism in action….whatever sells. I thought free market capitalism was good?
Mocking Sarah Palin as a retard whitetrash snowbilly sells, especially when she corroborates the stereotype by lowering herself to counter-attack her grandson’s father on the trashtv circuit.
And Andy Jackson would have have shot you damn seccessionists on sight.
I notice Nishi didn’t answer Bob’s questions. The manner in which the media cover’s Obama is a tad bit more important that how disgustingly they attack Palin. So, answer the questions regarding Obama, please.
The Fawn Patrol
“Palin never even tried to evolve explantions for Troopergate…”
The truth doesn’t require any “evolution”,Nishi; the truth is what it is, stands alone, and does not “evolve”…
“…she talked around it when she talked at all.”
There was an investigation underway; it wouldn’t have been prudent nor proper to comment excessively. She wasn’t looking for a verdict in the court of public opinion; but waiting for the facts to speak for themselves…
Oh, and she’s been cleared; quietly and completely…
http://washingtontimes.com/news/2009/jun/08/palin-fends-off-all-ethics-charges-brought-since-0/?feat=home_headlines
Now Nishi, I don’t believe you answered my questions from #535. Would you mind doing so please..?
I’ve addressed you points, I think, and would like you to extend me the same courtesy…
Best Wishes
Duuuuh mEDiA is tEh eVoooooL! Give them no, narrative, OUTLAWS!
The man had a spiral notebook filled with hate blurps directed at Jews and Obama on the seat of his car, you say? Coincidence! Random happenstance! People walk into Holocaust museums and shoot black people all the time! Besides, all my friends have spiral notebooks where they keep handwritten messages to remind themselves just exactly how much they hate Obamas! Nothing fringe about it!
It’s tEh mEEEEEdIaaa! Disgusting Progs! Libnozzles! Keep ’em in your crosshairs! Lie, cheat, and steal teh naRRaTiVVe!
Tdh – that was real informative. Seeing how Bush, Reagan, and the Weekly Standard were on that list, it kind of makes your meme fall apart, no?
Bob – For someone like the nishit that views science as a religion, it has very little use for facts, truth, or honesty.
Do you know how many people the Socialist/Communist/Marxist/Liberals/Progs have killed in the world?
ALL PROGS HATE ISREAL too! Forget that Jews overwhelmingly vote Democrat! Facts are are teh sUcKagE!
Teh MediAAAA, party people! Focus your fool’s anger!
ON THE LIST! Yes, let’s say they were on the list! Works for right-wing radio! Say it and they believe it!
SAY IT IN CAPS, though.
Teh cRaJXe MaN went to the Holocaust museum to find him some ReAGaN!
TDH, I find your ideas fascinating … you don’t, perchance, have a newsletter to which I could subscribe?
TDH,
Is that you thor? I know you particularly dislike the media bias argument…You really can’t argue that, overall, they acted as propaganda arms of the Obama campaign. I mean Wright, Ayers, his ever evolving narrative arc; c’mon man…
Are you wishing to join all the nutroots in asserting that the nutcase Von Brunn was a winger? A mainstream one at that? Puh-leeez…
What about Carlos Bledsoe and the shooting in Arkansas? Why didn’t that get the same magnitude of play in the press as Roeder or Von Brunn..?
You think that Rahmbo’s conference call points for that week included not pissing off the Muslims, you know by an inconvenient truth or stubborn facts, prior to Obama’s triumphant address in Cairo..?
Or perhaps there were to be no distraction from the desired narrative of the overarching success of his trip abroad; well, apart from the fashion disaster Michelle had in London, and the bad PR pic Reuters posted of her with Carla Bruni…
Why the double standards in thise three instances; riddle me that please..?
WILLY BUCKLEY JUNIOR IS A RINO! VOTED FOR OBAMA!
RINOS HAVE A CHOICE! LEAVE AND LIVE, or STAY!
Carin – That is nishit’s special friend.
TDH,
Buckley junior is a RINO, you are correct…But you made one small typo…
RINOS HAVE A CHOICE! LEAVE AND LIVE under Obama’s tyrannical boot, or regain your senses and STAY!
