It’s being characterized as a “full-throated apology” that you can hear on the show tonight, so you can tell your grandkids about that time you heard Letterman apologize. Except that there’s no real articulation of what he did intend:
“All right, here – I’ve been thinking about this situation with Governor Palin and her family now for about a week – it was a week ago tonight, and maybe you know about it, maybe you don’t know about it. But there was a joke that I told, and I thought I was telling it about the older daughter being at Yankee Stadium. And it was kind of a coarse joke. There’s no getting around it, but I never thought it was anybody other than the older daughter, and before the show, I checked to make sure in fact that she is of legal age, 18. Yeah. But the joke really, in and of itself, can’t be defended. The next day, people are outraged. They’re angry at me because they said, ‘How could you make a lousy joke like that about the 14-year-old girl who was at the ball game?’ And I had, honestly, no idea that the 14-year-old girl, I had no idea that anybody was at the ball game except the Governor and I was told at the time she was there with Rudy Giuliani…And I really should have made the joke about Rudy…” (audience applauds) “But I didn’t, and now people are getting angry and they’re saying, ‘Well, how can you say something like that about a 14-year-old girl, and does that make you feel good to make those horrible jokes about a kid who’s completely innocent, minding her own business,’ and, turns out, she was at the ball game. I had no idea she was there. So she’s now at the ball game and people think that I made the joke about her. And, but still, I’m wondering, ‘Well, what can I do to help people understand that I would never make a joke like this?’ I’ve never made jokes like this as long as we’ve been on the air, 30 long years, and you can’t really be doing jokes like that. And I understand, of course, why people are upset. I would be upset myself.
“And then I was watching the Jim Lehrer ‘Newshour’ – this commentator, the columnist Mark Shields, was talking about how I had made this indefensible joke about the 14-year-old girl, and I thought, ‘Oh, boy, now I’m beginning to understand what the problem is here. It’s the perception rather than the intent.’ It doesn’t make any difference what my intent was, it’s the perception. And, as they say about jokes, if you have to explain the joke, it’s not a very good joke. And I’m certainly – ” (audience applause) “- thank you. Well, my responsibility – I take full blame for that. I told a bad joke. I told a joke that was beyond flawed, and my intent is completely meaningless compared to the perception. And since it was a joke I told, I feel that I need to do the right thing here and apologize for having told that joke. It’s not your fault that it was misunderstood, it’s my fault. That it was misunderstood.” (audience applauds) “Thank you. So I would like to apologize, especially to the two daughters involved, Bristol and Willow, and also to the Governor and her family and everybody else who was outraged by the joke. I’m sorry about it and I’ll try to do better in the future. Thank you very much.” (audience applause)
Not that there’s any kind of recognition here of the gap between perception and reality that’s been programmatically visited on the Palins, but this will do, for me, and is the last I’m going to write on it.
Comment by Phil on 6/15 @ 6:07 pm #
I think we need to give Letterman the benefit of the doubt before we engage in the same tactics we accuse the Left of, ie distorting the author’s intent.
Comment by Christopher Taylor on 6/15 @ 6:09 pm #
See, up until that point it was completely confusing to him that a joke about raping girls and calling a governor slutty was in any way offensive or troubling to people. It wasn’t his fault, it was everyone else’s fault for misinterpreting his intent.
Comment by Dan Collins on 6/15 @ 6:12 pm #
Look, Phil, under any available reading that I can imagine, what he said was vile. IMO. Is it less vile if he’s talking about the 18 year old? Sure. Fine.
I part ways with the Left most vigorously in this case, though, by not calling for his head, when the apology to the Palins has been offered. That’s really all that he can do to address the situation, anyway. I don’t think he needs to check into rehab, even.
Comment by Pablo on 6/15 @ 6:12 pm #
It’s what he would have said in the first place if he had more sense than bile.
Comment by sdferr on 6/15 @ 6:15 pm #
Well, to spread the excuse making just a little, at least the people misinterpreting were blinded by their own failure to grasp Letterman’s utter ignorance of the plain facts of the ballgame attendees. Once they figured out he really didn’t know, they made the correct adjustments for the most part.
Comment by takeshi kovacs on 6/15 @ 6:16 pm #
What pathetically hedged, insincere @#%%$#$$%%^&^, I guess about as much as can be expected.
Comment by Pablo on 6/15 @ 6:16 pm #
I’m sort of ambivalent, but then I’m sort of not, because of the double standards and hypocrisy on CBS’ part. For Imus is why, and because of Alinsky.
Comment by The Sanity Inspector on 6/15 @ 6:20 pm #
The jokester is liberal and the butt of the joke is conservative, so there’ll be no replay of the Don Imus scenario. This apology is likely to be all that’s forthcoming from him. It’s acceptable, IMO.
Comment by Joe on 6/15 @ 6:21 pm #
You think Letterman was bad, check out this crap.
Comment by sdferr on 6/15 @ 6:24 pm #
The Imus angle though, hasn’t much to do with Letterman per se. It was about Obama and the standards he sets. To this day I’ve not heard that one person has asked Obama why he’s taken such a different tack in this situation as opposed to his early calls for Imus’ firing. At this point it appears no one will ask him.
Comment by happyfeet on 6/15 @ 6:29 pm #
Letterman works at a company called CBS what thinks it is funny and a lot reflective of their values to joke about raping little Christian girls. People here may have varying degrees of understanding of David “child rape is funny” Letterman’s apology but for sure who will not understand it is CBS I think. Why are the filthy Christian’s panties in a twist, CBS will wonder.
Comment by Pablo on 6/15 @ 6:31 pm #
Whoa. CBS fired Imus for a completely off the cuff, off color joke. And Imus shtick is being a miserable old insulting son of a bitch, full stop. But he insulted a politically protected group, and he was gone. Fired by CBS. After, coincidentally, I’m sure, Barack Obama said he should be fired.
Letterman does it? Crickets. I call bullshit.
Pingback by Letterman to Apologize Tonight. | Little Miss Attila on 6/15 @ 6:31 pm #
[...] winking constantly or holding his fingers, crossed, behind his back, that will likely be the end of it for me as [...]
Comment by Joan of Argghh! on 6/15 @ 6:35 pm #
Sorry, but there is a rather unmistakable absence of acknowledgment of the Palins as human beings who were vilely targeted and cruelly slandered.
Read it again, the apology is all about Letterman and his high standards and how sorry he is to have fallen from his own self-estimation.
Mean. Little. Man.
Comment by Joe on 6/15 @ 6:38 pm #
Our next RNC chairperson? H/T: Ace
Comment by not bh on 6/15 @ 6:38 pm #
Joe, this is old but be sure to scroll down for the photo of Yglesias.
Comment by ccoffer on 6/15 @ 6:40 pm #
Does thin mean David Letterman isn’t to be considered an asshole anymore? They guy was a douchebag before his lame fucking joke, and he’s still a douchebag.
Comment by sdferr on 6/15 @ 6:41 pm #
Imus was shafted then? So Letterman should be now? And by the by, it hasn’t exactly been crickets the last six days. All I hoped to get at was that the hypocrisy of note falls on Obama and those like him back when Imus was being pilloried and a current question, why the failure to speak up now, as far as I’m concerned. It doesn’t fall on the special politically protected group for instance. Letterman, CBS, who gives a shit? Not me anyhow as I don’t really use either one. Obama, on the other hand, sets standards we get screwed by every day. I’m content to have the Palin family take out after Letterman.
Comment by Mikey NTH on 6/15 @ 6:44 pm #
So, Mr. Letteman – your writers and you are too ignorant to know who was accompanying Gov. Palin. You and yours didn’t know and didn’t care to know. And it would be fine if it was Rudy Gulianni (what?). And it would be fine if it was Bristol Palin (still not geting this).
And at some point in this cloud of words there is supposed to be an apology, but what is it? What are you trying to say? You know, Mr. Letterman, there are some things you can’t explain away, such as a locker-room joke on broadcast television, in a venue that isn’t one for locker-room jokes. Just say you made a locker-room joke, you regret doing that, you apologize, and that is it.
Try to man-up to that level. Three words: “I am sorry.”
Comment by rev wright on 6/15 @ 6:44 pm #
the chickens are roosting somewhere
Comment by Bob Reed on 6/15 @ 6:45 pm #
This will be a good example of institutionalized media hypocrisy next time the left starts whinging about the hypocrisy of religious conservatives…
Other than that, I can only observe that there was a lot of han-ana, ham-ana, palaver leading up to the apology…
And, he never did state what the intent was; but, WTF he is a comedian attemoting a vile and lame joke…
He apologized, case closed, file it away as a future “exhibit”, and move on; we got bigger fish to fry…
Comment by Mikey NTH on 6/15 @ 6:46 pm #
All that would be needed would be A-Rod to say that he is a professional and has the sense to keep his antics off the actual playing field.
Pingback by CBS Loses Hotel Advertiser Because of David Letterman’s Rape Joke: Boycott Working, Protest Planned Outside CBS Studio « Frugal Café Blog Zone on 6/15 @ 6:49 pm #
[...] Obama supporter Bill Maher disses Palin Chicago Tribune: Entertainers too political Protein Wisdom: David Letterman, Intentionalist The Dallas Morning News: Controlling pundits’ rants Fort Hard Knox: Liberal Bill Maher [...]
Comment by Pablo on 6/15 @ 6:50 pm #
CBS should have a standard and apply it evenly. It shouldn’t be OK with them to call high school girls whores but a firing offense to call college girls whores, and I don’t have a problem with anyone who wants to twist their nuts over the point. As for the crickets, are you aware of a CBS statement on the matter?
Pingback by More Hate Against Palin’s Children: Bill Maher Wants Spotlight, Tops Letterman’s Willow Palin Rape Joke « Frugal Café Blog Zone on 6/15 @ 6:51 pm #
[...] I no longer believe…That we have an inquisitive American media as we once knew it Protein Wisdom: David Letterman, Intentionalist Moralia: Because hot conservative women have to stick together Frugal Café Blog Zone: [...]
Comment by Pablo on 6/15 @ 6:51 pm #
Oh, and especially because Letterman makes them way more money than Imus did.
Pingback by Columnist S.E. Cupp Blames Obama for Letterman’s Palin Joke (video) « Frugal Café Blog Zone on 6/15 @ 6:51 pm #
[...] Predictability Reaganite Republican Resistance: Bounce Letterman to the Curb Protein Wisdom: David Letterman, Intentionalist Frugal Café Blog Zone: AlfonZo Rachel’s ZoNation: Bad Conclusions Drawn by Liberals about Our [...]
Comment by sdferr on 6/15 @ 6:53 pm #
Sorry Pablo, I misunderstood your crickets comment insofar as you meant it to apply only to CBS. No, I’ve heard nothing salient from the network.
Comment by sdferr on 6/15 @ 6:56 pm #
I didn’t think Imus should have been fired, so I thought people firing him were wrong to do so then. Why would I now insist that they do another wrong thing now? There’s no harm in asking them to account for the differential treatment of the two cases though. To that I’d say, have at it.
Comment by SarahW on 6/15 @ 6:57 pm #
The apology tracks very closely with what some writers at a professional comedy mag ( Sheckymagazine) suggested. THere was only one Palin daughter at the game and that daughter was 14. He admits making a joke about a Palin daughter at the game might be reasonably construed as being about that daughter. May Dave go and sin no more.
Comment by Crazy Lolcat Lady on 6/15 @ 7:02 pm #
Letterman’s recitation of the facts is incorrect and self-serving. He said that there was one joke and “the next day” people were outraged that he had been talking about Willow. In fact, he made the A-Rod joke about the Palin daughter on Monday night. Outrage ensued because it had been widely reported that Willow was the daughter who accompanied the Governor on the trip and went to the game. Then on Tuesday or Wednesday night he made the joke about how the hardest part of Palin’s visit was keeping her daughter away from Spitzer. He knew by then that Willow was the daughter on the trip.
Comment by geoffb on 6/15 @ 7:06 pm #
As always, when caught out doing something and called to account for their words or behavior, a person of the Left has to reach for the ever handy “I (or some lower staffer) was stupid” defense. It is better than what is most likely the truth, the “I was being evil”, non-defense defense. This is the, self described, “smarter” set.
Comment by Pablo on 6/15 @ 7:07 pm #
That is the nut of it, in my mind. And I don’t mind the people that are making that point hurting them. As to whether it costs Letterman his gig, that’s where I’m ambivalent. But calling for that is really the only way to force the question.
Comment by msm on 6/15 @ 7:07 pm #
dave we told you and your writers who would be there.
Comment by DavidL on 6/15 @ 7:08 pm #
It is not for me to say if Dave Letterman’s latest apology is acceptable or not. I am not the offended party. The next move is up to Willow.
Comment by serr8d on 6/15 @ 7:08 pm #
I guess two sides can play the ‘frame the intent any way we damn well please’ game, eh, Dave? It’s about time we started replying in kind. Saul Alinsky would be proud, and damned if I’ll feel ashamed.
If we don’t use and play by the full set of rules our adversaries use, we’ll fail at the game. Can we afford to do that, given the stakes?
Comment by Old Grouch on 6/15 @ 7:12 pm #
Just to compare and contrast:
Imus’ remark was on a live radio show, with (at most) an x-second delay.
It was an adlib.
There was only his producer, with the “dump” button, to block it before it went over the air.
Higher levels at CBS didn’t have any opportunity to get involved until after the fact.
Letterman’s gag was scripted.
It passed muster with the writers, the producers, and Letterman himself.
Late Night is recorded 5 hours before the eastern zone broadcast feed.
Either nobody at CBS thought to involve the net’s Standards & Practices people (before or after the recording), or they passed it also.
The show was sitting on tape for 5 hours.
There was plenty of time to run it past higher levels of the network, get a decision, and edit it. Either someone failed to do this, or “higher levels” saw no problem with the “joke,” either.
Conclusion: Imus was a mistake, Letterman was intentional.
Comment by sdferr on 6/15 @ 7:12 pm #
I think asking Obama himself, “why the different treatment of the two similar cases?” does the trick Pablo, and one need even call for any firing, since Obama’s done it already contra Imus.
Comment by Rob Crawford on 6/15 @ 7:12 pm #
Basic tit-for-tat strategy.
Comment by mike tyson on 6/15 @ 7:13 pm #
damn rape jokes ok now
Comment by sdferr on 6/15 @ 7:13 pm #
Damnit, needn’t (I don’t know what’s with my leaving off the negs today.)
Comment by rev al on 6/15 @ 7:14 pm #
“imus insulted a race and a gender”
Comment by rev al on 6/15 @ 7:16 pm #
“who is Mr. Letterman insulting as a group?”
Comment by ghost707 on 6/15 @ 7:17 pm #
What Letterman needs to do is try being a talk show host comedian and try some funny jokes.
The bitter, old, lefty ranting schtick got old years ago.
The man oozes hate.
Comment by Bob Reed on 6/15 @ 7:18 pm #
“There’s no harm in asking them to account for the differential treatment of the two cases though.”
I agree completely…
But then again I’m a winger, so there’s that…
Comment by not bh on 6/15 @ 7:20 pm #
In a game theory sense, the idea is retribution for an act of aggression. The method of that retribution doesn’t matter. For instance, if someone punches you in the face, it’s still tit for tat to punch them in the stomach.
So, we don’t actually have to follow their playbook, we just have to make sure it hurts.
Comment by Pablo on 6/15 @ 7:25 pm #
Chillbilly wimmens.
Comment by jaujau on 6/15 @ 7:27 pm #
My opinion is ‘who cares?’ I don’t. I just can’t muster enough damn to give, anymore. Someone just walk away from this mess. Sarah first.
Comment by Dan Collins on 6/15 @ 7:27 pm #
And sentient beings.
Comment by Cynthia Yockey, A Conservative Lesbian on 6/15 @ 7:27 pm #
Man up, you disloyal weasels!
HillBuzz and A Conservative Lesbian are going to continue this fight until CBS fires David Letterman. This is because lesbians and gays know all too well that if you let the first bully off easy, you will soon be overwhelmed by bullies who would never have had the courage to harass you without seeing how easy it was for the first one.
Sebastian Gray, from HillBuzz, told you this is going to take at least four weeks. We are in mid “This will blow over” phase now. Consistent, persistent effort will pay off now in huge rewards but we have a few more weeks to go. Gettng Letterman fired is a shot across Obama’s bow that we’re not just going to take everything he and his minions dish out. DO. NOT. STOP. NOW. Keep your eyes on the prize, boys, keep your eyes on the prize.
And trust me, you are going to be SO glad a skilled activist lesbian is on your side to show you how this is done and keep your spirits up until we are victorious AND LETTERMAN IS FIRED!
Cynthia
Comment by Pablo on 6/15 @ 7:30 pm #
See, now Cynthia is stoking some flames under my ambivalence. I really like the idea of hurting CBS.
Comment by rev al on 6/15 @ 7:33 pm #
please don’t diss me i said that Hannity tonight you evil wingers
Comment by TmjUtah on 6/15 @ 7:35 pm #
He tells ten bazillion jokes a year. Some kill. Some suck. Most just flow on by.
I haven’t watched Letterman in years. The Palin joke was born in the mind of a writer who hates the Palins, that much is obvious. Any casual exposure to Letterman will inform the viewer that the guy pretty much dislikes or at least looks down on 99.9% of the people he comes in contact with or mentions, but the Palins as a group had to measure somewhere below dumpster sludge in his universe for that particular joke to have made his monologue at all.
His apology is for including a fourteen year old girl in the blast radius, and please don’t fire him. Thanks. And tonight’s top ten is….
As much an apology as I ever expected to see. Time to move on.
Of course, had he been Glenn Beck or Limbaugh in the same position, there would have been a lynching. Such are the days we live in.
Comment by rev al on 6/15 @ 7:35 pm #
you all gots to have a group don’t you know. we don’t need no uncle obamas
Comment by rev al on 6/15 @ 7:36 pm #
i’m sorry that be uncle Clarence
Comment by TaiChiWawa on 6/15 @ 7:38 pm #
Cynthia, if you keep piling on, the “this will blow over” phase will be followed by the “making him a martyr” phase.
Comment by Pablo on 6/15 @ 7:40 pm #
Right.
Saul says make CBS fire Letterman.
Comment by B Moe on 6/15 @ 7:41 pm #
Bullshit. Imus complemented a basketball team for their tenacity and style.
Comment by Pablo on 6/15 @ 7:42 pm #
TaiGhiWawa, nobody on either side really gives a rat’s ass about Letterman. He’s expendable.
Comment by TaiChiWawa on 6/15 @ 7:47 pm #
As an ideological pawn, a rat’s ass can become a sacred cow (or something).
Comment by B Moe on 6/15 @ 7:48 pm #
I think Olberman started the sainted martyr bit last week already.