There, FTFY…
Oh, and by the way, you didn’t answer my question about the double standard in the coverage of the three recent killings…
why not?
TDH stands for typically dumb hick.
Your entire argument works on that silly evil media assumption, which, by the way, I don’t buy at all so how do I really argue against it past that point?
The reason you even know who William Ayers and Rev. Wright are is because of teh evoool media, Bob.
Many of you people have a serious hate-screw loose. I’m not a fan of Code Pink nor do I raise my dander every time Jeff Goldstein tells me I should. It’s for the exact same reason, sadly, that I don’t.
I know a Jew, pretty well, too. He’s a Literary Studies professor. He’s Marxist-leaning. He lives a spartan life with his wife and two young daughters. I have discovered no evil in the man in all the years I’ve known him. A good father, a family man who doesn’t lie, cheat or steal nor kill people. He’s also a proud American by any standard or measure. Marxism in Lit isn’t the Che-style call to revolution. Educated people know this well.
All the fucked-in-the-head hick-ignorant hate directed toward his-type and Dr. B____sky’s politics, and all others like the good Jewish Prof., I believe harm America, are un-American, have no place in America, save for every American’s constitutional right to be a stupid, ignorant loud-mouthed American.
TDH stands for typically dumb hick.
Your entire argument works on that silly evil media assumption, which, by the way, I don’t buy at all so how do I really argue against it past that point?
God you’re a fucking bore. I suppose you can’t argue against it past that point because you’re a sheltered little Florida via Texas douchebag who lives off his parents money and has made no mark in the world. You’re not even in the game so calling anyone else a hick is laughable. I’m pretty sure Bob Reed lives in New York. As do I. I have more friends and acquaintances in the major media than you have teenage Cuban cabana boys on call for “pool cleaning” and there is nobody who denies the media bias in private.
I tole you……LIFE ISN”T FAIR.
TEH MEDIA ISN’T FAIR.
It is not the job of the media to educate or to inform, but TO SELL.
Free market rules.
It was PALIN’S JOB TO EDUCATE AND INFORM THE ELECTORATE.
She FAILED.
Obama succeeded.
QED
And no, I don’t think Palin got a fair deal from the GOP.
They screwed her like a two-dollar whore and now they are trying desperately to scrape her off their shoes.
…if Piper Palin were to confront that jack’s ass David Letterman, on his remarks about her sister(s)……
I wonder, would this embroglio have stunk more (and caused even higher high dudgeon) if Sarah had taken Piper to the game rather than the obviously interchangeable (in the minds of David Letterman’s shrugging defenders) tag team of Willow – Bris…
You know thor,
As much as you obsess about the “hick” thing, if I were a psychologist I might think you protest too much. And, very much like Toshiro Mifune’s character, Kikuchiyo, in the 7 samurai, are secretly from the same hick roots you so often denigrate…
I know that you and I disagree on the extent of the media influence on the last election. You believe I’m just parroting a tired, winger meme that you’ve too often heard as a prelude to the discussion being over…
And, I haven’t seemed to flesh out my own argument well enough to convince you otherwise. That being that the majority of voters in this country are actually apathetic and ignorant of both the issues in play and the positions of those they are forced to choose between to fill the office in play. And, as no one likes to come off as or be thought of as ignorant, when pressed in debate about an issue they’ve not put much thought into, will most likely fall back on the last thing they’ve heard on the issue; whether that be from the smart guys on TV, or the CW that the same have cultivated in the mostly politically ignorant circles these folks run in. After all, nobody on TV ever lies or misrepresents the truth, eh thor..?
I’ve seen it in my own circles at many different juctures in life. Folks that could cite baseball statistics for you, and knew every bit of minutia regarding the upcoming NFL draft, but could only mimic what Dan Rather had told them on the evening news; because just as ESPN had always delivered the truth, why shouldn’t CBS..? Of course, the difference is that ESPN had no agenda, nor any influence, in the outcome of the NFL draft, while CBS had considerable influence over everyman’s opinion and hence the election…
Political movements are made up of people, we agree on this. And, I’ve mentioned my encounters with political opponents of national stature, who were really fine folks to sit and talk with or share a beer at a bar. You know I’m not about collectivism, in any sense, but especially collective vilification of prejudice. When I decry leftist ideas it is just that. In most cases is doesn’t make the people bad; it’s just that I believe the ideas are bad for our nation…
So, as we often do, we’ll agree to disagree. And don’t take my 7 samurai allusion too hard. I recall that your father is a decorated Korean war vet, and a fine man by all accounts. I hope that he is doing well these days, as I hope you are too…
I only meant that somewher in the past, you might have had a bit of hick in the woodpile. And if there’s never been any hick in you, well, goven your nature, I’m sure there’s been nights when you wouldn’t have minded being in some hick-especially if she were fine looking!
Best Wishes
Did you know you have to faint the jab, which, of course, is most effective after you land the jab, then bounce forward off of both feet and commit your left-hook in perfect timing to your bounce. It’s a short punch. One’s distance has to be perfect to effectively land a left-hook to the body. Your opponent should lean forward into you or slip to his right because if he follows the punch or moves straight back you follow up with a left-hook to the head; it’s the proverbial double-left hook. That’s my tip of the day, wingers.
Really, Abe, and do I live in my Mommy’s basement too? You know so much about me, you must have dated my dog. Either that or you’re so weak in the head you have spew school girl lies to puff up you’re wittle wingered ego.
In private! You don’t say! Major media! Evoooool! You’re in the big-time land of Know, Abe-man. I always suspected Fox News was biased, thanks Abe.
“I tole you……LIFE ISNâ€T FAIR.
TEH MEDIA ISN’T FAIR.
It is not the job of the media to educate or to inform, but TO SELL.”
Nushi, that sounds sooooo cynical mydear…
That’s the role the founders of our nation envisioned that journalists would fullfill, Nishi; that’s why they thought a free press to be so important. And, school children are taught every day that the media exist just for that purpose; the fullfillment of the founders wish for an informed electorate…
And if it has been reduced to simply what sells, which would be a shame, why isn’t it that there are more right leaning networks..?
I mean, the electorate is roulghly divided in two, why then is the MSM predominantly disseminating a left leaning world view..?
It’s a shame if has come to what you allude to; bet even if so, brace yourself, for the pendulum always swings back…
Best Wishes
Look, Bob, the fineness of my Dad isn’t in question. I’d gladly admit my Dad’s meaner than hell and a hard ass. I can say that though, because he’s my Dad. He’s enough of a winger that I have to remind him to shut the fuck up about politics sometimes. The old coot calls me to bitch about Obama because he’s forgotten it’s one of his other sons that so proudly belongs to the Democratic party, not me. My Dad can’t even remember who to yell at first. We’re a fractious family. Many different types of wingers in the clan, and in various stages of wingerdom I might add. But we only yell at each because we care.
Dan Rather hasn’t been on TV for some time now, Bob. Those who agreed with Dan usually didn’t do so simply at Dan Rather’s command. If they did then they’re no better than ditto-heads.
Obama didn’t win because of the media, Bob. He’s a class act and smart. I’ve got two eyes and ears, Bob, and I’m hear to tell you nothing you or Jeff or Dan is going to override my instincts of sight and sound. If it makes you feel better to fall back on the media as an excuse but it’s all sort’a lame when addressing the likes of why I voted for Obama.
Much of American exceptionalism is an exceptional amount of bullshit. Ronald Reagan wasn’t all that great of a President. I’ve seen the world, read a few books too. This Obama looks to be a fine man, one with a good measure of self-confidence too. He’s done fine so far and will likely continue to do so. The world marches forward, not backward. Going backward gets you caught with the double-left, or didn’t you hear about what Frazier did to Ali’s jaw in their first go?
hear = here
Did you know you have to faint the jab, which, of course, is most effective after you land the jab, then bounce forward off of both feet and commit your left-hook in perfect timing to your bounce. It’s a short punch. One’s distance has to be perfect to effectively land a left-hook to the body. Your opponent should lean forward into you or slip to his right because if he follows the punch or moves straight back you follow up with a left-hook to the head; it’s the proverbial double-left hook. That’s my tip of the day, wingers.