Comment by JD on 6/15 @ 7:48 pm #
This is the best we will ever see on this one. It seems like he apologized for making a joke about a 14-year old, or for telling a joke that could be reasonably construed to have been about a 14 year old. There is nothing to suggest that he thinks it would be wrong to have told that same joke about an 18 year old, and said as much.
Comment by not bh on 6/15 @ 7:52 pm #
If you’d had me in the first place, you’d have lost me with that.
Ummm… how high?
Comment by Bob Reed on 6/15 @ 7:58 pm #
Pablo,
You are right sir; Saul says tighten the screws on Lettermans shriveled nutz till he quits or is fired…
“Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules. You can kill them with this, for they can no more obey their own rules than the Christian church can live up to Christianity.”
David violated the rules of identity politics; the rules his side professes to adhere to. While great care must be taken to not let this morph into censorship, or the rights endorsement of a new unified PC speak protocol in America, the hypocrisy angle that is often trumped up as an excuse to hound conservatives, especially Christians, should be the cited reason to keep the blowtorch on high…
Much like Jeff suggested the other day, Hillz should be enlisted of possible, and definately Imus should be asked about this; the latter would certainly wish to rub a little salt into the CBS wound I’d think. Hell, it’s hard to get close to him, but I’d almost say PAY some reporters to ask the O!ne his opinion in this, and Rev Al too; but dear leader would just blow it off as a distraction and would have a point right now…
Expose the hypocrisy!
I’m sooooooooo conflicted on this
Comment by gus on 6/15 @ 7:59 pm #
Calling a womens basketball team NAPPY HEADED HO’s CANNOT be compared to what Letterman said.
If you libtards don’t understand that, it just reinforces the fact that you are retarded and need to be eliminated.
Comment by ghost707 on 6/15 @ 8:00 pm #
In the end, Palin’s stock went up and Letterman’s stock went down.
Letterman now knows this.
Enjoy the karma sandwich Letterman.
Comment by Bob Reed on 6/15 @ 8:00 pm #
Oooops, sorry for the failed HTML-fu
Comment by rev al on 6/15 @ 8:01 pm #
you all don’t know how to do this shit! call us at sharpton/jackson for a free consultation.
Comment by gus on 6/15 @ 8:02 pm #
Letterman had no stock. He took TARP funds, so Opie writes his jokes.
Or maybe Opies State Media Czar writes the jokes.
Comment by mj on 6/15 @ 8:03 pm #
Well, he’s edged somewhat toward an apology, but certainly hasn’t made the full trip yet.
The rape and hooker jokes were pretty foul. They were not “misunderstood.” Because of his extreme dislike for Governor Palin, he chose to attack a kid. Whether the kid’s 14 or 18, it was wrong.
He’s not guilty of people taking any jokes the wrong way. And he certainly shouldn’t be apologizing for that. What he’s claiming to take the full blame for is nonsense.
Comment by Barack Motherfucking H. Obama on 6/15 @ 8:03 pm #
I still think the better comparison is to Shuster’s comment on Chelsea Clinton being “pimped out” by her mother’s campaign. Let’s compare:
Chelsea was nearly a decade older last Februrary than Bristol is today (not to mention Willow).
The phrase “pimp out” has many non-sexual meanings, while the jokes about being knocked up and kept away from Spitzer have no non-sexual interpretations.
No one seriously thought Shuster was literally calling Chelsea a whore, but the Spitzer bit can mean nothing other than “[Unnamed Palin daughter] is a whore.”
Hillary got a personal apology from the head of NBC News, and Shuster got a two-week suspension.
Pingback by Attila and Dan at Protein Wisdom — MAN UP! — Cynthia Yockey, A Conservative Lesbian on 6/15 @ 8:03 pm #
[...] just spied posts by my beloved Little Miss Attila and online friend Dan Collins at Protein Wisdom that they are inclined to accept David Letterman’s apology to Gov. Sarah Palin and her [...]
Comment by The Monster on 6/15 @ 8:05 pm #
damn that sock.
Comment by not bh on 6/15 @ 8:07 pm #
Cynthia says jump, Dan.
Comment by gus on 6/15 @ 8:07 pm #
Letterman is loaded. He’s worth millions and millions and millions. The only thing that can hurt Letterman is if his EGO is hurt. His Ego will be hurt when his show is cancelled. It will be soon. He’s run his course and he has made more money than Tony Rezko. He has no moral code. Like most libs, Letterman is guided by ideology, and it’s quite easy to be immoral or amoral, when you are a liberal and you are rich.
Kennedy, Pelosi, Kerry, Kohl, Edwards, Rockerfeller on and on and on and on. Hollywood libtards don’t know what it’s like to be a normal American, working, striving and sacrificing for family and Country.
They have no clue.
What has the Obama family ever sacrificed for America? Nothing.
Obama is the exact opposite of Kennedy’s Creed.
Ask not what your country can do for you.
Ask what you can do for your country.
Obama is the EXACT OPPOSITE. Opie is telling MILLLLIONS of Americans, that America is bad and America OWES them.
Comment by frankly on 6/15 @ 8:09 pm #
You know what’s funny? Letterman’s son is a bastard! LMAO!
That means Letterman’s son’s mother is a whore! ROFLMAO!!!
You know what else is funny? Letterman’s a bastard!!11!
That means Letterman’s mother is a whore!!!1111!!!!
I’ll be here all week!
What? It’s just a joke. Chill out. I certainly didn’t mean to offend anyone. Get a grip. Don’t you have a sense of humor?
Comment by Pablo on 6/15 @ 8:10 pm #
Almost exactly right, Bob. But not so much Letterman as CBS. And Obama, though he’s a lot harder to nail down on this one. Letterman is but cannon fodder.
Comment by sdferr on 6/15 @ 8:10 pm #
If not ideology exactly then at least self-confessedly by Jim Lehrer News Hour commentator Mark Shields.
Comment by Joe on 6/15 @ 8:11 pm #
Matthew Yglesias does some fun role playing.
h/t: bh
Comment by rev al on 6/15 @ 8:12 pm #
just a little advice: freddy’s fashion mart; black rock(man that’s racist)
Comment by B Moe on 6/15 @ 8:13 pm #
You gotta ratchet it up a few more notches if you are going to satire, rev al. You still ain’t near as over the top as most of our regular trolls.
Comment by Jeff G on 6/15 @ 8:14 pm #
My entire blogging career has been for naught.
This is Dan and Sarah’s blog now, I guess.
Use it in good health.
Comment by not bh on 6/15 @ 8:15 pm #
rev al reads like router/newrouter to me.
Comment by gus on 6/15 @ 8:15 pm #
Pimping out Chelsea Clinton is not possible.
Think about it.
Comment by Jeff G on 6/15 @ 8:16 pm #
OUTRAGE!
Comment by steve on 6/15 @ 8:17 pm #
Shock is not humor. Humor ought to uplift (Bill Cosby) or give insight (Will Rogers) or help someone cope with the trials of life. Humor is not about demeaning, but for Letterman, that is what it has become. Letterman has demonstrated he is not a decent human being, not a principled man and certainly not concerned about anyone other than himself. It is sad that ‘humor’ has devolved to such a level.
Comment by joey buzz on 6/15 @ 8:20 pm #
Did yall catch this stupid piece What Hillary can teach Sarah
I haven’t read anything that ignorant since …well this afternoon.
Comment by Pablo on 6/15 @ 8:21 pm #
Keep in mind, Jeff, that DL’s excuse is that he really meant to trash the 18 year old, not the 14 year old. Also, Alinsky.
Meanwhile, thanks to Cynthia, I’ve fallen in love twice. It’s the accent, I’m sure of it.
Comment by Makewi on 6/15 @ 8:23 pm #
Alinksy might very well say to push until CBS fires Letterman, but OTOH Saul is a straight up asshole who’s “advice” makes the world a worse place.
Comment by Pablo on 6/15 @ 8:29 pm #
Making them live up to their own rules isn’t all that radical. Remember when BECAUSE OF THE HYPOCRISY was a recurring theme around here?
Comment by psycho... on 6/15 @ 8:30 pm #
This is no different from what he said last time. Longer. Yay.
And if I ever see an apology (or “apology”) from anyone, ever, whose message isn’t “I’m better than you, apologized-to person(s),” I’ll eat my own balls.
Don’t give up on us, baby.
I still say it’s the idea that there was meaning sufficient to be intended in the text of the not-joke that has everyone confused and firing randomly.
Don’t think that, and you don’t have to OUTRAGE (or “OUTRAGE”).
Comment by serr8d on 6/15 @ 8:30 pm #
Ooops. But, damn, I’m just in a framing mood.
Comment by LCB on 6/15 @ 8:31 pm #
TBH, this apology is not enough. Letterman must be fired, and you should keep pushing this until he is fired.
Comment by Joe on 6/15 @ 8:32 pm #
I mean, come on, Letterman’s late apology is a bunch of bullshit with the intent of saving his job.
The outrage is not that Letterman made some off color joke about one of Sarah Palin’s kids. That type of shit gets you banned from the neighborhood BBQ. Is that Letterman did not have motivations beyond a crude joke (and by crude I mean not funny and well structured, not blue) about Palin. It is that Palin is fair game, for full blown ridicule all the time, other people (on the left of course) are not.
Comment by rev al on 6/15 @ 8:32 pm #
The Rev Wright knows OUTRAGE: that house ain’t done yet crackers.
Comment by Joe on 6/15 @ 8:32 pm #
And by Sarah Palin being fair game, that licence to kill extends to all her spawn too.
Comment by happyfeet on 6/15 @ 8:33 pm #
And I really should have made the joke about Rudy…
Yes. Cause when CBS piece of shit David “child rape is funny” Letterman wants to tell dago jokes, the CIA’s gay s&m dungeon master Leon Panetta is too out of bounds for the homosocialist Tiffany poofters what he serves.
Comment by michael j on 6/15 @ 8:34 pm #
children are involved?
Comment by Bob Reed on 6/15 @ 8:35 pm #
Jeff G,
I don’t think it’s twisting DL’s intent to ask CBS, or the advertisers, to explain the difference between this instance and the Imus episode. The same probably holds for asking Hillz if there is any difference between this and Limbaughs joke about Chelsea all those years ago; or the difference between Obama’s family being off limits and Palin’s not being…
That’s not outrage, or taking liberties with DL’s intent; it’s simply asking for explanations. And it should be done in a low key but forceful way. No spittle flying outrage…
There’s been too much push lately with the left trying to turn every nutcase murderer into a mainstream right winger. And a never ending meme of their has been “the hypocrisy”. Might it not be a good way to push back against the whole chillbilly meme and point out the hypocrisy at the same time?
Just a thought
Comment by McGehee on 6/15 @ 8:35 pm #
In a previous thread I linked my post about the Letterman thing, and I think that was before I amplified what I thought was the reason I didn’t share entirely Jeff’s position on the joke.
Letterman’s failure is as he says tonight, in not knowing that the facts were inconsistent with his intent. Audience members who didn’t share in the New York sensibility to which he was pandering, could not be expected to favor the intended interpretation over the factually supportable one. The author bears responsibility for ensuring his text reflects his intent, and in the brief text of a joke (as opposed to, say, a ten-minute radio monologue) there’s no margin for error.
Obviously Letterman doesn’t get it, if he is willing to empower the interpreter over the author as a rule. Here his mistake was that he inadvertently empowered the interpreter and got burned.
Comment by McGehee on 6/15 @ 8:39 pm #
That’s nice. In every fight there are always red-shirts that need to be sent out into the line of fire to make the other side waste its ammunition and cull the useless from our own ranks.
Go get ‘em!
Comment by happyfeet on 6/15 @ 8:41 pm #
hah! I have a sheckymag funny I can never tell.
Comment by Joe on 6/15 @ 8:45 pm #
Hitchens as usual cuts through some bullshit: “Fascism at home sooner or later means fascism abroad. Face it now or fight it later. Meanwhile, give it its right name.”
Comment by sdferr on 6/15 @ 8:45 pm #
Alinsky doesn’t offer tactics in service of just any old aim though, choose whatever aims you will, does he? Weren’t his tactics purpose built to serve the strategic aims he had in mind? Isn’t there some sense in which his strategic aims amount to the negation of your own purposes, at least insofar as those purposes, your purposes, are fit to the principles of the Declaration, namely individual rights, whereas his aims are the aims of the state as knower and executor of the good for all?
Comment by happyfeet on 6/15 @ 8:46 pm #
I still say it’s the idea that there was meaning sufficient to be intended in the text of the not-joke that has everyone confused and firing randomly.
It definitely means something that the Tiffany fags don’t feel any need to apologize when their perverted late night unfunny geezer starts up with the child rape jokes what are so bad that advertisers start wanting nothing to do with his perverted geezer ass.
Comment by serr8d on 6/15 @ 8:48 pm #
McGehee, you’ve nailed it.
Letterman’s intent was to fly his crass bit of sickness right in the face of the weakened, cowering remnants of the Republican party; to pile on and then skate free after the doing was done. Surprise, David.
Seems the cornered animal fights. A bit late, maybe in the wrong style, but we aren’t extinct just yet.
Comment by not bh on 6/15 @ 8:48 pm #
On fire, sdferr. Keep it up.
Comment by Rick Ballard on 6/15 @ 8:55 pm #
‘feets – I’m working on a Top Ten Differences Between David Letterman and Roman Polanski List and I can’t get past:
1. “He’s much taller.”
Any suggestions?
Comment by lee on 6/15 @ 8:55 pm #
I’m not buying the explanation the apology depends on.
Letterman says:
Yet he makes a joke about the daughter getting it on with A-Rod at the game?
I call bullshit.
He knew a daughter was there, and I don’t think he cared which one. The joke doesn’t depend on it being Bristol (sorry Jeff), just because she was the one pregnant last year. The hilarity ensues at the thought it could be any low class, tabloid fodder Palin.
Anyway, my main concern is that this doesn’t become standard mainstream fare, and to that end, and with the understanding that Letterman’s apology is really just lying horseshit, I say keep after’em til they scream Cynthia…
Comment by The Sanity Inspector on 6/15 @ 8:55 pm #
“Humor ought to uplift”
Eh, we all have moments where we enjoy a joke that pats us on the back while it kicks the other guy down the stairs.
Comment by B Moe on 6/15 @ 8:56 pm #
Indeed. What sdferr said at 104 was huge.
That right there needs repeating.
Comment by The Sanity Inspector on 6/15 @ 8:56 pm #
108:
Polanski is the orignal five foot pole you wouldn’t want to touch anyone with.
Comment by Stephen M on 6/15 @ 8:58 pm #
“My entire blogging career has been for naught.”
Waaahhhh!
Comment by not bh on 6/15 @ 9:03 pm #
That’s some biting wit and humor right there.
Comment by happyfeet on 6/15 @ 9:04 pm #
David “child rape is funny” Letterman is allowed in the United States of America where he can more better attack the wee Christian children with his lewd sexual humorousness, but Mr. Polanski is not. He can but taunt from afar. Also, NG knows who David “child rape is funny” Letterman is. So he’s got that going for him too.
Comment by B Moe on 6/15 @ 9:05 pm #
And on a post about misinterpreting jokes, to boot, bh.
Comment by sdferr on 6/15 @ 9:06 pm #
Biting wit? Misinterpreting, I thought he’d just glanced at some withered part of his anatomy and let out a gasp of crying pain.
Comment by not bh on 6/15 @ 9:07 pm #
Yeah, it’s been a rare day for the trolls, B Moe. Stupid is the new black, apparently.
Comment by not bh on 6/15 @ 9:08 pm #
Actually, sdferr, your explanation seems equally likely.
Comment by maggie katzen on 6/15 @ 9:08 pm #
RACIST!
Comment by Abe Froman on 6/15 @ 9:12 pm #
Any of you outragebots care to fill me in on why this is still worth expending energy on? I’m missing the strategic vision here.
Comment by not bh on 6/15 @ 9:12 pm #
That’s why I now constantly wear my custom t-shirt, maggie. “Denounced” with an arrow pointing up at my head.
When I go out at night, the arrow points the other way.
Comment by happyfeet on 6/15 @ 9:13 pm #
For fuck’s sake, this is the man what made … oh. Maybe I should say for fuck’s sake you pansies so I get your attention more better. Yes. I think so. Okay.
For fuck’s sake you pansies, David “child rape is funny” Letterman is the perverted codger who forced presidential candidate Meghan’s Coward Daddy to grovel and apologize several times* for the high crime of NOT GOING ON HIS SHOW.
Fuck David “child rape is funny” Letterman” six ways to Sunday and also the network that subsidizes his perverted bullshit as well I think. Also, he ugly.
Comment by The Sanity Inspector on 6/15 @ 9:14 pm #
#121:
Because an innocent girl’s honor has been outraged. Can lefties even think the word Honor without enclosing it in sneer quotes?
Comment by not bh on 6/15 @ 9:17 pm #
How about I simply donate the legal maximum to her when she next runs for office and then vote for her?
Comment by Jeff G on 6/15 @ 9:17 pm #
Yes, Letterman failed to articulate his intent to a certain audience. Namely, the not-his-audience that caught this on Youtube, or through some OUTRAGE link.
Anyone’s who watched Letterman over the years and knows his monologue knew right away that he was going after Bristol, Sarah for being what Letterman’ audience believes is the Socially Conservative Scold of an (irony!) unwed teenage mother who got to be that by BANGING SOME BOY out of wedlock, and both conservatives who don’t see the irony (BECAUSE OF THE HYPOCRISY) and conservatives who do, but who have to take their lumps for (what the left believes) is adhering to a “family values” morality that doesn’t allow for such failing.
Those familiar with Letterman were quick to point out that — rather than making a “rape joke” about a 14-year-old whom I quite sure Letterman had never even thought about — he had made an easy, sloppy, liberal-audience-that-thinks-it’s-hip-friendly joke that tied into what has already become an ossified narrative about the Palins. He was using all the jokes before his as a referent.
Because it turns out he got the details of the game attendance wrong, he opens himself up to charges of targeting a 14-year-old. But nothing in his history, as he himself notes, suggests that he’d operate on that level: again, he’s doing liberal-audience-friendly late night topical humor, not looking to break new ground on TV.
Those truly interested in divining Letterman’s intent had an awful lot to go on. Instead, they jumped to what it seems to me was the least likely — and least charitable — interpretation because they could. Because they knew more about the Palin’s actual itinerary than Letterman or his joke writers did.
Those people are all entitled to their interpretations, from a theoretical perspective, so long as they believe Letterman is lying about what his intent was. If they don’t care what Letterman’s intent was — if, as Sarah says, he left room for reasonable people to interpret things differently, and his explanation is irrelevant, inasmuch as it doesn’t affect what the meaning is of what he said — then what Letterman meant will, according to them, be what they say he meant, not because they don’t believe the apology, but because they can take the original utterance and show that it could have meant something else.
And they have chosen to stick with that something else.
It’s time to look at precisely what goes into your decision.
With that, you’re on your own.
Comment by Doug Schoen on 6/15 @ 9:18 pm #
“Comment by Phil
I think we need to give Letterman the benefit of the doubtâ€
Phil there is no doubt here, once again Letterman made it clear he checked and rechecked to ensure BRISTOL was 18.
This is complete utter BS.
Letterman’s words
The next day, people are outraged. They’re angry at me because they said, ‘How could you make a lousy joke like that about the 14-year-old girl who was at the ball game?’ And I had, honestly, no idea that the 14-year-old girl
Phil this is what he “checkedâ€
From CBS news NY
Alaska Gov. Palin Talks About Special Needs In NY – wcbstv.com
Jun 7, 2009 … NEW YORK (CBS) ―. Click to enlarge … an anniversary celebration for the Manorville-based Independent Group Home Living Inc. after attending a Yankees game. She was joined by her husband, daughter Willow and a sister. …
wcbstv.com/topstories/palin.special.needs.2.1034707.html
Phil, I used the CBS station report cuz he works at CBS. It’s the same story ALL stations put out as well as the news papers.
Phil there are some 3000 articles from June 7th and 8th that SPELL IT OUT that Willow, the 14 year-old was the daughter at the game.
Phil, this is his third attempt to spin this and once again he is lying.
3 strikes and you out.
Comment by Rick Ballard on 6/15 @ 9:20 pm #
“But nothing in his history, as he himself notes, suggests that he’d operate on that level”
Mia used to think of Woody that way too.
Comment by Jeff G on 6/15 @ 9:21 pm #
Oh, and you can pucker up and blow me, Stephen M. I’ve been writing about intentionalism for years, and it occurs to me that some here would rather follow the post structural model because it feels so good to fight back using the same incoherent methods of interpretation.
Meanwhile, doing so just further undermines what it is we’re fighting for. As sdferr notes above.
I don’t expect swollen pricks like you to keep up, but there are others here that I thought had gotten it by now.
But if this site wants to keep traffic and join in the “how to get a million hits” link exchange fests, it’s best to be on the same page with the rest of the herd and get your outrage on — regularly, and with the best headlines to get you all linked up.
Selection bias. Just like the mainstream media. That’s the blogosphere nowadays.
And that’s a fucking waste.
Comment by sdferr on 6/15 @ 9:25 pm #
I am a pansy but not the flower sort I hate those sorts but the other kind cause I still think the best exegesis of Letterman’s joke and in consequence the only apology that would finally rest on something remotely resembling the truth of the thing would be if Letterman would explain his political aim in the whole thing, but that he cannot do, since it draws the curtain too much to the side revealing the homunculus at work on the controls, an uncool in the conformist sense of uncool homunculus, a slavering follower.
Comment by serr8d on 6/15 @ 9:30 pm #
Sarah Palin is leading the way on this one…
I think the outrage is, I have a daughter.
Comment by Doug Schoen on 6/15 @ 9:32 pm #
Jeff G
Because it turns out he got the details of the game attendance wrong, he opens himself up to charges of targeting a 14-year-old.
“got the details of the game attendance wrongâ€
Really? How?
Jun 7, 2009 … NEW YORK (CBS) ―. Click to enlarge … an anniversary celebration for the Manorville-based Independent Group Home Living Inc. after attending a Yankees game. She was joined by her husband, daughter Willow and a sister. …
wcbstv.com/topstories/palin.special.needs.2.1034707.html
Jeff how did he get the “details of the game attendance wrong†when his own station CBS along with ALL OTHER forms of news got it right?
And Jeff, Letterman said he checked and rechecked the “details†and still got it wrong?
Jeff the jokes were scripted meaning written BEFORE he aired them. I have to assume someone at CBS approves what is broadcasted BEFORE it goes on the air.
So now Jeff not only did Letterman get the “details of the game attendance wrong†multiple times, but CBS also got it wrong even though CBS got it right when they reported it.
That’s a little hard to believe ya think.
It would easier to believe that ALL employees in a McDonalds do not know they make hamburgers.
Comment by Bob Reed on 6/15 @ 9:33 pm #
Well, for what it’s worth, I haven’t been niggling about any rape jokes throughout the whole discussion. I’ve been talking about the children of any politician being off limits. There used to be a time when that was understood…
Bristol has decided to be a public figure to some extent by participating in the National Teen Pregnancy Awareness Day; so she should expect some degree of razzing, personally, about being an unwed mother. That said, she can always address this by admitting that if she’d been abstinet she wouldn’t be there, and go on to get a plug in for the pro-life point of view…
Maybe I’m old fashion, and lack “edge” and “hipness”, but I don’t think that politicians families should be brought into the assault on those same public figures.
If the public figure chooses to do so, in a self depricating way that’s fine, but doesn’t release the hounds-so to speak…
Comment by sdferr on 6/15 @ 9:34 pm #
Heh. “the abstinet” the cool new communications tool where people just don’t.
Comment by happyfeet on 6/15 @ 9:36 pm #
oh for the sake of fuck. How many moons do we have to live in a Daily Show society and yet continue to carve out an arbitrary and unquestioning safe political harbor for fucking comedians just cause back in the day Bruce Lenny or whoever blah blah blah transgressive blah blah. Hello? That was then this is now (and Ponyboy was in that one too, you know). Shit what you see on CBS or their corporate relatives Showtime or Comedy Channel or whatever is by design of an ideological piece with whatever might fly out of Katie Couric’s ass any one week. All these bastards are where they are and doing what they’re doing because they’re dependably on the same page. And that page is dirty and that page is socialist. Messaging. You have no idea how ingrained and openly acknowledged it is now in television. Or, you know very well how ingrained and openly acknowledged it is now in television. You want to advance dirty socialism in this country I don’t care if you do it behind some cliched late night talk show desk or from any slot on any of our pitiful broadcast networks or by telling a bless-their-hearts easily-blinkered people carbon dioxide is of the devil. I am way not amused and fuck all you tv bastards ungently with a chainsaw I think.
Comment by Jeff G. on 6/15 @ 9:39 pm #
You’re assuming he knows the difference between Bristol and Willow.
Again, I’d bet a grand Letterman had never heard of Willow. Everything he knows of the Palins is cartoon. His joke was a furtherance of the cartoon. In the cartoon, Sarah has a daughter who got knocked up out of wedlock. She’s the “slutty” one who supposedly highlights Sarah’s HYPOCRISY for championing family values.
But whatever. Jesus forgives, even if you people don’t.
Comment by Jeff G. on 6/15 @ 9:43 pm #
I have no idea what happened to this place.
I once interviewed a fucking COCK, for Chrissakes.
Comment by happyfeet on 6/15 @ 9:45 pm #
Willow was the one named after a pagan witch what never knew the love of Jesus. Andrew Sullivan researched it and everything.
Comment by TmjUtah on 6/15 @ 9:50 pm #
Uh… let me be clear:
I’m not assigning any meaning or post facto interpretation to the Letterman mistake. It was ultimately and transparently a mean spirited swipe at a target of opportunity that was/is/will be tomorrow loathed by everybody involved with the event.
Teh hate really did minimize the chance that there would be anything remotely funny being said to other than a narrow audience right out the window. Dave knows his fan base I guess.
Which raises some questions about the folks who wait in line to sit in that audience. I will agree in advance that quite a few people would giggle at a decapitation if the house band played a sh-boom at the critical moment, but really, the laughter that came out of that crowd was too much of the “hit her again, Dave!” style than I’d care to find myself a part of.
You can’t use Alinsky’s tools and call yourself a citizen. You pick up the cudgels of ridicule and bad faith, you abandon the goals you set out to defend.
It might be fun to gas an SS guard. Or twenty. But that way lies madness. Such is the same with folks like Ayers and company.
Ayers, Obama, Alinsky – they cannot produce a program that can succeed in an honest market place. So they abandon the effort, and instead adopt a program to destroy the status quo and HOPE that the CHANGE works out for the best.
Hope. CHANGE! Hmmmm. Where have I heard that before?
To bed. Four thirty is early in any time zone. Carry on.
Comment by sdferr on 6/15 @ 9:51 pm #
“or cares about the details”, except today we’re to take it that he’s serious about not picking on minor children for their sexual proclivities or sexual non-proclivities, whichever. Bozometry if you ask me.
Comment by Jeff G. on 6/15 @ 9:51 pm #
The joke works, meya, because people like you will laugh at any shot taken at Palin, no matter how lazy and mailed in the thing is.
I’d say the target audience of the joke were a punch of Pavlovian dogs, but at least Pavlov’s dog got some nutrients out of the deal.
Comment by Bob Reed on 6/15 @ 9:58 pm #
Gee Jeff,
I never caught the cock interview…
Was it anyone’s cock in particular, or just a fictional stand alone cock? And, were you trying to make any particular point, or simply engaging in satire of a generic interview?
I’m not trying to draw any out of scale distinction because DL’s joke was obviously a fictional construct also. I guess what I’m getting at is that by involving the family of a political target the lines of reality and fiction intersected. FWIW, I’d be as uncomfortable if it were any politician’s family members.
Perhaps I’m fretting too much about this episode simply advancing the Palin chillbilly meme in the minds of the apathetic, but impressionable, public; the ones that base their political opinions more on DL and Jon Stewart than by actually reading credible news sources…
Comment by takeshi kovacs on 6/15 @ 9:58 pm #
No, he doesn’t care about the details, the only detail that matters is anything that disparages anyone who would challenge Obama, to that end Couric and Gibson will slash edit interviews, Tina Fey will put her own misguided
second city spin on it, Larry Flynt will do a porn film, Axelrod will spin 60 forms of garbage, and spread it on Youtube; Intentionalism, it’s what’s for dinner
Comment by not bh on 6/15 @ 9:59 pm #
I gotta say, again, it’s just surreal to have this discussion at pw.
Comment by TaiChiWawa on 6/15 @ 10:01 pm #
I once interviewed a fucking COCK, for Chrissakes.
And you handled it beautifully.
Comment by sdferr on 6/15 @ 10:01 pm #
Where’s Linda F when you need her for a little comic relief?
Comment by TaiChiWawa on 6/15 @ 10:01 pm #
The interview, of course.
Comment by Jeff G. on 6/15 @ 10:01 pm #
I think this is precisely what a lot of people are reacting to.
But these things run their course. At some point, people realize they are being pandered to. And if they don’t — and we’ve found ourselves in a position where the Daily Show is driving elections — then we should be more concerned about fixing the educational system and lambasting the news media than with trying to scapegoat a comedian.
Because the latter will have unintended consequences that serve the left.
Comment by Jeff G. on 6/15 @ 10:05 pm #
Nor do I. But I prefer to show my displeasure by not doing it rather than by writing daily posts about how much better I am for not having done it.
It’s just too…I dunno, showy, I guess.
Comment by happyfeet on 6/15 @ 10:05 pm #
if Letterman would explain his political aim in the whole thing
I would be a lot mollified to where people would say what’s up with happyfeet he looks all mollified today.
Comment by Jeff G. on 6/15 @ 10:07 pm #
Why should he have to explain his political aim?
Answer: he shouldn’t.
Comment by sdferr on 6/15 @ 10:07 pm #
yeah, well don’t set your teeth on it cause it ain’t happening and you ain’t getting mollifurcated.
Comment by lee on 6/15 @ 10:11 pm #
Jeff, I get what you are saying, and I don’t like the idea of fighting fire with fire in an interpretive sense either.
My thing is, I don’t believe Letterman is above lumping Willow into the Palin narrative.
See, I’m weighting the facts that it was Willow at the game, Letterman said “daughter” instead of Bristol, and Lettermans done a thousand Palin family jokes, I don’t buy his selective ignorance excuse, especially as I know he was lying in his apology when he said he thought only the Governor was there. It strains my credulity that he thought that, yet made a joke that she was there and she really was. Ask yourself why he had to include that lie.
All in all, I think your interpretation relies on a lot of faith in Lettermans character that I don’t see.
I see you trying to Shepard us away from falling into the same behavior that we find repellent in the left, and I’m appreciative of that. But I think CBS is playing us for chumps with “plausible denyability”.
I think that fucker was pushing the envelope, and he’s laughing about it off camera.
Yeah, but if it had been a cock belonging to an ideological enemy’s minor son, I wouldn’t have anything nice to say about you either…
Comment by serr8d on 6/15 @ 10:11 pm #
Why should he have to explain his political aim?
Answer: it’s obvious.
Comment by Bob Reed on 6/15 @ 10:12 pm #
“…we should be more concerned about fixing the educational system and lambasting the news media…”
You make a good point, the education system is probably the top priority in this country, to insure that our kids get educated and not indoctrinated, and can see through charlatans in the public square.
Also, I dig what you’re saying about scapegoating DL. Not only does it violate some of the classical liberal principles, but may enable the tables to be turned later in a way we won’t be able to protest without being true hypoctites.
I admit being conflicted because it’s difficult to have it in your face, so to speak, but in the long run it’s not worth the price of integrity.
Comment by sdferr on 6/15 @ 10:12 pm #
Hey, don’t anybody go getting the idea that I said that he should “have to” cause I don’t think I did.
Comment by happyfeet on 6/15 @ 10:13 pm #
Then I will explain his political aim for him.
Comment by Rick Ballard on 6/15 @ 10:13 pm #
But he’s not a comedian. An “edgy” comedian would have contrasted Michelle’s “toned arms” with her lard ass by this point. Or mentioned TOTUS a time or two. Letterman is just one more has been apparatchik spewing agitprop. I’m fully prepared to accept the fact that CBS pays him an exorbitant amount to proffer “I was too lazy or stupid to check on the leftist hacks who fill my mouth every night” as his very bestest excuse. I would expect nothing more from a man whose every moment is spent engaging in child rape fantasies.
Comment by happyfeet on 6/15 @ 10:14 pm #
I didn’t say “have to” either. It’s just it would be nice. And after we could all drink a dirty socialist Pepsi and Refresh Everything.
Comment by Jeff G. on 6/15 @ 10:17 pm #
He’s a comedian to people who find him funny, Rick.
Comment by sdferr on 6/15 @ 10:17 pm #
Jokes about toned arms would point to tennis players and how their arms are two different sizes and how Michelle’s arms are two different sizes too but not because she’s a tennis player but because she’s got to hold Baracky up with one arm and beat Rahm Emmanuel with the other and those two things don’t take the same energy, beating on Rahm is way more harder.
Comment by happyfeet on 6/15 @ 10:19 pm #
That’s not exactly fair about the “people who find him funny” cause I laugh utterly mindlessly when the tv gives me cues to laugh and I cry like a little girl when they tell me to cry but I’m not good at the getting angry when they want me angry cause then I just feel so used.
Comment by Jeff G. on 6/15 @ 10:21 pm #
Yeah, you’re right happyfeet. How can I consider calling Letterman a comedian?
Some people here don’t find him funny and never have. And it’s what they think that matters when determining the guy’s vocation.
The people who laugh? No say whatever.
Comment by happyfeet on 6/15 @ 10:22 pm #
In the U.K. they would just call him a presenter I think.
Comment by Jeff G. on 6/15 @ 10:23 pm #
A presenter who spent years doing standup. He ain’t Ryan Seacrest.
Comment by Jeff G. on 6/15 @ 10:25 pm #
I’m sick of “discussing” this. The sanctimony here is beginning to harden my arteries.
And by harden, let me be clear and say that no rubbing or child rape fantasies were involved in the plumping of said arteries.
Comment by serr8d on 6/15 @ 10:26 pm #
I think this ‘revolt’ against proper thought may be short-term. If everything the Left says and predicts and maneuvers for comes to pass, we, the dwindling opposition, will offer less and less as times goes by. Republicans will righteously self-destruct; Palin will fade away, and we’ll all live in a bright, shiny, progressive future that’s adorned with HOPE and CHANGE and Bunnies! and…poor education.
wait…Palin is digging in her spiked heels. Dare we support her in this, her first since the November election loss, public call for an UPRISING? Should we get behind her no matter what we believe, damn the tactics full speed ahead, with the INTENT of throwing support her way?
I think she’s worth it. Because they HATE her so much.
Comment by Bob Reed on 6/15 @ 10:26 pm #
I understand red wines are good for combatting arterial hardening…
If you squint a bit, scotch can look like red wine too!
Comment by lee on 6/15 @ 10:27 pm #
What makes the comedian thing iffy is that besides attempting to make his audience laugh, he also interviews presidents and presidential candidates, and senators and foreign dignitaries.
That kinda takes away from the whole “he’s just a stupid comedian for heavens sake” thing.
The guy has some political clout.
Comment by happyfeet on 6/15 @ 10:27 pm #
Ok he’s a comedian. But it’s still relevant what he did in the campaign to Governor Palin’s running mate, the apologies he extracted, and how it relates to his newfound predilection for lewd sexual humor directed at barely legal Christian teens.
Comment by louchette out of sorts, not not them on 6/15 @ 10:29 pm #
i’d just like it noted for the record that i am very much in favor of more cock interviews. and no, i never think of anything else.
Comment by Christopher Taylor on 6/15 @ 10:34 pm #
I’d like to see Letterman out of his job, not because of this but because he’s… boring. And obnoxious. He’s taking up a time slot that someone far more talented and entertaining could have merely out of tradition and inertia. I want him to retire, he doesn’t even have to admit he has been phoning it in the last 15 years, he should just go.
Comment by Jeff G. on 6/15 @ 10:34 pm #
Horseshit. If you don’t promise to do Letterman, you have nothing to apologize for if you don’t show. If when you show you refuse to apologize and explain yourself, you haven’t apologized. McCain is responsible for McCain’s failings.
I don’t believe for a second anyone who’s being honest believes Letterman has a “newfound predilection for lewd sexual humor directed at barely legal Christian teens.” But hey, if pretending so lets you feel like a leftist must feel when they break out the intentional misreadings and agitate for apologies and firings, knock yourselves out.
It’s just the way things are. Everybody’s doin’ it. And if everybody’s doin’ it, that’s a lot of people doin’ it!
Comment by happyfeet on 6/15 @ 10:35 pm #
that is also a very good point, what lee makes
Comment by Rick Ballard on 6/15 @ 10:36 pm #
Some mockery is just unaccepatble, eh? What an outlaw.
Comment by serr8d on 6/15 @ 10:37 pm #
louchette, I wouldn’t have searched this out for anyone else…(Jeff, you could’ve said ‘whipped this out’ )
Comment by Jeff G. on 6/15 @ 10:38 pm #
I don’t know what that means.
I’ve been suggesting mockery rather than full-throated OUTRAGE since day one.
Comment by Adriane on 6/15 @ 10:40 pm #
See that ragtime couple over there
Watch them throw their shoulders in the air
Snap their fingers
Honey, I declare
It’s a bear, it’s a bear, it’s a bear
There!