Really, Abe, and do I live in my Mommy’s basement too? You know so much about me, you must have dated my dog. Either that or you’re so weak in the head you have spew school girl lies to puff up you’re wittle wingered ego.
In private! You don’t say! Major media! Evoooool! You’re in the big-time land of Know, Abe-man. I always suspected Fox News was biased, thanks Abe.
Was that supposed to be a comeback, thor? For all your tortured boxing analogies we have a sufficiently dimensionalized psychological profile of you to not need to go generic on the insults. You’re not particularly complex, save for the fluctuations in your brain chemistry. You can’t possibly think I’m going to whore out my friends or any details of my life in the comments section of a blog. To me all that matters is that you know that I know that you know what a sheltered little poseur you are. And I’m pretty sure that deep down you do.
“Dan Rather hasn’t been on TV for some time now, Bob. Those who agreed with Dan usually didn’t do so simply at Dan Rather’s command. If they did then they’re no better than ditto-heads.”
I only used dynamic Dan Rather as an example thor. And you’re still missing my point about the apathetic near majority we have in this country; a large number of them who vote each time and do so essentially uninformed. It’s not that these folks slavishly listen to the MSM, waiting in thrall for their next commandment. They want to know tomorrow’s weather or the score of the ball game…
But, if you were to asks them about the particulars of an issue, in front of others especially, and they hadn’t thought about or formed an opinion of their own, then they would repeat what they’d heard someone else say; someone who’s opinion they aither respected or thought must be correct. And most likely that would either be something thay had heard on their favorite news outlet, or from someone in their circle of friends whom they liked and/or respected that was opinionated…
That’s all I’m sayin. And, as usual it is not that simple, I guess I’ll just have to flesh that out a bit more…
I don’t expect to change your point of view; I’m happy that you like and respect Obama. But, To say the media had no effect on the last election is as ridiculous as I were trying to assert that the MSM influence was the sole factor at work. It was not, and I’m not saying it was-but it was an influencing factor!
As always, it’s not a simple binary system, and the truth lies somewhere between our points of view.
Best Wishes
Oh and I didn’t say the media made you vote for Obama, thor. You made an informed choice I assume…
I only tried to say that a lot of relatively uninformed folks voted for him, without actually knowing who they were voting for…
Do you prefer Frazier, thor? Is that why you like Ali v Frazier I..? I always though Foreman was actually tougher, physically, than either of them, but I liked Ali…
Be Cool…
What a fucking dumb ass.
You see my fist coming, you’d better faint first. It’ll be easier for you. )
Actually the losing meme of Obama voters having been manipulated by the media is at the heart of the parrot ego puff up that most here are in engaged in. The polling data and voting trends are devastating for the Republicans so I can understand their looking to magic beans and evil winds for answers.
Reality is being served in heaping helpings to Americans. Flag-pin pipe dreams are for fools. China looks to overtake us in short order economically and Europe already has. We got punted. Debt powered our economy and that’s a too obvious truth to deny. As Asian and the emerging markets develop organic buying power we’ll lose our only winning hand, namely, our place as the largest consumer market. Economics fund military power. We’re going to eventually lose our lead militarily as well. The day of the dumb Bushian-Republican politician are over, and if they’re not then we’ll lose ground against the world that much quicker.
Some interesting points in that final paragraph about economics, organic buying power, and military power…
I’d love to address them now, but will need to take a rain check until tomorrow. I have to arise at 0-dark-thirty again tomorrow, and so must hit the rack now…
Let’s take this up again later
Enjoy yourself
Have you considered thumbing through medical chat sites on the internet? Surely there’s someone out there who was born with no arms that you could frighten with your mighty keyboard-fu.
Yes We Can!
ha
/yawn
Look Bob….it matters not a whit what the founders intended the press to be.
They owned slaves and land and were fierce unionists.
The press has evolved to be a competitive free market of sellers.
And if the GOP doesn’t evolve, it going to be as dead as the dodos and the Whigs.
Yes, and newspapers are dying by the day, while Fox kicks the living crap out of its fellow TV broadcasters. Check the numbers, scientist.
Yeah.
DAVID LETTERMAN’S HATE, ETC. !
David Letterman’s hate is as old as some ancient Hebrew prophets.
Speaking of anti-Semitism, it’s Jerry Falwell and other fundy leaders who’ve gleefully predicted that in the future EVERY nation will be against Israel (an international first?) and that TWO-THIRDS of all Jews will be killed, right?
Wrong! It’s the ancient Hebrew prophet Zechariah who predicted all this in the 13th and 14th chapters of his book! The last prophet, Malachi, explains the reason for this future Holocaust that’ll outdo even Hitler’s by stating that “Judah hath dealt treacherously” and “the Lord will cut off the man that doeth this” and asks “Why do we deal treacherously every man against his brother?”
Haven’t evangelicals generally been the best friends of Israel and Jewish persons? Then please explain the recent filthy, hate-filled, back-stabbing tirades by David Letterman (and Sandra Bernhard) against a leading evangelical named Sarah Palin, and explain why most Jewish leaders have seemingly condoned Palin’s continuing “crucifixion”!
While David and Sandra are tragically turning comedy into tragedy, they are also helping to speed up and fulfill the Final Holocaust a la Zechariah and Malachi, thus helping to make the Bible even more believable!
(For even more stunning information, visit MSN and type in “Separation of Raunch and State” and “Bible Verses Obama Avoids.”)
David Letterman is German, Jan. But how does one go about receiving your newsletter?
while Fox kicks the living crap out of its fellow TV broadcasters.
Umm…no…..just out of other cable news outlets.
All that proves is conservatives watch cable news and not Jon Stewart or their local news outlets.
/yawn
such a bore.
What is the top rated blog? Huffpo wasn’t it? And there are more highly ranked liberal blogs than conservative blogs.
If newspapers die, its because they arent competitive.
Free market FTW!
And say…..since FOX is kicking ass….and has such awesome numbers……why arent your memes getting out?
Lol.
You see Pablow….the FOX viewers already get conservo memes.
Thats why your superawesome reaganisms aren’t spreading.
Echo chamber.
nite!
And there you go assuming that they’re not. Bush had better numbers at this point than Obama does, and you saw what happened to him. But then, you’re not bothering with the numbers, are you, scientist?
Are you sure that’s not Scientologist?
Pablow….FOX viewers already drank teh koolaid.
You got their votes.
But how do you get your superawesome conservative memes out to people other than beckers, juggalos, prolife terrorists, neo-nazis, white supremecists and gun nuts?
hahaha!
The Barack Obama is doing a very good job of spreading the conservativish memes I think.
Twilight Vanquisher you are not a kid anymores and for the kids it is free enterprise what is where the grass is greener. It is individual liberty where the grass is greener.
Or it will be, soon enough.
so you better go back to your bars, your temples, your massage parlours I think cause when freedom is the meme what is in eclipse you don’t want to be taken for a dirty socialist I don’t think. Or a journalist.
here. it’s a song from long ago:
Feets…..you just can’t be the individual freedom and liberty party when you want to make laws about uteruses and penises.
You cant be the prolife party when you say its understandable to kill abortion doctors but not to even rebuke the mother that plans and pays for the abortion.
You can’t be the party of Andy Jackson when you lobby for seccession.
You can’t be the party of Thom Jefferson when you throw all the elites and academics out.
You can’t be the party of Ben Franklin when you deny Science.
Right now you are the party of cognitive dissonance.
Your prophets are all angry fingerpointing puffy old white men trying to scold us back into the 20th century.
Cultural evolution doesn’t run backwards.
Embrace the future.
The world is changing.
The First Law of the Mentat
Feets…. je t’adore….but your protests are ignoble and most importantly futile.
You just sound bitter.
But….don’t get mad….get even.
;)
Here’s what I would do….Joe Scarborough.
You will loose, but you will look good, lose gracefully, and have a few self-deprecating laughs.
Possibly Palin could be his VP candidate. I dunno though…her negatives with independents are ferocious.
Ok….I just watched Joe on MTP.
I think O should have sent him to China instead of Huntsman.