Comment by happyfeet on 6/15 @ 10:42 pm #
No no no. Mr. Letterman dragged that out for days, doing the mercilessly pillorying thing, on not uncoincidentally the exact same line of merciless pillorying that the Barack Obama was having his dirty socialists in his media and elsewhere spew and blather. McCain had a judgment call to make. As a sitting Senator, should he go on David “child rape is funny” Letterman’s low brow wankerfest or head to Washington and take part in the policy discussions. Barack Obama’s Katrina media like NPR and MSNBC would have fucked Meghan’s Coward Daddy up his coward ass had he gone on the show as predictably as they called him an erratic senile loser for not going on the show.
Comment by not bh on 6/15 @ 10:42 pm #
Some mockery is just unaccepatble, eh? What an outlaw.
You know what’s not outlaw? Shooting your horse while you aim at your enemy.
Comment by Jeff G. on 6/15 @ 10:43 pm #
I can’t filter through the affected cornpone right now, hf. If you have something to say, say it.
Comment by happyfeet on 6/15 @ 10:43 pm #
Hot dogs made out of turkey are also not particularly outlaw.
Comment by happyfeet on 6/15 @ 10:44 pm #
hmmph.
Comment by happyfeet on 6/15 @ 10:48 pm #
I don’t think dirty socialist corporate minions are teeming fonts of individual agency and I don’t think they need be treated as such.
Comment by lee on 6/15 @ 10:50 pm #
What I don’t understand is your mockery of the outrage. Letterman did, at best, use lewd sexual humor directed at a barely legal Christian teen. At worst an illegal teen. To me that’s the one that makes sense, because that was the one at the ball game, and unlike you, I don’t think Letterman is ignorant of the Palin family. He’s been joking at their expense for a year.
And outrage at attacks on the innocent is never wrong,
Comment by Abe Froman on 6/15 @ 10:52 pm #
It’s like I stepped away from PW and came back to find a bunch of retards trying to fuck a chicken. I feel so homeless.
Comment by Jeff G. on 6/15 @ 10:55 pm #
I haven’t mocked the outrage. I said it’s been pushed to overkill.
And no, I don’t believe Letterman was going after Willow Palin. He was riffing off a leftist cartoon in which Bristol is the unwed slut mother of a moral imperialist.
Unfortunately, part of that cartoon consists of the idea that rightwingers are humorless scolds who scream about “PC” until their speech ox is gored. Then all of a sudden they show themselves as desirous of enforced “civility” — even if they aren’t the intended audience, and even if the show is geared toward other adults.
Comment by Jeff G. on 6/15 @ 10:56 pm #
You? Imagine how I feel, Abe.
Comment by Jeff G. on 6/15 @ 10:56 pm #
Things will be changing, though.
Comment by not bh on 6/15 @ 10:58 pm #
Heh. Are you thinking about going city homeless or riding the rails? I’m thinking rails myself. I’m too quick and clever for those train company dicks. And I like canned beans.
Comment by baldilocks on 6/15 @ 11:04 pm #
“Again, I’d bet a grand Letterman had never heard of Willow.”
That’s his problem.
“But whatever. Jesus forgives, even if you people don’t.”
We’re not talking about the salvation of his eternal soul here, just his earthly reputation.
Comment by sdferr on 6/15 @ 11:04 pm #
Panetta says he thinks if you read behind it Cheney wants Jeff’s server — well let’s just say Cheney isn’t fairly disposed to being laughed at, by anybody, let alone beaneaters.
Comment by happyfeet on 6/15 @ 11:08 pm #
Les “I too think child rape is funny” Moonves is as much accountable for programming the Letterman slot as he is for programming the CBS evening news slot, the one that felt a lot enthusiastic about running with their nonpartisan unbiased TANG memo story. Yes. The Letterman show is programmed every bit as much as every other show on CBS, including news, and all of them report to one narcissistic dirty homosocialist named Les Moonves.
Comment by baldilocks on 6/15 @ 11:10 pm #
“I once interviewed a fucking COCK, for Chrissakes”
“Yeah, but if it had been a cock belonging to an ideological enemy’s minor son, I wouldn’t have anything nice to say about you either…”
The actions of a certain whack-job professor from the Northwest spring to mind for some reason.
Comment by Jeff G. on 6/15 @ 11:12 pm #
Now that people have made it so, sure.
Nevermind that he didn’t intend his joke to be at Willow’s expense.
What matters is the outrage that his ignorance has made possible. Feels so righteous, milking it this way.
Comment by Abe Froman on 6/15 @ 11:14 pm #
Heh. Are you thinking about going city homeless or riding the rails? I’m thinking rails myself. I’m too quick and clever for those train company dicks. And I like canned beans.
I think I’ll just go in the woods and live off of squirrel meat and berries.
Comment by not bh on 6/15 @ 11:15 pm #
Juliette, that’s been brought up three times now.
Not analogous. And unnecessarily personal, IMO.
Comment by Jeff G. on 6/15 @ 11:16 pm #
Well, as I told Treacher and the others who were good enough to bring up Dr Fr*sch, I never contacted her work, never tried to get her fired, and didn’t go after her legally until I felt she was an actual threat to my 2-year-old son — who (I guess it bears noting, surprisingly) was never part of a Presidential campaign election story and was never the unwed teenage mother of a family values candidate.
Couple that with my doubts that Letterman is a threat to stalk and do physical harm to Willow Palin, and I don’t see the connection.
But I do see why people keep bringing it up: it’s meant to open old wounds and pretend I’m some sort of hypocrite.
I don’t agree, but thanks for suggesting so publicly.
Comment by happyfeet on 6/15 @ 11:17 pm #
Mr. Letterman’s political agenda bit him in the ass. Me I say cool beans.
Comment by Joe on 6/15 @ 11:17 pm #
Letterman’s intent was to get a cheap laugh at the expense of Sarah Palin, because it is open season on Palin. Now I agree kids should be off limits, but in this case the kids were not the issue. It was a joke, and we can all be a little thicker skinned abouit that, but the underlying intent was to mock Palin.
So fuck Letterman. And fuck those who think it is right to call an open season on Palin.
Comment by baldilocks on 6/15 @ 11:19 pm #
“Juliette, that’s been brought up three times now.”
Well since just got here…
“Not analogous.”
Neither was the mention of the cock interview.
“And unnecessarily personal, IMO.”
Well if you’re scold me, you’re going have to explain both adjectives.
Comment by baldilocks on 6/15 @ 11:19 pm #
er, the adverb and the adjective.
Comment by baldilocks on 6/15 @ 11:20 pm #
Well if you’re scold me=Well if you’re going to scold me
Comment by not bh on 6/15 @ 11:21 pm #
If you’re agreeing it wasn’t analogous — as you found the cock interview — then why bring it up?
Comment by Jeff G. on 6/15 @ 11:22 pm #
Comedians should never have political agendas. I like my comedians bland, politically neutral, and painfully careful about not giving offense.
Comment by baldilocks on 6/15 @ 11:23 pm #
“But I do see why people keep bringing it up: it’s meant to open old wounds and pretend I’m some sort of hypocrite. ”
Yes, Jeff. That’s exactly what I’m trying to do: hurt you. I don’t know why I helped with the charge to ostracize that creature or prayed for the safety of your offspring. :::rolls eyes::
Goodbye.
Comment by happyfeet on 6/15 @ 11:24 pm #
Political agendas. I do not think you are a hypocrite at all Mr. Goldstein but you look at this dealio and see David Letterman and I look at this dealio and I do see a political agenda and it is homogeneous with the political agenda of the company for which Mr. Letterman works and it is homogeneous with the political agenda of every other major company what employs David Lettermans. And this Mr. Letterman, in trying to curry favor with his homosocialist overlords during contract negotiations, he got his pervert geezer dentures kicked out of his dirty socialist mouf. Many had stopped believing it could happen anymores.
Comment by Jeff G. on 6/15 @ 11:24 pm #
I never said the cock interview was analogous. I was suggesting that this conversation about what kind of joke can and can’t be justified is happening on a site where I once interviewed a cock and turned Washingtonian’s exploits into cereals suggestive of anal sex.
I find that ironic.
But hey — FR*SCH!
Comment by Merovign on 6/15 @ 11:25 pm #
Oh, for fuck’s sake. “I didn’t mean to call Palin a slut and her one daughter a whore/slut/rape fantasy subject, I meant to call Palin a slut and her OTHER daughter a whore/slut/rape fantasy subject, it’s not my fault you people are stupid” is NOT an apology, not here, not on Mars.
Jackass had two chances to apologize, and failed both. As far as I’m concerned, that’s three strikes, and CBS should really get rid of the douchebag – because he’s a douchebag, and he’s going to keep up that behavior because there are no real consequences and it gets him attention.
We’re about a half-hill from running out of hills to die on here, folks, metaphorically speaking. I’m up for a little outrage sprinkled with extra “I’m sick of your shit.”
Comment by happyfeet on 6/15 @ 11:26 pm #
Mr. Merovign there’s no way he didn’t run that apology up the CBS flagpole first.
Comment by Jeff G. on 6/15 @ 11:27 pm #
No, Juliette. You stay. I’ll go.
I’ve outlived my usefulness — and rather than read ex-supporters taking their (personal) shots at me, I’d rather just remember the good times and leave all this behind.
Peace out.
Comment by happyfeet on 6/15 @ 11:28 pm #
nonononono. You’re my favorite. Please don’t go. baldilocks neither.
Comment by Merovign on 6/15 @ 11:28 pm #
I’m sure he did, happs. Doesn’t make it a real apology, also doesn’t mean CBS won’t have to bleed more ad money the next time he does it, either.
Comment by Joe on 6/15 @ 11:28 pm #
Just like Sullivan’s intent was never really about Trig Palin. Sullivan wanted to break a big scandal and bring down his own trophy moose. Unfortunately his speculations were those of a gay man who has only a rudimentary idea of how a uterus and vagina even work. But still, he was committed to the scent of it like one of his beagles chasing a squirrel.
Sully kept telling himself if he kept pursuing that weak piece of shit story of his, eventually he would be vindicated. He kept digging. He got suspended a day at the Atlantic, which started getting embarassed over his crazy behavior. Eventually the heat came off because McCain started to implode on his own and Sullivan lost his quarry to Gibson and Couric.
But he has not forgotten and will never forgive. He will bag his moose. He hopes to cut out her heart and show it to her beating before she dies.
Comment by lee on 6/15 @ 11:29 pm #
I guess a lot of folk think jokes meant to humiliate the kids of political opponents are cool and hip now too. Well, at least since it happened to Palins kids last year, so now it’s totally acceptable, and any objection at this point is just self-righteous sanctimony.
I see.
All I can say is, don’t expect any decent person to run for office ever again. Those ones will be protecting their kids by staying the hell away from politics.
Comment by baldilocks on 6/15 @ 11:29 pm #
That’s right: supporters are the ones who always agree with your take on an issue. I forgot.
Comment by baldilocks on 6/15 @ 11:30 pm #
Change you name to….never mind. Okay I’m really gone.
Comment by Jeff G. on 6/15 @ 11:31 pm #
You can find new life at Dan’s new site with the rest of the folks here — some of whom it appears have been just waiting to tell me off.
Don’t forget to follow the gang on Twitter!
Comment by happyfeet on 6/15 @ 11:31 pm #
CIA director Leon Panetta says it’s almost as if former vice president Dick Cheney would like to see another attack on the United States to prove he is right in criticizing President Barack Obama for abandoning the “harsh interrogation” of terrorism suspects.
Comment by Jeff G. on 6/15 @ 11:33 pm #
Yes. Two hundred posts disagreeing with me shows how closed off I am to disagreement.
Hell, it’s not like I’ve answered arguments here.
But hey — Fr*sch!
Comment by Joe on 6/15 @ 11:33 pm #
Okay. I like Lisa Lampanelli, but this Palin shit does not so much offend as bores.
Comment by Jeff G. on 6/15 @ 11:36 pm #
My last word here:
Comment by not bh on 6/15 @ 11:37 pm #
Okay, Juliette surprised me. I have to say.
Comment by Bob Reed on 6/15 @ 11:38 pm #
Jeff G,
Just a suggestion. Instead of feeling like you’ve outlived your usefulness, being depressed by the emotionally invested responses of some of your audience and supporters, and just remembering the good times as you fade away; instead look forward to all of the good times that lie ahead of you!
This is a polarizing episode, and people’s noses are open for revenge, and just like an ordinarily law abiding crowd can become so enraged as to become a lynchmob, so too have some of the commentariat here. I’m sure that folks will return to an even keel once they realize how much bigger fish there are to fry.
I truly don’t think that everyone has developed a sudden sanctimonious streak. But I did get your meaning earlier when you called it too showy for your taste.
The bloodlust will cool, reason will return, and the good times will roll! In fact, I’m certain that they lie just around the corner…
I know you’re an English professor and apologize for the high cliche count.
Comment by happyfeet on 6/15 @ 11:38 pm #
There’s no word there it’s just a blank space so I’m hopeful you’re saying you haven’t said your last word here. Please?
Comment by blowhard on 6/15 @ 11:39 pm #
Sounds like a wrap.
Hope you post an essay from time to time if the urge takes you, Jeff. Thanks for all the fish.
Comment by happyfeet on 6/15 @ 11:40 pm #
no blowhard it’s not a wrap this is not how it ends
Comment by Merovign on 6/15 @ 11:41 pm #
Even when I disagree, I try to be forgiving when JG gets a little paranoid. Not many people on teh internets have been stabbed in the back as many times as he has and stayed around. I remember when he used to make all these contacts across the aisles back in the bad old days around mid-GW years, and as far as I can tell even the ones that still post here went all ape-shit on him.
And of course the occasional insane poster, PJM sideways dealings, and the disgraceful Patty episode – I was “what” when it happened but I never figured out “why.”
Jeff’s kind of like the Israel of the internet. He’s just this tiny little blogger that’s constantly stabbed at by his neighbors and occasionally his allies. Every day must be a new “what the fuck?”
So, Jeff, not piling on, just, not so right this time (right about the importance of intent, wrong about the point spread between declared and perceived intent).
Comment by Merovign on 6/15 @ 11:43 pm #
Wacky mis-spelling, should have been “I saw “what”", not “I was “what”".
Comment by happyfeet on 6/15 @ 11:44 pm #
He’s not so tiny. Big deal people read him.
Comment by SteveG on 6/15 @ 11:46 pm #
Whatever
Honor dictates that Letterman’s sorry mouth gets punched.
F*** intent.
Letterman says it was a mistake… Willow’s grandfather should be able to say “well then it was a mistake that I beat the crap out of you, I must have meant beat the daylights out of that crappy bandleader you pay to laugh at your dumbass jokes… sorry, maybe”
Comment by Joe on 6/15 @ 11:47 pm #
On Palin’s future:
In this case, viewers. Letterman’s joke was crude and inappropriate, but my fear was that the Republican right wing would make too big a deal out of it, thereby achieving Letterman’s end game: attention, and consequently, eyeballs. I still think calling him a pervert or a pederast just lowers Palin to his level. The best way to hurt Letterman is to ignore him.
And he deserves to be ignored. He is a mean, petty, bitter guy. Over the years working with candidates, I’ve dealt with late-night shows a lot. And there is a definite spectrum. On one side, you have Jay Leno, who treated guests with total professionalism and respect. Jay would always come to the green room and personally meet the guest and make sure they were comfortable and at ease. Always brought flowers for female guests or companions. Letterman, on the other hand, was consistently rude. He acts like he’s doing you a big favor have you on the show. He never greets guests before the show. Likes putting the freeze on them (the green room is frigid and spare) so you walk out cold and he always has the advantage.
But at the end of the day on this one, score one for Palin. She looks like a good and righteous mom defending her kids and Letterman looks like the cruel punk that he is.
Palin should accept the apology and move on, a little wiser. She won this round but she definitely took some hits too. Another lesson learned.
Comment by lee on 6/15 @ 11:47 pm #
Bob, you might not think this episode is important, but I see it as something new (well, as new as Palin on the national scene) and very dangerous. Like I said, don’t expect any decent person to run for office ever again. Those ones will be protecting their kids by staying the hell away from politics.
That means this country is going to hit bottom fast in a cultural landslide.
Comment by baldilocks on 6/15 @ 11:49 pm #
“Comment by not bh on 6/15 @ 11:37 pm #
Okay, Juliette surprised me. I have to say.”
Sorry for breaking my word again about going (I’m human and have a blogger’s personality, both failings). And I suppose I’m like Jeff in that I prefer to defend myself among friends. So I’ll say this: what the fuck so damned surprising.
If you going act as though I shat upon the carpet, the least you all could do is spell out *why* you think so instead of putting out these high-minded “tut-tuts.” I’m a straight-shooter, I have been for the six years I have been blogging and the almost 48 years that I have been breathing. IOW, I don’t see what the surprise is about.
Did I hurt feelings? That I understand, because I have them and they are hurt right now by several people here.
Comment by Joe on 6/15 @ 11:54 pm #
The last line was mine.
Comment by not bh/blowhard on 6/15 @ 11:55 pm #
I asked you about it directly, Juliette. You didn’t respond.
Comment by JD on 6/16 @ 12:01 am #
Why is it that even when it is a Leftist being a lying mother-fucking cum-guzzling gutter slut, the Right winds up eating their own?
Comment by baldilocks on 6/16 @ 12:05 am #
#
Comment by not bh/blowhard on 6/15 @ 11:55 pm #
“Not analogous.â€
Neither was the mention of the cock interview.
“If you’re agreeing it wasn’t analogous — as you found the cock interview — then why bring it up?”
I’m not agreeing that our host’s woes with another person who does not know what boundaries aren’t analogous to the Letterman-Palin issue.
You mentioned that the above two situations aren’t analogous but you didn’t bother to mention that the “Cock interview” wasn’t analogous with the Letterman-Palin and that’s what I’m pointing out.
“then why bring it up?”
*You* brought it up.
“I asked you about it directly, Juliette. You didn’t respond.”
That’s because I didn’t see it. I tend to miss things when I’m pissed.