He is brilliant.
Gregory tried to bait him into the letterman/palin shitstorm, hoping for some outrage…Joe deftly sidestepped, compared Palin to Sotomeyor, and segued into a policy discussion.
Wow.
Is he a rino though?
Seems like you guys have pitched him out of the tent a few times.
Bitter is the wrong word. Disgusted. My little country. The dirty socialists broke it and their media catamites broke it and the state radio NPR parasites broke it and the Mr. Soros broke it and our little democracy, it is polluted, it is weak, it is diseased.
It’s nothing to do with flowing with the dirty socialist tides of history. We know these tides and it is freedom what ebbs and it is prosperity what ebbs and it is respect for people what ebbs and then people die what wouldn’t have and devolution is just another word for nothing left to corrupt with dirty socialist spirit-crushing schemes I think. Don’t ever ever take evolution for granted cause of what happened to Mr. T. Rex was just awful and what happened to the kitty cats what had the tusks was just awful and what will happen to democracy and freedom? Could very well be just awful.
Nothing romantic about evolution and I will tell you why. It’s cause it’s just a smart people way of saying oh. Damn. When you look back on things it all makes sense. In retrospect. Cause of the evolutionary dynamics what you can discern.
Yay.
What happened just 4 short years ago, Squishi?
You can’t be profound when you can’t get your facts straight, Squishi.
Anybody know who the hell Nishfong is talking about at 580? Joe Scarborough?
BMoe,
It sounds like it to me; but really, who knows!
Joe S isn’t full on RINO though; he’s more libertarian…
But he fraternizes with Lefties a lot, and sometimes seems like he’s lookin’ for their approval!
Might have somethin’ to do with relyin’ on MSNBC for his bread, and wantin’ invites to all the right cocktail parties in DC and on the upper east side of NYC…
That is absolute gibberish.
Maybe you should find a blog closer to your reading level, Col.
Pablow…Bush won by 5 electoral votes in 2000, on culture war issues.
When 9/11 hit he just didn’t have the substrate to be able to deal with it.
In 2004 he won by 35 electoral college votes, in wartime.
He was barely better than Kerry.
Obama won by 192 electoral college votes.
ONE HUNDRED AND NINETY TWO.
Oh feets.
Don’t you see it?
This wouldn’t be happening in Iran if not for Obama. The election in Leb wouldn’t have have turned out pro-freedom.
People want to be free, but they want to be respected.
Obama has opened a door for that.
The world doesn’t want our meddling.
We can’t be the Superawesome World Police anymore.
We can’t afford it and it makes people hate us.
Teacher: Earth-That-Was could no longer sustain our numbers, we were so many. We found a new solar system, dozens of planets and hundreds of moons. Each one terraformed, a process taking decades, to support human life, to be new Earths. The Central Planets formed the Alliance. Ruled by an interplanetary parliament, the Alliance was a beacon of civilization. The savage outer planets were not so enlightened and refused Alliance control. The war was devastating, but the Alliance’s victory over the Independents ensured a safer universe. And now everyone can enjoy the comfort and enlightenment of our civilization.
Young River: People don’t like to be meddled with. We tell them what to do, what to think, don’t run, don’t walk. We’re in their homes and in their heads and we haven’t the right. We’re meddlesome.
Are you guyz are so bitter that you have to constantly grief on Obama for making things better and hope he fails?
This is amazing!
The world is changing!
And to think I thought twitter was useless.
The foundation of what is happening in Iran owes much more to Iraq than to anything Barack Obama has done with his simpering speechifying. But it’s not Iran where we need to worry about dissipated freedom it’s in our little country and Barack Obama and his minion people seem to be under the illusion that we’re all in this together and we’re not. That is something very profound about where our little country is that the Barack Obama doesn’t understand.
Ah yes, the Obama Freedom Agenda, conjured up circa Oct 2001.
George Bush always told the Iranian young people to yearn for freedom and that he stands with them. Obama just gazes off into the distance.
What a laugh. People don’t like to be meddled with. Except, our government is taking our money, and spending it for us. Oh, about that choice in regards to health insurance … we’re going to take that away from you too, in the name of fairness. And, with Obama’s move in firing at AmeriCorp IG … we’re going to only have the freedoms Obama lets us have.