Comment by Adriane on 6/16 @ 12:07 am #
JD -
because the perfect is the enemy of the good, but part of conservative ideal is attention to detail, i.e. perfection.
http://www.grouchyoldcripple.com/archives/006855.html
Comment by Bob Reed on 6/16 @ 12:08 am #
Well lee,
I’ll admit that the left has been using the politics of personal destruction for a long time in an effort to intimidate people from running for office due to youthful indiscretions. And, Palin has taken the worst of it since the Democrats immediately realized that her natural charisma, homespun appeal, down-to-earth speech, and straightforward rhetorical style were too “Reagan-esque” and posed a serious threat to Obama; as Mika Brzinski pointed out this week, there were MSM types all around her feverishly looking for dirt to use against her. That’s also why she’s continues to be hammered long after the election; we see it here in some of the trolls that can’t resist cracking on her…
But the public instinctively recognized the fundamental unfairness of the MSM when it came to their reportage of Palin, and were stymied when ot helped her even more. CBS tried to combat it with their “mini-series” session with Couric, and they seemed successful-for a time. But, despite all that she held her own really, and had McCain not been so old, and such a poor candidate himself, she might be the VP instead of greasy Joe…
So too will it be with this letterman episode. Although a portion of the population, and most of his audience, will always have nothing but sneering contempt for her, many more than that will recognize the fundamental unfairness of him using her children as a cudgel to beat her up with for cheap political gain. And they’ll only have to be reminded of it at the right time to innoculate her against additional derision of the same kind…
Anyone who feels really strongly about this should take the time to write to CBS and their advertisers, And, if you’re really outraged you can take heart because some very tenacious folks are going to make DL’s life moserable for a while; folks that are not considered mainstream RethigliKKKans by any stretch of the imagination. Let them do the dirty work, and let our representatives, and much of the blogosphere, move on to fight Obama on the matters of policy that will really wreck our nation…
I admire Palin very much, and was writing letters on her behalf for months before she was nominated. I have a sense tha the more they mock her, the stronger she’ll become; think of it like annealing. She will be a player in the future, for sure, and a serious one at that. We should just keep this in our back pocket for future use, and get on with the game.
Just my two cents…
Best Wishes
Comment by sdferr on 6/16 @ 12:10 am #
baldi, had you stopped by days ago when this business got going and Jeff began to put his two cents in (pardon my forgetting)? If so, do you feel that you’ve got his take on the thing? And if yes to that one, where is it you’ld pin your difference, whether tactically or strategically from his?
Comment by JD on 6/16 @ 12:11 am #
Can’t we all just get along ?!
Comment by baldilocks on 6/16 @ 12:12 am #
“And if yes to that one, where is it you’ld pin your difference, whether tactically or strategically from his?”
No comprendo.
Which post?
Comment by sdferr on 6/16 @ 12:15 am #
Well, I figured all the ones he wrote (though they are pretty much of a piece one with another), though we could look at the pw rises to the challenge if we need to delimit it.
Comment by lee on 6/16 @ 12:18 am #
I hope you’re right Bob, We’ll see…
Comment by not bh/blowhard on 6/16 @ 12:18 am #
Juliette, I have no idea how we got off track. I didn’t bring up the cock interview. When I thought you agreed Fr*sch wasn’t relevant, but then had brought it up anyway, I was surprised.
Here, this is the point. When you’re talking with a friend and you can use a generic example or a personal example to make a point, you generally go with the generic example. So as to not piss off your buddy for no reason. As Fr*sch has been brought up multiple times now by others — and it doesn’t seem at all analogous to me — I wonder why people feel the need to reference it.
Comment by sdferr on 6/16 @ 12:26 am #
Looking back I see that Jeff’s first post on the subject was short. Here’s the whole thing:
Comment by not bh/blowhard on 6/16 @ 12:27 am #
Okay, good night and adios. It’s (mainly) been fun everyone.
Comment by JD on 6/16 @ 12:27 am #
Letterman is a pimple on the ass of humanity. He could have apologized last week, and this never would have been a story, just another example of how the rules for the Right and Left are drastically different. His non-apology apology and the closer-to-an-apology apology just go to show how vapid Dave is, and apparently now 18 year old children of candidates are fair game. The whole situation, for me, is less about Dave, and more about the abject hypocrisy and naked partisanship that the Left engages in, without being called on it.
Comment by baldilocks on 6/16 @ 12:32 am #
“sdferr
Well, I figured all the ones he wrote (though they are pretty much of a piece one with another), though we could look at the pw rises to the challenge if we need to delimit it.”
Are you talking to me? I had not seen where Jeff had authored any posts. I guess I missed those also.
“bh
As —– has been brought up multiple times now by others — and it doesn’t seem at all analogous to me — I wonder why people feel the need to reference it.”
Sorry but I’m not omnipotent. I have not seen where she was brought up.
“I wonder why people feel the need to reference it.”
Because we’re just sadists trying to hurt the guy whose posts we really want to see. ::::grrrr:::::
Actually it could be because the two situation are about adults who are obtuse and/or sick enough not to know where the boundaries are as they relate to the minor children of their ideological opponents.
Nah, that couldn’t be it.
Comment by baldilocks on 6/16 @ 12:34 am #
Oh yeah, and I’m of the school that ‘Dave knew.’ He just didn’t care.
Comment by sdferr on 6/16 @ 12:35 am #
Yes, baldi, sorry I failed to address that. My bad (chalk it up the friedrice I was shoveling in as I wrote it, I think). By the way, have you seen or heard from Darleen lately? We’ve not seen her in these parts for over a week.
Comment by baldilocks on 6/16 @ 12:37 am #
Haven’t seen Darleen. Has anyone emailed her?
Comment by JD on 6/16 @ 12:37 am #
I’m of the school that it sucks watching my friends tear into each other rather than the dirty little fucking wannabe Euro-socialist weenies.
Comment by sdferr on 6/16 @ 12:37 am #
No, not that I’ve heard.
Comment by baldilocks on 6/16 @ 12:39 am #
#
“Comment by JD on 6/16 @ 12:37 am #
I’m of the school that it sucks watching my friends tear into each other rather than the dirty little fucking wannabe Euro-socialist weenies.”
Yeah that sucks.
Comment by JD on 6/16 @ 12:53 am #
It is a meta kind of idea that we should take a look at. Why is it that the Right winds up eating their own, especially when it is the Left that is in the wrong?
Comment by sdferr on 6/16 @ 12:57 am #
[hiding behind his goof shield, sdferr offered] Cause the right is hungry and the left just ate the right’s lunch?
Comment by JD on 6/16 @ 12:59 am #
Fuckers. They can eat my lunch, but they better not try to toss my salad.
Comment by JD on 6/16 @ 1:12 am #
I denounce sdferr. Just for fun.
Comment by JD on 6/16 @ 1:46 am #
Class is just oozing from our last few visitors …
Comment by JD on 6/16 @ 1:52 am #
thor licks the cockandballz
Comment by JD on 6/16 @ 2:11 am #
Dan or Jeff – Are the above turdlets from any of our regular trollish-types?
Comment by Thor's mom on 6/16 @ 2:13 am #
I’m so proud of what you’ve done with your life.
Comment by Kiss Me Sarah on 6/16 @ 2:18 am #
I don’t know what’s into Todd.
Lately he’s been urinating on the fence posts.
Comment by JD on 6/16 @ 2:19 am #
Whomever had the decency to delete those little nuggets of love from the troll, could you let everyone know who that asshat was?
Comment by Track P; on 6/16 @ 2:20 am #
That’s my sister.
She ain’t nothin’ you can contain.
Fuckin’ cameras.
Comment by Bristol Long Time on 6/16 @ 2:23 am #
Anyone looking for a place to happen? How about a stop on the way?
I’m so wet. I’m so slick. I need some Alaskan pipeline Mommy promised the world.
Comment by JD on 6/16 @ 2:25 am #
Must be one of Letterman’s writers …
Pingback by Letterman Palin Joke Nonsense Continues « Society Portal on 6/16 @ 2:29 am #
[...] came up with an even longer and more obsequious apology, and a fat lot of good it did him. Dan Collins declares himself done with the subject (whew), but others still want him expunged from CBS. [...]
Comment by Biafra Palin on 6/16 @ 2:34 am #
It’s a place in Africa, Biafra.
Greater Africa, don’t know where that is.
Comment by Carin on 6/16 @ 4:26 am #
Is it too late for me to mention, again, that this is a useless distraction?
Healthcare. cap and trade. North Korea’s threatening S. Korea with war.
And, no I’m not telling people what they can talk about. But, spare a bit of outrage.
Comment by Carin on 6/16 @ 4:27 am #
Also, that this issue is a lefty magnet. Because they don’t wanna talk about health care, etc.
Now, THIS is something they can sink their teeth into.
Pingback by It’s official: Palin is the new Bush | Cold Fury on 6/16 @ 5:05 am #
[...] never did understand how anybody could possibly take this guy (hat tip notbh) seriously in the first place. For a good long while there, some of the more genial and polite [...]
Comment by B Moe on 6/16 @ 5:14 am #
It’s not a lefty magnet, it’s a lefty IED.
And it worked like a fucking charm.
Comment by B Moe on 6/16 @ 5:21 am #
On the other hand, I have never seen a full blown purge up close and personal. Might be fun.
Pingback by Moe Lane » Letterman apology, take two. on 6/16 @ 5:37 am #
[...] The Other McCain, Ace of Spades, Hot Air, Riehl World View, Big Hollywood, Wizbang, & Dan Collins. Also, Governor Palin has already accepted the apology: “Of course it’s accepted on behalf of [...]
Comment by Mr. Pink on 6/16 @ 5:52 am #
Maybe this conversation would have been better off discussing the double standard of these asshats. Joe Biden’s daughter has been photographed doing coke, Obama has two daughters of his own, I have not seen or heard anyone joke about them. I think you can make a fair argument to Dave’s intention by the jokes he has not told and the ones he does. Hell we do it here in the comments section when you see someone come in and yell a set of biased talking points slanted to one side.
Pingback by Letterman apology, take two. - Moe_Lane’s blog - RedState on 6/16 @ 5:53 am #
[...] The Other McCain, Ace of Spades, Hot Air, Riehl World View, Big Hollywood, Wizbang, & Dan Collins. Also, Governor Palin has already accepted the apology: “Of course it’s accepted on behalf of [...]
Comment by Mr. Pink on 6/16 @ 5:55 am #
It is kinda messed up when you see people arguing in favor of Alinsky tactics.
Comment by Hell yes I'm thor on 6/16 @ 5:58 am #
I’m here to defend Sarah Palin’s honor, if there ever was such a thing.
(Add Woody Wood Pecker laugh for full effect)
Comment by brobin on 6/16 @ 6:00 am #
I read the text. It’s more of the same: wink, wink the audience will cheer and the fools will think I actually apologized.
The substance is based on the obvious lie that he though Palin was alone at the game. So it would be funny to make a joke about one of her daughters.
The tone is of a rationalization wrapped in a faux apology.
There’s a full paragraph there on how it’s not the “intentâ€, it’s the “perception†and it doesn’t matter that he was “misunderstoodâ€.
Which tells me that he thinks we rubes out here in outrage land are too dim to properly grasp his form of humor.
“Apology. I don’t think that word means what you think it means.â€
Comment by Pablo on 6/16 @ 6:00 am #
Alinsky’s goals are the problem, not the tactics.
Comment by Mr. Pink on 6/16 @ 6:07 am #
I disagree but I easily could be wrong. I would argue in favor of high minded political discourse, with honor given to both sides but where shitbags using Saul’s tactics called down to the floor and exposed. Those may be losing tactics in a political sense I admit, but should be the goal and worth struggling for.
PS It is ironic as hell looking back on arguments against waterboarding where people would state “We will be no different than them.” I feel like one of them now. I do not want to be a lying shitbird twisting words and mouthing lies on purpose. I would use those tactics on the foreign enemies of my country without question and eat Cherios after, but on American citizens that think different than me in a representative republic not so much.
Comment by Hell yes I'm thor on 6/16 @ 6:09 am #
President Obama has helped inspire the youth of Iran to take to the streets to fight for freedom and justice.
Sarah Palin is at war with David Letterman.
Drawn your own parallels, party people.
Comment by Hell yes I'm thor on 6/16 @ 6:09 am #
Drawn = Draw
Comment by Hell yes I'm thor on 6/16 @ 6:12 am #
Hey Jeff, I agree with you. Jokes a joke, no biggie.
Man hug?
Comment by B Moe on 6/16 @ 6:13 am #
Alinsky’s goals are the problem, not the tactics.
His tactics are the path to his goals, they won’t work for us.
Proving you are no better than the opposition is not a viable strategy.
Comment by Mr. Pink on 6/16 @ 6:16 am #
“Proving you are no better than the opposition is not a viable strategy.”
I would disagree if you are talking about foreign policy or strategy. Domestic political discourse between citizens I totally agree, the strategy should be to disown those tactics and expose them as the poison they are.
Comment by Roland THTG on 6/16 @ 6:19 am #
President Obama has helped inspire the youth of Iran to take to the streets to fight for freedom and justice.
HAHAHAHAHA
Godd one.
Comment by Roland THTG on 6/16 @ 6:20 am #
Or good one, whichever you prefer.
Comment by N. O'Brain on 6/16 @ 6:24 am #
“#Comment by Hell yes I’m thor on 6/16 @ 5:58 am #
(Add
Woody Woodmy tiny little Pecker laugh for full effect)”TFTFY
Comment by Hell yes I'm thor on 6/16 @ 6:24 am #
Oh how wrong you are, it’s gonna be three and a half more years of this same shit and worse.
Then Obama is gonna take you r-wingered raging pugs down hard, again.
Only the bitterest angry paranoids will be left on PW. Meaning the same ones that are here now.
Comment by SDN on 6/16 @ 6:24 am #
I put this in an e-mail to Jeff, but after seeing #286, I thought it needed to be said here:
Don’t forget that even though the Founders produced a group of men who thought and wrote in ways that helped shape and guide our nation into greatness, they made sure they had a street thug named Sam Adams with his own group of bullyboys available when Heads Needed Cracking. I’m way more suited to the Head Cracking role than in expressing ideas; that I leave to people like you and your co-posters who can communicate better than I ever will.
Comment by Mr. Pink on 6/16 @ 6:25 am #
We seem to be doing a fair enough job of taking ourselves out thor why drag Obama in to this?
Comment by LTC John on 6/16 @ 6:26 am #
Carin, I’ll worry about Korea for al of us. I Corps can use the help…
Comment by louchette out of sorts, not not was on 6/16 @ 6:26 am #
thanks for the link, above. reread it this morning. good fucking times. but last night i went to bed. because cock actually is a lot more interesting than this junior high dudgeonfest. and this morning this is all still just as stupid as it was last night and the day before yesterday.
carin is right. and so is jeff. and the more people act like pinched little church ladies on a crack fueled rampage the more it proves that letterman’s ‘joke’ was correct in its mocking assessment of THEM. and just like with the ‘rush is the head of the rebublican party’ bullshit: most of you have taken the bait and fallen into line and acted out precisely the trite roles that your enemies have defined for you.
the joke sucked. palin and family ought to be angry. other actually important shit is going on. this is still stupid. i still love cock. and i hope jeff keeps writing.
Comment by Carin on 6/16 @ 6:30 am #
President Obama has helped inspire the youth of Iran to take to the streets to fight for freedom and justice.
Sarah Palin is at war with David Letterman.Lakers fans are at war in the streets of L.A.
Drawn your own parallels, party people.
FTFY
Comment by B Moe on 6/16 @ 6:31 am #
other actually important shit is going on.
http://thenextright.com/ironman/mrs-dodd-brilliant-businesswoman
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/beltway-confidential/Gerald-Walpin-speaks-the-inside-story
Comment by Rick Ballard on 6/16 @ 6:32 am #
Jefferson used Alinskyite tactics to beat Adams in 1800. There is absolutely nothing new or unusual about them and Adam’s refusal to speak to Jefferson (that famous “classic liberal”) for more than a decade after the election is a reasonable indication of how deeply Adam’s felt about Jefferson’s violation of the common “higher” understanding of the political themis of that day. To imagine that politics has ever been played in other than a cesspool or to suggest that “education” (when fence posts can outwit a substantial bloc of voters) is the answer is to engage in rainbow and unicorn fantasy.
Comment by Hell yes I'm thor on 6/16 @ 6:32 am #
I’m sure Jeffster savored the moment when reading an email from you, SDN.
Not often does a pure batwing crazy nutlog treat him to a direct email!
Sort’a like noticing a huge blood clot in your shit, it gives one pause.
Comment by Mr. Pink on 6/16 @ 6:32 am #
For the record I was never pissed about the joke, just about the blatant double standard employed that made it possible and the fact that if this slid then it would make it that much easier to demonize and ridicule the next candidate that ran against Obama (He who must not be mocked).
Comment by Pablo on 6/16 @ 6:33 am #
No, you’re absolutely right there, Jeff. And there are places that the joke would be more or less appropriate. Not that it would be a better joke or be in better taste, but that joke would fly on The Daily Show or an HBO stand up special with nary a peep. Maher would get away with it unscathed.
Try that on CBS. How do you suppose they’d deal with it? Better yet, try this one on CBS. Your picture would be hanging on the wall of the security office with instructions to make you extremely unwelcome.
Comment by B Moe on 6/16 @ 6:35 am #
To imagine that politics has ever been played in other than a cesspool or to suggest that “education†(when fence posts can outwit a substantial bloc of voters) is the answer is to engage in rainbow and unicorn fantasy.
Why are you wasting you time here then, dude, sounds like you and SDN need to go start busting some fucking heads! Fucking A!
Comment by royf on 6/16 @ 6:35 am #
As usual thor is full of crap, There were citizen uprisings just as big as this back in 2004 which were violently put down. They weren’t as well reported but that doesn’t mean they didn’t happen. There was also the voter boycott during the last election which was by most inside reports very successful, it failed to get reported as well. All I can say is if Iranians are expecting anything more than a vote of “present” from Zero they will be overjoyed when Ogabe bows to the Ayatollah.
Comment by mossberg500 on 6/16 @ 6:40 am #
Too bad Frank Marshall Davis isn’t around to tuck and fuck sasha and malia into bed. That would be fucking hilarious.
Comment by alppuccino on 6/16 @ 6:43 am #
George Bush would have started his comment by saying “To the people of Iran, we stand with you.” He would have talked around Ahmadinihead – thereby dissing him publicly. The hermaphroditic limp noodle/empty sack/pussy Obama felt the need to not step on Mahmoud’s toes. Of course, he’s not in a position of strength, being the president of an arrogant country while Bush was the president of the greatest, most exceptional country in the history of the world. So I guess you have to cut Barry Cheesecake some slack.
Comment by Pablo on 6/16 @ 6:43 am #
Walking is a way to get too the whorehouse as well as to church. Walking isn’t the problem. The Nazis used tanks and planes and bombs. We did too. That doesn’t makes us no better than them. 13 rules. None of them are particularly original, nor are they especially unsavory. It’s just an interesting collection. And there’s no way in hell I’m giving up #5. Which is part of why I like referring to this as an Alinsky tactic.
Comment by B Moe on 6/16 @ 6:44 am #
And there are places that the joke would be more or less appropriate. Not that it would be a better joke or be in better taste, but that joke would fly on The Daily Show or an HBO stand up special with nary a peep. Maher would get away with it unscathed.
None of that really matters, Pablo.
The point is people who don’t listen to Letterman are trying to get him fired, just like people who didn’t listen to Imus got him fired, and people who don’t listen to Rush are trying to get him fired, and on and on and on. All for political reasons.
Do you really want people who disagree with you politically to get to determine what you listen to? Do you want this to continue to escalate until all entertainment is the nothing but bland, white bread, non-offensive totally politically correct pablum?
Got to hit the field. By all. Hope there is still a blog here when I get back.
Comment by alppuccino on 6/16 @ 6:46 am #
oh, and I can see the end of Letterman’s career from my porch.
Comment by mossberg500 on 6/16 @ 6:47 am #
See it doesn’t work so well when joking(if you can actually consider it joking) about anyone’s child being talked about in such a manner just because you disagree with their parents politics.
Comment by Carin on 6/16 @ 6:51 am #
“Sarah Palin” isn’t the mound I wanna die on.
what?
Comment by Pablo on 6/16 @ 6:54 am #
They’re trying to do just that, day after day after day, with some success. No, I don’t like it. Hence, make them live up to their own standards. If it hurts them enough, they’ll change them. Or at least, you’ve got their shiny hypocrisy on a gleaming silver platter.
We’re talking about CBS here. You’ve just described their entire programming lineup. Except for the part where it’s OK to shit on anyone right of Bill Clinton.
Comment by Salt Lick on 6/16 @ 6:58 am #
I can see the end of Letterman’s career from my porch.
Not sure I can see it, but I can see a kerfuffle that will forever define his later career. As long as these things can still backfire, it gives me Hope. I’m not for censorship, but all for that public shunning stuff. That’s me being all Panglossian.
Comment by Mr. Pink on 6/16 @ 7:02 am #
OT but have you guys checked this out off Drudge yet? ABC is anchoring their newscasts from the White House for days on healthcare.
http://www.drudgereport.com/flashaot.htm
Comment by alppuccino on 6/16 @ 7:08 am #
When apologizing, use a lot of “I” statements. But be careful. Only use the “I” statements that put you in the most positive light. An example: “I feel like I need to do the right thing and apologize so that I can be a good guy in this whole thing. So I sorry.”
Comment by Hell yes I'm thor on 6/16 @ 7:16 am #
Check your porch. I am waving my balls your direction.
Comment by mossberg500 on 6/16 @ 7:22 am #
It’s hard to believe you possess a set of balls, but then again, you seem to have a vivid imagination.
Comment by serr8d on 6/16 @ 7:29 am #
Jeff, you shouldn’t be disheartened by low-level disagreements. This blog, and everyone who reads it, is firmly in your camp. Of course there are trolls, but by and large they are a vanishingly small percentage of your readers / responders.
(I will recommend to some that friends shouldn’t reopen old wounds just to argue a point. That’s tactics best reserved for long-married couples, don’t'cha know?)
Comment by Danger on 6/16 @ 7:30 am #
“But whatever. Jesus forgives, even if you people don’t.”
Jeff, At the risk of repeating myself I pasted the comments I made in the pw challenge thread. It is likely that you missed them (and probably will miss the replay as well) but that is the downside of being so many time zones away.
Hopefully you will see this and allow me the courtesy of a reply (email or otherwise)
“Comment by Danger on 6/13 @ 6:11 am #
“There is only one possible outcome. I guess getting there sooner doesn’t make it any worse.â€
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.
For instance, 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”
As an adendum I don’t know if David Lettermans apology/explanation was sincere/accurate perhaps this is one of those instances where the answer IS above my paygrade.
“I’ve outlived my usefulness — and rather than read ex-supporters taking their (personal) shots at me, I’d rather just remember the good times and leave all this behind.”
I think you are throwing out the baby with the bathwater with that oulook but in responce to the first statement I quoted on you above: yes Jesus does forgive but we ALL tend to fall short of his standards. Would you agree?
Dan,
If you speak to Jeff I hope you consider passing this message along (assuming he does not see it).
I would e-mail it directly but I am not sure if he gets (or reads) the e-mails sent to the jeff@proteinwisdom.com address
Comment by alppuccino on 6/16 @ 7:30 am #
Check your porch. I am waving my balls your direction.
Should I use the Hubble?
gotcha
Comment by serr8d on 6/16 @ 7:36 am #
OT (since thor’s shat up the thread again): Charles Johnson’s pleasure curve this morning is approaching noose-induced levels.
Comment by Hell yes I'm thor on 6/16 @ 7:40 am #
You’re staring at a couple of fucking field mice, Alp.
Over here! Do I have to block the sun for ya?
Comment by alppuccino on 6/16 @ 7:44 am #
You know, Letterman could be just the guy to revive Celebrity Boxing
I’d love to see JM J Bullock put him on the canvas.
Comment by Red on 6/16 @ 7:44 am #
David Letterman’s fauxpology essentially says nothing. That he meant it towards Bristol doesn’t make it any better and he is also saying that we the audience failed to grasp his intent which is crap. I know what I heard and read. His intent was to demean the daughters of Barry’s political rivals like a good elitist lefty lapdog. If he has no better control over the words that are written for him to read off a prompter or from cue cards then perhaps he needs to unplug. I hope CBS advertisers pull their own plugs. Letterman=old hack.
Comment by Rob Crawford on 6/16 @ 7:49 am #
Merovign:
Yeah.
But maybe it is time to shut down PW.
Comment by Red on 6/16 @ 7:50 am #
#313. Comment by mossberg500 on 6/16 @ 6:47 am #
See it doesn’t work so well when joking(if you can actually consider it joking) about anyone’s child being talked about in such a manner just because you disagree with their parents politics.
——————————————–
Remember when Hollyweird actors were protesting the Bush and the Iraq war and Tim Robbins got into some pissing contest with someone who ‘went after his kids’? Tim held a press conference and jumped all over that guy who did that. I’m saying, what’s good for the goose is good for the gander. If BHO told the press et al. that his children are off limits then it should stay that way across the board.
Comment by Diana on 6/16 @ 7:51 am #
Damn. I fear an old friend has just died.
Fare well, Jeff.
Comment by Mr. Pink on 6/16 @ 7:55 am #
I am refraining from posting my thoughts on the prior comments on here because none of them would be helpful, wanted, and probably would be taken as insults.
Comment by Hell yes I'm thor on 6/16 @ 8:01 am #
I’d take the odds on David Letterman cracking Todd Palin like a bullwhip.
Comment by tash on 6/16 @ 8:01 am #
Cynthia Yockly and Sebastian at Hillbuzz think you are a wimp for accepting the apology. They said something intertesting that Republicans give up too easily. I read that and thought they are right. Now I do not like Democrats tactics but they are right that to get rid of Bill M and Lettermen is not to give up and keep pressure on CBs and their sponsors.
Letterman, Stewart, Bill M are the conveyors of popular culture that ridicule conservative ideas and people. In order to have a chance to persuade the public about our ideas we have to stop those that ridicule us and our ideas. So persistance is needed to campaign against the popular culture icons and in this case that means comedians.
No more agreement that comedians are tolerated when they cross the bounds of decency. If you do not like vulgarity and shock jokes then we must be persistant and solid in going after their money source, the sponsors. Even if we know the sponsors are not guilty.
In this recession sponsors are very aware of the consumer and want to appease the consumers since they depend on us.
Comment by B Moe on 6/16 @ 8:03 am #
Walking is a way to get too the whorehouse as well as to church. Walking isn’t the problem.
Car jacking is also a means of transportation, doing it to get to church doesn’t make it right.
Ceding principles for the sake of political expediency is wrong. Period. If Amanda Marcotte had a clue she would be having a fucking field day over here. She is must be too busy being offended by something else.
Comment by louchette neti neti on 6/16 @ 8:04 am #
btw, it seems to me that most of ya’ll don’t understand the economics of how broadcast television economics works, or don’t understand it well at least. the show and its contents are not the product. YOU are. warm bodies sitting there watching the ads. that is what the advertisers pay the networks for. your presence. the shows are just a lure to keep you there watching the ads. it’s part of why boycotts don’t always work ot so well. the calculus is thus: if more people are watching the show/ads because of whatever scandal du jour than are not buying the product because they are pissed at whatever scandal du jour the sponsors still win.
DL is a tired has-been who was never all that funny with a dwindling audience and market share. there really is such a thing as no bad publicity. and this attention just keeps him there longer, and brings him more viewers. and it even makes him look smarter than he is insofar as it keeps proving his joke about his ‘not us.’ that is, US. well maybe not me. cuz i don’t allow enemy dipshits to define and manipulate me. not if i can help it.
i’m going out for the day. i assume this wanky kerfluffle will still be raging when i return. at least, i hope that PW is still here for it to be raging upon. =|
Comment by happyfeet on 6/16 @ 8:04 am #
Do you really want people who disagree with you politically to get to determine what you listen to? Do you want this to continue to escalate until all entertainment is the nothing but bland, white bread, non-offensive totally politically correct pablum?
CBS for sure already represents the end stage of this progression I think. Already. Many many others too.
Nothing of a CBS loves freedom.
Comment by serr8d on 6/16 @ 8:05 am #
#330 The Stupid … she is strong with this one.
Comment by Bob Reed on 6/16 @ 8:05 am #
“But maybe it is time to shut down PW.”
Rob,
Why do you think this to be the case? I’m just curious…
Comment by B Moe on 6/16 @ 8:06 am #
In order to have a chance to persuade the public about our ideas we have to stop those that ridicule us and our ideas.
There you go.
Comment by louchette neti neti on 6/16 @ 8:06 am #
damn typos. redundancy. i denounce myself. and rush out to catch the bus.
Comment by McGehee on 6/16 @ 8:07 am #
And yet we’re wrong for not accepting his stated intent as valid? For expecting a man who makes jokes on national television to show some professionalism?
Jeff, I think there’s a difference between recognizing that Letterman fucked up, which I do, and shrieking for his head on a platter, which I for one am not. Mainly though, I’m not shrieking for his head on a platter because if I want empty calories there are less cumbersome ways to get them.
This is not a hill any person — or any site — needs to die on.
Comment by Luke on 6/16 @ 8:08 am #
The point of this whole exercise is NOT that Letterman intended to make a joke about raping a 14 year old. We all know he didn’t.
The point of this exercise is NOT that we like or endorse heavy-handed censorship or anti-intentionalist “arguments”. We don’t.
The point of this is to teach these leftist-relativist-fucks how goddamn illegitimate their strategy of linguistic terror really is and to teach them that two can play at that game. This is the linguistic equivalent of Mutually Assured Destruction. “Oh, you don’t like nuclear war? Then FUCKING STOP lobbing warheads you fucking fascist motherfuckers.”
You use illegitimate tactics to take down one of ours, we’ll use the same goddamn tactics to take down 3 of yours. Until you stop. Don’t like it? FUCK YOU, you fucking started it.
Comment by apotheosis on 6/16 @ 8:08 am #
Sweet honey bunches of goatse, what got into Jeff G?
Dude, this is your site. Just because some people disagree with you doesn’t invalidate your opinion. Some of us have been patiently waiting for you to get back to writing…we’ll read Dan and the rest in your absence, but your absence is still felt.
That’s not to sell Dan or the others short, but c’mon.
Comment by Danger on 6/16 @ 8:10 am #
Hi Bob,
Do you think I missed the mark at 322. You seem to be much better than I at expressing reason and drawing out the best in people than I am.
Regards
Comment by McGehee on 6/16 @ 8:10 am #
Because of incidents like this.
Comment by serr8d on 6/16 @ 8:11 am #
One advertiser has already turned away from DL’s show, louchette. That’s the impetus behind his apology, and nothing more.
Again, I see this mini-movement as Sarah Palin’s call to arms; her first since the election. That’s the main reason to positively respond: to throw support behind Sarah.
That’s something I’d like to do. What else? Either support Sarah or dig up Zombie Reagan.
Comment by B Moe on 6/16 @ 8:11 am #
This isn’t about CBS, I know CBS sucks. This is about the idea that it is okay to try to silence those with whom you disagree. And the notion that being offended is a political position.
Be offended, it’s cool with me. But don’t use it to justify abandoning your principles.
Don’t like CBS or Letterman, don’t fucking watch him. But don’t try to tell others they can’t watch him because you don’t like it.
Comment by Bob Reed on 6/16 @ 8:11 am #
thor,
We’re all keenly aware of your distaste for Palin. I know you’re trying to be witty and all, but this is an instance where all you’re doing is stoking the flames of folks resentment towards you…
Your comments aren’t helpful on this matter and I would ask you this once to please stop trying to aggrivate the commentariat…
Maybe go write some more poetry or something…
Much obliged
Comment by Danger on 6/16 @ 8:11 am #
that came out awkward delete one of the I’s
I guess that proves my point above (344 not 322;)
Comment by Diana on 6/16 @ 8:12 am #
Fuck you, serr8td.
Comment by B Moe on 6/16 @ 8:13 am #
The point of this is to teach these leftist-relativist-fucks how goddamn illegitimate their strategy of linguistic terror really is and to teach them that two can play at that game. This is the linguistic equivalent of Mutually Assured Destruction. “Oh, you don’t like nuclear war? Then FUCKING STOP lobbing warheads you fucking fascist motherfuckers.â€
You use illegitimate tactics to take down one of ours, we’ll use the same goddamn tactics to take down 3 of yours. Until you stop. Don’t like it? FUCK YOU, you fucking started it.
But it isn’t mutually assured destruction, Luke. If we start acting like them we are only destroying ourselves.
Comment by serr8d on 6/16 @ 8:13 am #
Sure, Diana!
Your place or mine?
Comment by Diana on 6/16 @ 8:15 am #
352 . You have no cause to use that shit with me.
Comment by happyfeet on 6/16 @ 8:16 am #
This isn’t about CBS, I know CBS sucks. This is about the idea that it is okay to try to silence those with whom you disagree.
I agree with Letterman that Sarah Palin is a more than suitable object of ridicule. But so is he.
Comment by Pablo on 6/16 @ 8:18 am #
Carjacking is a means of stealing transportation, B Moe. It is not driving. That comes after the immoral act. If I remember correctly, insisting that everyone be held to the same standard regardless of race, gender, class or ideology is a fundamentally American concept. I don’t see a moral problem in people demanding that CBS adhere to that. I can see where Imus might prevail if he were to sue CBS on those very grounds. Plus, I really don’t give a damn about Letterman one way or the other, so whatevs.
Comment by donald on 6/16 @ 8:18 am #
You know what Jeff? I don’t get it. I ain’t the sharpest knife in the drawer but I know that David Letterman is a hypocritic cheap shot punk who had a STAFF of writers (Cause he couldn’t do it himself, we learned that during the writers strike) slave over whatever the hell it is that they slave over, to come up with some matter they called a “joke” then came opened his mouth and made an ass out of himself, not to the in crowd, not to his people, but to people who have some sense of common decency. A lot of these people, including people who are fans of you, who pay real attention to you and your thoughts don’t fucking like David Letterman and their letting it be known in their favorite public forum. Dave’s a crappy guy, that’s all. I mean, what the hell.
Comment by B Moe on 6/16 @ 8:19 am #
Ridicule away, then. It is the rabid movement to have him fired that I find disturbing.
Comment by sdferr on 6/16 @ 8:19 am #
B Moe is seriously on to something good people. Think hard about what he’s gripping there in 347 & 351. It’s not merely a call to “not abandon your principles” either, it is as much a call to try harder to understand what those principles are, what they entail beyond your instinctual urge to strike back at your perceived enemy in Letterman and Co. More, what it is about those urges that stands in blunt opposition to JeffG’s project in this blog. It’s no wonder he’s frustrated.
Comment by happyfeet on 6/16 @ 8:21 am #
also, he’s a balls out misogynistic little fuck, your David Letterman
Comment by happyfeet on 6/16 @ 8:22 am #
oh. that was a generalizey your
Comment by B Moe on 6/16 @ 8:22 am #
Carjacking is a means of stealing transportation, B Moe.
Yes, and the tactics of Alinsky and the left are a means of stealing language and interpretation. We don’t need to go there.
Comment by Pablo on 6/16 @ 8:24 am #
Yes it is. CBS fires people for making jokes about people being whores. But not Letterman and not when the butt of the joke is named Palin.
Unless you’re Al Sharpton. Which maybe next time he takes off after somebody who says something he doesn’t like, that person’s employer will tell him to fuck off. Otherwise, if it’s good for the goose, it’s good for the gander.
I’d like to see CBS having to come down one way or another on this. And if it means Letterman stays and Imus gets an apology, I’d call that progress.
Comment by serr8d on 6/16 @ 8:26 am #
Diana, this isn’t a dirge. I’ve thrown people out of business meetings because of the attitude you’ve espoused.
Think. Think. Think.
Comment by Pablo on 6/16 @ 8:26 am #
Holding your opponent to their own standards does no such thing. In fact, it does quite the opposite by requiring them to mean what they say and say what they mean.
Comment by sdferr on 6/16 @ 8:27 am #
On the question of strategy and tactics, it seems to me that rather than take the simple or easy route of reaching for something, anything right off the shelf, we’d do better to draw back and think about what it is we want to come to pass (the end or goal) and how it is we’d best go about getting there (the means or tactics). In this sense we would be behaving somewhat along Alinsky’s lines, because this is what he was about, thinking through his political project from top to bottom and back again, then fashioning his own path in a coherent whole.
Comment by McGehee on 6/16 @ 8:27 am #
The reference to the cock interview is Jeff making an analogy to the target-audience argument he’s made about Letterman’s Palin joke. Jeff has written on this site before about the particular idiom unique to Protein Wisdom that we here learn to share if we stick around long enough.
I think that analogy should not be dismissed casually — but then again, I have never seen Jeff make a joke so negligent of the context of what he’s joking about, as to be misinterpreted except in bad faith.
I think the point of disagreement here is whether it was possible to misinterpret Letterman’s joke in good faith. It appears Jeff doesn’t believe so.
I think there’s also a difference of scale between “The Late Show” which is broadcast on TV stations across the country and thus seen nightly by millions, and Protein Wisdom which — though it deserves to be — isn’t seen by quite so many people nor quite so diverse an audience.
Comment by happyfeet on 6/16 @ 8:28 am #
I think all of this contrived brouhaha thinger is the exact sort of material one looks for from which to fashion ridicule of the corporate media dirty socialists, of the dirty socialist values campaign in which the Tiffany fags are big big players and what is unrelenting and gathering force…
Irony is rife with intent sometimes I think. It’s goshawful ironic that David “child rape is funny” Letterman doesn’t think child rape is particularly funny.