I thought electoral votes were the bad, and what was more important was raw percentages? If I learned anything from the 2000 election, it was that one shouldn’t look at electoral votes to tell teh “true” outcome of the voting will.
MORE PEOPLE VOTED FOR GORE! ELECTORAL VOTES ARE THE SUXXOR.
love, 48.
This wouldn’t be happening in Iran if not for Obama.
…
People want to be free, but they want to be respected.
Nishi is right, when Obama started talking about negotiating with the Dinnerjacket that was more disrespect than the Iranian people could stand.
B Moe, maybe the Iranians were afraid Obama would bow when he met the Dinnerjacket? He IS inspirational!
The question is, Nishi, what does the Big O! do now? Because standing around being an inspirational poseur ain’t gonna cut it any longer.
http://tinyurl.com/komq4z
http://tinyurl.com/ntju2b
And yet he extended the GOP margin in both houses of Congress.
Or, 52%. Reagan won by FOUR HUNDRED AND FORTY ELECTORAL COLLEGE VOTES. And then he won again by FIVE HUNDRED AND TWELVE. Man, the caps really punch that up, don’t they?
BTW, you’d better water your memes. They’re dying.
Obama has done jack shit, which is exactly what Patrick Disney is arguing, should you bother to actually read what you cite. But apparently, he does absolutely nothing really, really well.
Friedman will explain some inconvenient triths to you.
Bush was a highly beneficial president not just to our little country but to the whole world is what I take from this.
Me too.
You think Mr. Teleprompter could bring himself to make a comment about last night’s violence in LA? b-Ball is his “game” right?
I’m ashamed to say it Carin, but I sometimes wish for a ‘man caused disaster’ to land on the heads of L.A. Laker fans while they’re rioting. Would they know the difference? Would I?
If such activities were performed by … uhm … those more likely to have voted for McCain in the last election, I’m sure we’d be reading OUTRAGED pronouncements from our cultural betters about what mouth-breathers conservatives are.
feets, Bush was a well-intentioned evangelical bumbler.
He spent a trillion dollars and 4228 lives from the finest military on the planet to make another Islamic state.
Yes, the Manifest Destiny of Judeoxian Democracy (aka the Bush Doctrine) was an Epic Fail.
He doubled the deficit, and told Americans to “go shopping” after the worst attack on American soil in ages.
He tortured.
That is what is going in the history books.
Obama has opened a door to dar al Islam.
He is doing exactly the right thing.
It is not about us, it is about Iran.
If he came out for the students, it would cause a crackdown, and send Iranians streaming to Nejad for protection from the ‘merican colonial imperialist meddlers.
Is it too much to ask you guyz not to be pissy about it and hope the greens succeed, even though the students are devout muslims?
Is it too much to freakin’ THINK?
Pablow, if conservative memes (reaganisms) are so spectactular, how become you lost?
We see how successful your Reagan memes are in the 21st century.
Evolve or die.
Friedman is epic failcake too.
If Iraq caused the Green Revolution, why didnt’ it happen before?
It happened after Obama’s Cairo speech, because Obama opened a door to dar al Islam and promised we wern’t going to meddle anymore.
Obama has opened a door to dar al Islam. Except for the faggots.
feets the “faggots” are still being killed in Iraq, under that swell
democracysharia law state American soldiers died to give them.It ain’t our bidness.
Barack doesn’t give a shit about human rights is the point, nishi. Barack cares about building a masturbatory shrine to… Barack. And his NPR sycophants will lay the bricks and his MSNBC will make the mortar but them muslims, they won’t masturbate dutifully. If Barack is dumb enough to want big happy muslimy credit for all of what is done in the dar al Islam after his magnificent tingly arousing speech I will be very happy to lay it at his holy feet. After Katie Couric finishes washing them and Evan Thomas is doneth annointing.
We’re all waiting for Obama to throw the students a bone, and meanwhile Germany is calling in the Iranian ambassador over the phony election results…
http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSTRE55D1Z820090615
Effin’ Germany!