Comment by Bob Reed on 6/16 @ 8:30 am #
Danger,
I think you did just fine; it was your voice and style. You made your points, just as we all have been trying to do. This is a matter that many have become heavily emotionally invested in. I too admire Palin greatly, and would personally love to have the proverbial 5 minutes alone wit DL to ’splain it to him, if you know what I mean…
But, in fact, the Governor has accepted his apology on the matter; much to the chagrin of some. Since she is the principle involved here, and it’s good enough for her, well then we all should be satisfied I guess…
As I’ve mentioned, let’s file this incident away in the ol’ memory bank, to dust off in the future if necessary. Although it’s a shame that it couldn’t be more utilized to illustrate the hypocrisy of the political left, well I guess we’ll just have to be satisfied with Palin’s highlighting of the fact that this kind of thing never happens to Obama, but has continued to happen to her. And come to think of it, as much as I bemoan the number of Americans that take the Daily show, and Good Morning America as serious news sources, I guess I should be happy that she got to rub that double standard in (the putz)Matt Lauer’s face on GMA…
There are much bigger fish to fry, politically speaking. Palin’s accepted DL’s apology so it’s time to move on. We need to stay focused lest the Obama bunch succeed in “Europeanizing” of America…
Best Wishes, stay cool in a Hot place!
Comment by McGehee on 6/16 @ 8:31 am #
Oh, and if anyone has any doubt about whether I think Letterman should be fired specifically because of this, this was me making fun of the idea.
BECAUSE OF THE AMBIGUOUS TEXT!
Comment by sdferr on 6/16 @ 8:31 am #
Maybe that would read better if it read “as a coherent whole” instead of “in”. Apologies, not enough coffee yet? yeah, that’s the ticket.
Comment by serr8d on 6/16 @ 8:32 am #
Bob, do you have a link for that? A link dated later than the one I posted @131?
Comment by Pablo on 6/16 @ 8:35 am #
serr8d, here.
Comment by McGehee on 6/16 @ 8:35 am #
Seconded.
The directly-injured party is who decides what satisfaction is required; the requirement has been met.
Settle down, people.
Comment by Pablo on 6/16 @ 8:37 am #
Exactly. Make hay while the sun shines, I say.
Comment by serr8d on 6/16 @ 8:39 am #
That’s all I needed, Pablo. Thanks.
Now, the wrap: Sarah Palin forced evil, wicked, mean & nassty David Letterman to grovel. She’s now graciously accepted his apology. This matter is at an end.
Meeting adjourned.
Comment by Hell yes I'm thor on 6/16 @ 8:39 am #
I think the real problem with the wingered of the the right (well, let me rephrase this as one of the many-many real problems) is that nobody physically fears the right. You’re playground sissies, pop gun pussies, lady bugs under a magnifying glass.
You want respect – hey man, we got to catch up to the Dem.s, go all Twitter, network email lists, yada-yada-splat.
No, no you don’t want hi-tech. The answer is old school. Think Dinka. Yes, the world tallest and skinniest people. The Dinka got no respect, for awhile, hell, whose bones do you think Idi Amin was suckin’ the flesh from? That’s right, a Dinka’s. But it went deeper than that. Every school kid would step on the back of a Dinka’s sandal and send him flying face down, every school girl in pig tails would flip the bird at a passing Dinka. It was raw central African disrespect.
So the Dinka asked themselves the same questions you’re asking now, namely, how can we shut those mocking motherfuckers up without having to shoot every one of their asses.
What they did was this: every year they made a large number of their warrior aged men do nothing. That’s right, do nothing. They sat around all day doing nothing but drinking vast quantities of a mixture of milk and blood. Nothing fattens a skinny man up like a blood milkshake.
It’s one thing to wedgie and swirly on a 7-foot dude who weighs a buck sixty five, but it’s quite another to yank the jock strap of a 7-foot 350-pound freshly fattened Dinka with a grudge.
You people need to get fat, or fatter, whichever. That’s all.
Comment by Pablo on 6/16 @ 8:45 am #
Oh really? You must not be watching the news much lately, because the right is extremely dangerous these days. Murderous, even, or so the story goes. In fact, weren’t you polishing that little idol here, whor? Of course you were.
Comment by sdferr on 6/16 @ 8:45 am #
Set the Letterman contretemps aside; there is still a great deal of work to be done to understand the dispute taking place here and elsewhere over how we react (variously), how those reactions do or do not feed the very aims the joke writers had to begin with, in a more abstract sense, how and why language works the way it does, how it is that this post can be entitled D.L, Intentionalist, however ironically. Just because Palin is satisfied doesn’t mean that we should be content to walk away from the more worthwhile questions the issue poses. And these aren’t primarily questions about how to deal with Letterman; they are questions about how we understand the intent of this blog and the intent of our political opinions.
Comment by happyfeet on 6/16 @ 8:47 am #
I agree with the idea that Governor Palin accepting his apology is pretty much the end except that it’s okay if David Letterman is still irked by the occasional reference to his child rape joke that people just didn’t get.
It’s very unfair.
Comment by Pablo on 6/16 @ 8:48 am #
Hey, since when does anybody who’s anybody pay any attention to what that bubble-headed chillbilly has to say? TEAR DOWN THE ED SULLIVAN THEATER!!!
Yes, I’m a bad man.
Comment by Rob Crawford on 6/16 @ 8:48 am #
1. Does it cause Jeff more frustration than pleasure? The answer appears to be “yes”.
2. Does it cost Jeff more financially than he gains? The answer appears to be “yes”.
3. Does it generate more heat than light? The answer appears to be “yes”.
I like Jeff — even when I disagree with him — and I like most of the people who hang out here. I’d hate to see it go, but maybe it’s just run its course.
McGehee:
Which I find utterly incomprehensible. This isn’t a statement lifted out of context; in fact, context makes the statement worse.
And, frankly, the argument that Letterman was attacking a caricature rather than a person is less than persuasive. The same could be said for any number of things said about Jeff — people weren’t attacking the real Jeff, but rather the construct they have of Jeff. So what? If it’s a lie, it’s still a lie. That some people have a rich fantasy life centered around public and semi-public figures is immaterial to the fact that their statements are lies intended to force the target out of the public debate by causing them pain.
Comment by happyfeet on 6/16 @ 8:50 am #
oh. I agree sdferr that there’s a lot to explore but we don’t even agree on the definition of “David Letterman” but right now we have the head CIA homo twisting Mr. Cheney’s words and we have the ABC News propaganda squad moving into the White House.
These ones might be more productive avenues to pursue.
Comment by B Moe on 6/16 @ 8:51 am #
You people need to get fat, or fatter, whichever. That’s all.
It sure worked for Ted Kennedy. Seems to be working pretty good for Chris Dodd and Barney Frank too.
Comment by happyfeet on 6/16 @ 8:55 am #
Also I want to say I thought lee made very good contributions on this thread that weren’t a lot acknowledged.
I agree with you about the caricature idea Mr. Crawford… I almost put it this way earlier…
It’s goshawful ironic that David “child rape is funny†Letterman doesn’t think child rape is particularly funny especially when David “child rape is funny†Letterman doesn’t even actually think Bristol Palin is a cum-guzzling Jesus-loving whore.
But that’s not what I wrote.
Comment by Hell yes I'm thor on 6/16 @ 8:55 am #
And that House Dem from New York, Jerrold Nadler, he’s fuckin’ huge!
Comment by sdferr on 6/16 @ 8:58 am #
I don’t have a handle on the currently most salient public issues hf. I guess if pressed at any given moment I could say what’s got me riled up, or what’s taken my interest the most, that sort of thing, but I wouldn’t claim to know from a practical politics sort of stance what is the best thing to pursue right now. Where I come from most all the time though, is a stance that is interested (eternally, it seems) in the more abstract aspects of human nature and the human condition; the issues lingering here seem to me to be more of that sort than the former. Besides, it’s pretty plain that Jeff isn’t entirely satisfied with the state of affairs here. I thought we might profitably explore all of this distinctly unsettled stuff, rather than throw in the towel, like, oh Palin’s happy so let’s all just drop this crap and move on.
Comment by Lamontyoubigdummy on 6/16 @ 8:58 am #
When did this joint go all “Free Republicky” with the moral authority police demanding sanctions and boycotts and firings and the you’re either with me or against me shit?
What Letterman said was cheap, predictable in its desperation, and disgusting. Kinda think that’s been established. I haven’t seen his show in 15 years so I’ve already done my part. Preemptive strike I guess. Plus, ya know, he’s fucking awful.
Anyway, for the mouth breathers and the nuclear outraged…DON’T WATCH HIM. Don’t watch CBS. Stop buying stuff from companies that advertise on CBS if YOU want. Hell, protest if YOU want. Write a letter. Sing a song. Do a dance. Whatever.
But don’t get all finger pointy and “true conservative” indignant if the rest of us are rolling our eyes at this circus, and don’t want to come off like the pre-pubescent, morally outraged left. Yes, yes we see the huge hypocrisy mountain over there on the left. It’s been there since 2001. It will be there tomorrow. Who cares?
I’ll watch football or basketball on CBS (which is pretty much the only reason to ever dust off that channel) if I want. My house. My TV. My remote. Fuck off.
Also, I think I dropped my car keys in here last night. Do we have a lost and found?
Comment by happyfeet on 6/16 @ 9:00 am #
It’s just sad what gets lost is how truly genuinely vitriolic and hateful Mr. Letterman is and how much of that vitriol was leveraged on a feeling he had of how very untouchable he is and what is now perhaps a little attenuated.
I think that’s neat.
Comment by Bob Reed on 6/16 @ 9:01 am #
And Nadler’s actually slimmed down from his former self…
Fellow used to be as wide as he is tall; and not in the good way!
Comment by Hell yes I'm thor on 6/16 @ 9:01 am #
I like World Superbike on the Speed Channel.
Comment by happyfeet on 6/16 @ 9:03 am #
when I look at the television I wanna see me, staring right back at me
Comment by Jeff G. on 6/16 @ 9:04 am #
He doesn’t?
Comment by sdferr on 6/16 @ 9:05 am #
How much of this thread has actually been devoted to Letterman’s posited distinction of “intent” vs “perception”, percentagewise, would you guess? I’d be willing to bet (without having done the analysis) that it’s in the range of 5 to 10. Not much, on the whole. I don’t know why I’m asking that question right now either…
There is a sense that DL has been taken down a peg or so, but I wonder whether that vague sense fits with the deal. Whether, that is, in the gusts of rage and yelling, he hasn’t maybe pulled off another coup? I dunno.
Comment by Pablo on 6/16 @ 9:05 am #
Yeah. And if those filthy Tiffany ones lose some sleep and/or money, that’s fun too.
Comment by Pablo on 6/16 @ 9:08 am #
I love the smell of schadenfreude in the morning. Also, petards.
Comment by Danger on 6/16 @ 9:15 am #
Thanks Bob,
“There are much bigger fish to fry, politically speaking. Palin’s accepted DL’s apology so it’s time to move on. We need to stay focused lest the Obama bunch succeed in “Europeanizing†of America…”
and Amen to that
Comment by Danger on 6/16 @ 9:19 am #
Welcome back Jeff,
Can we put this discussion behind us and get back to sending volleys down range now
Please.
Comment by Lamontyoubigdummy on 6/16 @ 9:22 am #
“There is a sense that DL has been taken down a peg or so, but I wonder whether that vague sense fits with the deal. Whether, that is, in the gusts of rage and yelling, he hasn’t maybe pulled off another coup? I dunno.”
Nah, no coup. DL is a talentless fossil from another age. A small, hateful man to be sure, but it’s the new “cool, hip” writers that wrote those Palin jokes. Not excusing DL at all, just saying he would have dutifully read 9/11 or holocaust jokes if some 20 year old writer fresh out of Harvard told him it would be all the rage (and get him some much needed press).
With Letterman’s “I meant the 18 year old slut, not the 14 year old one” apology, he might as well have said, “fake, but accurate.”
He’s done.
Lonely ‘ol Dan Rather is about to have a friend out in the pasture.
Mark Cuban will probably step up and give Letterman his last show on HDNET.
Comment by Mr. Pink on 6/16 @ 9:22 am #
How about everyone start referring to Dave Letterman as a chickenhawk since he voted for Obama and has no intention of serving in Iraq or Afghanistan? Is Dave’s kid signing up or is he just in favor of sending other children to die in wars?
Comment by Ric Locke on 6/16 @ 9:30 am #
::sigh::
1) Letterman got priceless publicity.
2) The next time Limbaugh, Hannity, et. al. make a joke about some Leftist, the Left will simply copy&paste.
3) This is now further impetus for “hate speech” laws.
There are stories, jokes, and anecdotes going back to antiquity in all cultures about dealing with djinn, malevolent gods or powers, and/or the Devil. The constant in all of them is that the nastiest thing they can do to the hapless protagonist is exactly what he asked for. Congratulations on working out the newest one.
Regards,
Ric
Comment by sdferr on 6/16 @ 9:30 am #
People hate philosophical pursuits, always have, always will. It sucks to like them. Think only of the first thing written with the name Apology and you’ve got the idea.
Comment by alppuccino on 6/16 @ 9:33 am #
Michelle Obama has really fat, cottage cheesy thighs.
There’s a joke in there somewhere.
Comment by alppuccino on 6/16 @ 9:33 am #
…because of the toned arms.
Comment by Mr. Pink on 6/16 @ 9:34 am #
401
You are probably right. I think this reaction is fueld in part by watching this woman’s private life get decimated and lied about for the past year and being able to do nothing about it.
Comment by Mr. Pink on 6/16 @ 9:36 am #
My last comment was directed at Ric.
Comment by Rob Crawford on 6/16 @ 9:39 am #
Bullshit.
Comment by happyfeet on 6/16 @ 9:43 am #
priceless publicity in june is a lot less priceless than july or may or (usually) february or november and I think a lot of the publicity will have sensitized people to the dirty socialist politics that Letterman likes to fondle and play with and bad touch all kinds of ways… they may not care but they’ll notice a bit more. Letterman’s flavor might not be exactly what it was and at the very least maybe the flavor might be a bit more yeah but I like Jon Stewart way better.
Comment by Rob Crawford on 6/16 @ 9:43 am #
Let me expand — how in the hell you get from private citizens expressing displeasure at an insulting remark to government regulation and punishment of speech considered by some to be insulting is a process of pure bullshit.
But, for what it’s worth, if that’s the result, then we deserve whatever we get for being stupid enough to not stop it at any of the hundreds of steps between the two points.
Comment by Thor's mom on 6/16 @ 9:45 am #
[i]I think this reaction is fueld in part by watching this woman’s private life get decimated and lied about for the past year and being able to do nothing about it.[/i]
Well, yeah. Which is why it looks like nothing more than a huge spasm of pathetic and impotent rage. Another component that fuels it is that the mindless Obama sycophancy and cowardice among comedians draws a sharper contrast between his and Palin’s treatment. Were we less removed from eight years of comics portraying Clinton as a boob and moral degenerate perhaps people would understand just how hysterical and over the top their reactions to this have been.
Comment by happyfeet on 6/16 @ 9:46 am #
The next time Limbaugh, Hannity, et. al. make a joke about some Leftist, the Left will simply copy&paste.
That already was ingrained forever and a day ago, even back when our little country wasn’t a dirty socialist shithole it was already like that.
Comment by Ric Locke on 6/16 @ 9:47 am #
How so, Rob (#406)?
This sort of thing is the definition of “hate speech”. No, you aren’t calling for Government censorship — but the distinction between a major corporation like CBS and a “government” is so small it’s generally imperceptible. If Letterman gets canned over this, it will be a punishment for “hate speech” worthy of the Canadian HRC.
Yes, yes, we have to fight back. I’m just sad that the inevitable result will be a pair of mirror-image castles lobbing bombs at one another across the desolated No Man’s Land.
Regards,
Ric
Comment by Pablo on 6/16 @ 9:48 am #
Which seems to be the point of the exercise. This story didn’t begin last week.
Comment by Rob Crawford on 6/16 @ 9:52 am #
Because in objecting to the bullshit that gets slung at us, we become indistinguishable from those slinging the bullshit.
Comment by Rob Crawford on 6/16 @ 9:56 am #
But, Pablo, you just don’t get it! We’re the only ones around with free will! Everyone else in the universe — American lefties, anyone outside the US, everyone — is merely reacting to what we do! Every goddamned thing is our fault!
We’re not to react to anything done to us or said about us. Do we think we’re their equals or something?
Comment by Pablo on 6/16 @ 10:00 am #
Like the one they laid on Imus. Thing is, this one will cost CBS a shitload of money and hamstring them in a timeslot they’ve been losing badly for some time, but have recently been making gains with Leno having abdicated.
CBS established a standard of punishing such “hate speech” made on its airwaves and they seem to have forgotten it for this case. The thing with the HRC is that they’re trying to stifle citizens’ speech. CBS is dumping, or not, on its employees. I’m sure you understand the liberty implications of each scenario.
Comment by Pablo on 6/16 @ 10:02 am #
See, this is where the hubris kicks in. ;)
Comment by Pablo on 6/16 @ 10:03 am #
Another apt description of CBS.
Comment by Lamontyoubigdummy on 6/16 @ 10:14 am #
“If Letterman gets canned over this, it will be a punishment for “hate speech†worthy of the Canadian HRC.”
Horseshit. If he gets canned, which he won’t (he’ll be put out to pasture just like Rather), it will be because of money. Canada’s HRC is about stifling individual speech on ideological grounds. And even that’s a smokescreen. It’s really about government power and control over the citizen. Like hf said, progressives in government have had that little gem “ingrained forever and a day ago.” It ain’t new. Obama is just the fucking catalyst for all their fascist dreams.
The Letterman dump will be about perception, (further) lost ratings and huge chunks of lost ad revenue.
Money.
Comment by Rob Crawford on 6/16 @ 10:14 am #
A private company firing an employee who is presented as one of the faces of that company for making comments damaging to the reputation and value of that company bears as much relationship to government-run kangaroo courts as my ass does to the moon — I’ll grant they’re both large, round, and pale, but in substance they’re incomparable.
Comment by Jeff G. on 6/16 @ 10:19 am #
Strawman. I haven’t said we’re not to react.
I said we should probably pay attention to how we react — you know, to make sure we aren’t becoming part of the joke.
Which, too late!
There are many ways of reacting. A week of full-frontal outrage over a joke made by a comedian during a monologue intended for lefty Pavlovian dogs shows us in a poor light, in my opinion. And it didn’t have to: pointing out that the joke was taking a cheap shot at the children of a political figure would have been enough to seize the high ground. Now, it’s become about “public civility” — a sure fire winner come election time!
I suspect some people are now saying, “what Letterman said was tasteless (hell, nobody had to tell me that), but at the same time, I don’t like this campaign to get him fired, either: he should be able to say what he wants during an adult show, and I as an adult should decide whether or not I want to laugh, watch, etc.
“Because I’d sure hate it if the turnabout is that they try to get __________ fired for saying something on his show I find both funny and, from a comedic standpoint, ‘true.’”
********
In any event, I don’t much care any longer. I have no place on the political spectrum, so I’ll just watch NFL Replay and wait for the season, instead.