Would it be too much to expect the leader of the free world to be sayin’ something?
Baracky is interested in taking credit for anything positive that happens, and all the bad stuff is Bush’s fault.
Yes, but what the Barack also wants to do is validate an equation that dar es Islam = Barack Obama’s America and what that does is to tell all the American womens that they are for real actual humans only by the caprice of history and it tells the American gay pipples that they should just shut up cause it’s just accidental happenstance that no one’s done dumped a wall on their gay little heads.
Barack is an evil fuck. This is never helpful, when evil fucks are in charge.
The “faggots†are still being killed in Iraq, under that swell
democracysharia law state American soldiers died to give them and there is very very little space between them peoples dying and it ain’t our bidness and them dying in Barack Obama’s holy name. He has been very very validating of their worst impulses, and very very quick he has been about it.Change! Which is going to remain a popular theme. It just won’t be the Change! you are Hope!ing for.
Unless you evolve into an incompetent/suicidal thing, in which case you also die. See Carter’s political career. On the bright side, Bammy can get hisself a Jew hating Nobel in years to come.
Friedman is epic failcake too.
Yes. He’s a goof-ass.
So we’ve seen a revision of the old “He may be a dictator, but he’s our dictator” meme. Now, instead of applying it outwardbound toward say A’jad or Chavezy, we’re supposed to say it about Barack Obama.
Is it too much to ask you guyz not to be pissy about it and hope the greens succeed, even though the students are devout muslims?
I hope very much they succeed, Nishfong. Because they are muslims.
Is it too much to freakin’ THINK?
lol.
If Iraq caused the Green Revolution, why didnt’ it happen before?
Because Iraq hadn’t happened before? That would be my guess.
You can tell that it’s killing him to have to state the bloody obvious.
I don’t agree with everything Friedman has written by a long shot, but he has made a lot of salient points in the past, and he is a helluva lot smarter than Obambi when it comes to the Middle East.
Carin, I’m a Jeffersonian.
I favor the electoral college over mob-rule anyday.
We live in a Republic, not a democracy.
I wasn’t even into politics back in Bush/Gore.
Couldn’t vote yet, so that raw vote stuff is going right over my head.
Dude, the guy that threw a shoe at Bush became a MENA hero.
Muslims hate Bush.
He meddled.
Because Iraq hadn’t happened before? That would be my guess.
Iraq had been “happening” for years.
I favor the electoral college over mob-rule anyday.
We live in a Republic, not a democracy.
There are… forms of government….and their perversions…..and the perversion of a Republic is a democracy.
I wasn’t even into politics back in Bush/Gore.
Couldn’t vote yet, so that raw vote stuff is going right over my head.
You are so clueless you don’t even realize this invalidates your whole schtick, aren’t you? On the other hand you are much younger than I thought, so I will give you a pass on being such an idiot. I was too at your age.
How can you be this stupid?
If Obama endorses the students that will fuel the anti-US meme-machine and tip the population back towards Nejad.
Plus it would cause the regime to crack down harder on the students and enable them to label the reformists as anti-Iranian seditionists and arrest and kill them.
oh.oh…right…….that IS exactly what Bush would have done.
Obama is doing exactly the right thing.
Wait and see.
If the students get proof out that the Baseej and IRANIAN riot cops are killing people that will be huge.
Nejad can’t be seen as killing Iranian citizens.
The whole country will rise against him.
This wouldn’t be happening in Iran if not for Obama.
If Obama endorses the students that will fuel the anti-US meme-machine and tip the population back towards Nejad.
I guess the Lord truly does work in mysterious ways.
Uh, OK.
Cognitive dissonance much, nishi?
Well, you can speak for the eugenicist-rave-gamer muslims, but you don’t speak for muslims in general. Take Sheik Ahmad al-Rishawi, for instance.
But then, what does he know? He’s just an Arab Muslim tribal leader. He really needs a deranged, snot-nosed American child to tell him what’s what. You want me to find his address for you, nishbot? BTW, how many handles do you plan on using on this thread?
I understand the words fine. However the words and concepts put together in this sequence mean nothing. Therefore gibberish.
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