Comment by Rob Crawford on 6/16 @ 10:24 am #
I wasn’t responding to you.
Comment by Pablo on 6/16 @ 10:28 am #
Thing is, Jeff, the rules at CBS have already been put into place. That downside has been part of the package from the day they fired Imus. Calling for Letterman’s head can’t possibly create that framework, because it already exists. CBS, Sharpton, Obama, et al. installed that policy at CBS 2 years ago. But some wiseasses are more equal than others.
Comment by happyfeet on 6/16 @ 10:28 am #
I would be fired if I said about that Malia slut what Letterman said about Bristol.
Comment by happyfeet on 6/16 @ 10:31 am #
sacrosanct
Comment by happyfeet on 6/16 @ 10:32 am #
But I don’t think the way to obviate hate speech laws is to encourage more hate speech. Fair’s fair to demonstrate that maybe there are more profitable uses CBS might could have for the perverted codger’s airtime.
Comment by Ric Locke on 6/16 @ 10:35 am #
I’m not at all sure how my reaction differs from Jeff’s, Rob.
It’s not that cause isn’t just or that “no reaction” is the appropriate reaction. It’s that it’s the wrong hill to die on — it doesn’t advance the line, and stands a good chance of leaving a vulnerable flank.
“Tolerance” means “I don’t like it, maybe I hate and despise it, but I put up with it anyway.” It does not mean “understanding”, and it sure as Hell doesn’t mean either “sympathy” or “approval”. And “free speech” means exactly that; when combined with “tolerance” it means that when somebody says something despicable, you grimace and move on. It does not mean you can’t defend yourself; it does mean that you cannot do so in a way that calls freedom of speech into question. If you do that you aren’t defending yourself against the speech, you’re trying to shut the speech down in direct contravention to the stated ideal. And no, the exact mechanism by which the speech is suppressed is not relevant.
But, then, I’m even more irrelevant than Jeff, who probably won’t lose his Internet access any time soon.
Regards,
Ric
Comment by Lamontyoubigdummy on 6/16 @ 10:37 am #
…”full-frontal” outrage…
Ok, which one of you was speakin’ out with his cock out?
…”I have no place on the political spectrum, so I’ll just watch NFL Replay”…
Watch the commercials. Michael Irvin has a new line of 12 button suits and men’s furs out.
I’ve always thought the political spectrum needed a classical liberal playa with an intentionalist pimp hand.
You could be that guy!
Comment by happyfeet on 6/16 @ 10:40 am #
Kyle-Anne Shiver solidly agrees with Mr. Goldstein and Mr. Locke I think.
Comment by Jeff G. on 6/16 @ 10:40 am #
By not trying to get Letterman fired, you are “encouraging” more “hate speech.” Got it.
Comment by Diana on 6/16 @ 10:40 am #
Serr8d … I’ve fired people for your kind of crap.
Comment by JHo on 6/16 @ 10:41 am #
So has MSNBC, Diana.
Comment by Danger on 6/16 @ 10:43 am #
“Thing is, Jeff, the rules at CBS have already been put into place. That downside has been part of the package from the day they fired Imus.”
Pablo,
I wonder if ratings were the real motivation for firing Imus. If his comments brought more viewers via the attention garnered CBS may not have canned him.
That’s why I am hoping that the American people will tune out on Letterman. CBS may be on the left’s side but they still have to answer to stockholders.
Comment by JHo on 6/16 @ 10:43 am #
Staggers the mind, why this isn’t more obvious, Jeff. I can see how a guy who spent years defining how anti-liberal PC was would want to hang it up when the homies themselves went all PC.
Comment by Lamontyoubigdummy on 6/16 @ 10:44 am #
“Serr8d … I’ve fired people for your kind of crap.”
Nobody here works for you princess.
Good grief.
Comment by Jeff G. on 6/16 @ 10:45 am #
It’s all about that head mounted on the wall, JHo.
Comment by Jeff G. on 6/16 @ 10:46 am #
Diana has been a longtime supporter of this site. She doesn’t deserve to be attacked.
Attack me, instead. It’s all the rage!
Comment by JHo on 6/16 @ 10:48 am #
And there you have it. Why, folks? Because anything less is probable fail and smacks of ninnies. Respect free speech and be tolerant. Be classically liberal.
Gettin’ all in Letterman’s grille is a useful, temporary device for exposing leftism’s rank hypocrisy and opportunism and nothing more. Adopting the progg’s intentionalist/speech control tricks means being a liar.
I’m guessing lying doesn’t do much to defend what needs defending, eh? Especially these days.
Comment by Lamontyoubigdummy on 6/16 @ 10:49 am #
“By not trying to get Letterman fired, you are “encouraging†more “hate speech.—
Ah.
Oh, I got one! By clapping these two rocks together, I keep Bengal Tigers off my lawn.
Prove it wrong!
Comment by Diana on 6/16 @ 10:54 am #
So long, Jeff. Best wishes.
Comment by JHo on 6/16 @ 10:55 am #
Jeff, as an aside, and while I have no idea what you’re working on, if you can post once a day, alone, and if in doing so you can take back the pw brand — and please yourself in that creative outlet — then maybe consider it. I think you must either nurture the brand or idle it, fwtw. And ignore the lying fruitcake liar troll liars, for they you have with you always, amen. They make your point by perpetually making none of their own.
The former commentariat — with a goodly portion of classic regulars here these days, too — made a formidable arsenal of thought. There must be a way to bring that back.
Comment by Lamontyoubigdummy on 6/16 @ 10:58 am #
“She doesn’t deserve to be attacked.”
Wasn’t “attacking.” More of a lighten up Francis kinda thing. Anyway, apologies to Diana. Didn’t mean to shoot at friendlies.
This thing is getting ugly.
There must be some fucking UN Peacekeepers around here or something.
Comment by Pablo on 6/16 @ 11:06 am #
Mr. Pink,
It was the advertisers/boycotts. Ratings don’t matter if you’re too toxic to sell ads.
Comment by cranky-d on 6/16 @ 11:08 am #
I think there’s a bit of selection bias going on here with respect to who is commenting on the kerfuffle which may be slanting the perceived bias of the commenters. The joke was made about the idea of Palin and her family rather than the reality of them. I guess I’m bad in that the whole statutory rape angle does not even end up on my radar on this. My big issue with the whole thing is the double standard with respect to which politician’s families are off-limits, and that is how it should have been approached.
The MSM, however, saw a chance to make up another story, and the participants were more than happy to oblige.
Comment by Salt Lick on 6/16 @ 11:12 am #
This thing is getting ugly.
No sh*t, Lamont.
Comment by Christopher Taylor on 6/16 @ 11:14 am #
was never part of a Presidential campaign election story and was never the unwed teenage mother of a family values candidate
I fear you’re going to rant about theocrats trying to take over the Republican Party soon.
Comment by happyfeet on 6/16 @ 11:15 am #
By not trying to get Letterman fired, you are “encouraging†more “hate speech.â€
“Trying to get Letterman fired” is just speech.
Comment by happyfeet on 6/16 @ 11:20 am #
But yes, to be less oblique. David Letterman hates the dirty Christian slut daughter of Sarah Palin. I think that’s clear as day, and saying it’s all cool cause Mr. Letterman was talking to an audience what also hates the filthy Christian slut is an idea I think it’s fair to bounce off of his sponsors.
And having that freedom, to make that case, militates against hate speech laws, not for them.
Comment by JD on 6/16 @ 11:22 am #
267, 269 and 270 are vintage thor …
Comment by Lamontyoubigdummy on 6/16 @ 11:27 am #
#444
Ah, well put Salt Lick. And here I thought we were all an autonomous collective
Comment by alppuccino on 6/16 @ 11:31 am #
Attack me, instead. It’s all the rage!
Jeff has fat, cottage cheesy thighs.
Okay, but I still say it works better on Michelle.
Comment by Jeff G. on 6/16 @ 11:35 am #
You said that not reacting like a flashed dowager encourages more hate speech.
Think about that.
Comment by happyfeet on 6/16 @ 11:44 am #
You said that not reacting like a flashed dowager encourages more hate speech.
Let’s try this again. CBS and Mr. Letterman can attack the filthy Christians all they want I think but if there aren’t consequences, you can bet they’ll attack them more than they would otherwise, and quite likely they will attack them increasingly viciously, and other people will follow their example.
This is how we got where we are today. Used to be slamming the slutty Christan tarts on the tv was frowned upon and you just kind of knew better.
The hate speech construct isn’t very useful and I shouldn’t have used it but it had already gotten thrown into the mix, but my point with that is that I think that people having the recourse of robust protest and the ability to generate opprobrium apart from a codified law is a very strong argument against establishing hate speech laws.
Comment by happyfeet on 6/16 @ 12:18 pm #
Comment by alppuccino on 6/16 @ 12:25 pm #
Paul Schaffer was really the guy that drove the lodging biz for the show. So that’s a net loss there.
I think it’s because he looks like a bellboy.
Comment by Jeff G. on 6/16 @ 12:34 pm #
That George Carlin used to say some nasty things.
Good thing he’s dead.
Comment by happyfeet on 6/16 @ 12:39 pm #
Carlin was a person. “Letterman” is a subsidiary of CBS what has an agenda to delegitimize the filthy Christians and wall off Marxist cocksuckers like the president from criticism. Very different things.
Also, the global warming debate is settled.
Comment by Thor's mom on 6/16 @ 12:46 pm #
If enough pressure is brought to bear he will end up getting fired. CBS ain’t gonna fall on their sword for Letterman any more than they would for a non-dirty socialist what doesn’t hate filty Christians. I just hope he doesn’t end up getting replaced by someone like Jon Stewart because I hate it when I laugh so hard I piss myself.
Comment by happyfeet on 6/16 @ 12:51 pm #
Whether Letterman gets fired or not is less the point than that he should fear it.
Comment by alppuccino on 6/16 @ 12:52 pm #
writer: “Another awkward moment – Seems that the Obamas were at the dinner table and the president said “where’s Bo” and Michelle said, ‘you’re eating him’.
Letterman: Nah. What kind of Palin jokes do you have this week?
Comment by happyfeet on 6/16 @ 1:04 pm #
And also the reason Mr. Letterman should fear being fired is because people like you and me and the other ones should be feeling a lot empowered to speak up when the dirty socialist media fucks start pissing on the Christian womens or the Republican womens or U.S. soldiers or Republican Christian womens what are soldiers.
And people should be feeling very empowered to share their views with the sponsors of the dirty socialist media.
It was a long march, the dirty socialist corruption of our media and our journalism and our academia. It will be a long march to kick the dirty socialist teef out of their heads. Either that or it might could go really quickly.
Comment by Jim Treacher on 6/16 @ 1:15 pm #
And once again, I apologize for that. I wasn’t trying to do a “gotcha,” but I understand that it’s a sore subject and I feel bad for bringing it up.
Comment by Salt Lick on 6/16 @ 1:25 pm #
Awkward moment last week when Malia and Sasha’s Girl Scout troop went camping… Seems the girls asked if they could use a burkha for a tent…
Comment by baxtrice on 6/16 @ 1:27 pm #
Okay, after 8 years of the MSM trashing conservative values and such, suddenly we’re on the warpath with David Letterman?
Why is this still going? Once again, we’ve got Socialized Health Care about to be rammed down our throat, NK with nukes, Iran’s boiling over in the streets, and the economy is diving faster than Paris Hilton towards a white line.
Let Sarahcuda deal with this; it’s her “OUTRAGE!” to have, not ours. We have bigger fish to fry.
Also, don’t like Letterman? Reach out, turn knob, kthnkxbai.
Comment by Tyrone Slothrop on 6/16 @ 1:49 pm #
JHo in 433wrote: I can see how a guy who spent years defining how anti-liberal PC was would want to hang it up when the homies themselves went all PC.
The levels of self-righteous whinging _are_ cloyingly high. Hopefully the Right-Thinkers will soon purge the ranks to the point that the Me-Too!ing Right and Left rah-rah’ers will be virtually indistinguishable in their comedic moral outrage.
Adios.
Comment by Jeff G. on 6/16 @ 1:52 pm #
He’s a comedian. He was doing a comedic monologue.
Comment by Salt Lick on 6/16 @ 2:12 pm #
Awkward moment at Sasha Obama’s birthday party last weekend… Seems she stoned one of the Kennedy kids who wouldn’t give up his pie.
Comment by happyfeet on 6/16 @ 2:17 pm #
He was advancing a campaign of ridicule against Sarah Palin, who I don’t even like. But I believe people should feel free to capriciously kick anyone what works for the dirty socialist media in the shin and run away really fast. For a good reason or for no reason whatsoever. I think the world would be a better place like that.
I get your point though and I respect it. I just think it’s sort of genteel for the sad fallen dirty socialist world we have found ourselves in. A lavishly principled point of view.
Please don’t kick my ass.
Comment by N. O'Brain on 6/16 @ 2:21 pm #
We all love you, Jeff.
In a manly sort of way.
If you’re a man, that is.
If you’re not, you’re a woman.
Comment by B Moe on 6/16 @ 2:30 pm #
The big point I am trying to make, and I am going to say it one more time, is that there is nothing, nothing, the left would rather do than get in a four year pissing contest about who is more offensive, Letterman et al or Limbaugh et al, and who is more offended, us or them, instead of talking about Acorn/Americorps investigations, or rampant Democrat corruption, or our fucked up schools, or a million other actual damn principled arguments.
Haven’t any of you noticed how the trolls squirm when JHo asks them about principles and belief systems? It’s because they don’t have any. They can’t make a principle stand and defend it because they are completely unarmed. They can be equally offended as you all are, and they would love nothing more than for you to let them show you. That is what we need to be hammering home, not wallowing around trying to win a stupid ass pissing contest in their fucking mud hole.
Comment by Jeff G. on 6/16 @ 2:47 pm #
By being outraged at a comedian for being a comedian.
Comment by happyfeet on 6/16 @ 2:49 pm #
“outraged” was how psycho put it and I thought it was apt
Comment by happyfeet on 6/16 @ 2:50 pm #
this is like the least fun topic ever, btw
Comment by Makewi on 6/16 @ 2:51 pm #
It’s not hard to see why people don’t want to let this one die, the double standard requires that they always are the acceptable target of these sort of jokes while those that make them are exempt. Which sucks.
OTOH, the jokes aren’t really jokes so much as reinforcing props which help those who find them funny to keep believing that the steak they are eating isn’t really made of horseshit.
Comment by Ric Locke on 6/16 @ 2:58 pm #
Bah. The only difference between Minas Tirith and Minas Morgul is the color of the paint on the walls.
Regards,
Ric
Comment by JD on 6/16 @ 2:59 pm #
I would be content with one single standard from the Left and the MSM (I know, redundant). One standard that is not subject to the political affiliations of the parties involved. One.
Comment by cranky-d on 6/16 @ 3:08 pm #
Good luck with that, JD. I’m with you, but I’m not holding my breath.
Comment by JD on 6/16 @ 3:09 pm #
Again, I would note that when a wrinkled old guzzler of Teh One’s love spunk Leftist makes a complete douchenozzle of himself on national TV, why does it seem to end up with people on the Right kicking each other in the teeth?
Comment by happyfeet on 6/16 @ 3:09 pm #
Hey you know what the David Letterman might could have done with more of going into this dealio? Goodwill.
Comment by Makewi on 6/16 @ 3:11 pm #
Oh, I don’t know Ric. The character of the average inhabitant each location attracted must count for something.
Comment by JD on 6/16 @ 3:13 pm #
I suspect Senor Locke is right, though I have no idea what he said.
Cranky!!!
Comment by thor on 6/16 @ 3:13 pm #
Are you trying to make me yawn and fart at the same time, JD?
Since it’s obvious you’ve cursed me with gas, I’m Nightrangering in your honor:
Sister Christian
Oh, the time has come
And you know
That you’re the only one to say
Okay
But you’re motoring!
Comment by JD on 6/16 @ 3:17 pm #
Go stick your flaccid love meat in Michael Vick’s chocolate starfish thorito.
Comment by Thor's mom on 6/16 @ 3:22 pm #
Again, I would note that when a wrinkled old guzzler of Teh One’s love spunk Leftist makes a complete douchenozzle of himself on national TV, why does it seem to end up with people on the Right kicking each other in the teeth?
Personally I wish people could spend more time arguing and less time rallying together to combat psychotic fuckheads like thornishi. They’re a cancer.
Comment by thor on 6/16 @ 3:25 pm #
Big gas in the Cudanozzle, sugar toots!
Comment by Danger on 6/16 @ 3:31 pm #
Feets,
IRT your fears about a Socialistic America, The tide will change just help me hold on to this foxhole until I can convince Bob Reed to run for office (Bob I would be happy to offer my services as your campaign muscle).
Yeah, I got a man crush for Bob but if someone could convince this Goldstein guy to get back to writing I would be happy to share the love.
What, hey where is everybody going?
Comment by thor on 6/16 @ 3:36 pm #
Cancer, you say? Nah, don’t think so, but you know what I think? I think you’re tragically boring and simple. A wrong-headed, boring, Bush league loser, that’s what you are.
Nishfong and thorazine are the antidote to you, booor.
Comment by thor on 6/16 @ 3:45 pm #
The machine revs with intention.
Anyone watching Dave tonight? Michelle Pfeiffer is on the show and Ian Lagen and the Bump Band are the musical guests.
Good times.
Pingback by Letterman’s Apology Much Like the Joke: His Intent Very Different From Our Perception (Updated) « Quick Daily Hits — Politics and Such on 6/16 @ 3:46 pm #
[...] Red State:Â Letterman apology, take two. The Other McCain:Â On Relentlessness Protein Wisdom:Â David Letterman, Intentionalist [Dan Collins] Gateway Pundit:Â Letterman Folds… Apologizes For Sick 14 Year-Old Willow Palin Sex Jokes Ace [...]
Comment by Thor's mom on 6/16 @ 3:48 pm #
Cancer, you say? Nah, don’t think so, but you know what I think? I think you’re tragically boring and simple. A wrong-headed, boring, Bush league loser, that’s what you are.
Nishfong and thorazine are the antidote to you, booor.
One doesn’t ordinarily solicit the opinions of the mentally defective when discussing options for their care and treatment.
Comment by ghost707 on 6/16 @ 3:52 pm #
I think conservatives are tired of getting beaten about the head and shoulders by amoral people such as Letterman.
While I certainly understand Jeff’s point, how long does someone stand there and get slapped in the face before doing something about it?
I think this Letterman kerfluffle is just part of the bigger cancer killing this nation: leftism in all it’s gruesome, destructive form.
Obama is going to self-destruct, the script has already been written.
Unemployment is easily going past 10%, and that will be the real beginning of the end for him.
Comment by thor on 6/16 @ 3:53 pm #
You’re fashioning yourself as my Mom.
I gotta party with you, dude!
Comment by Bob Reed on 6/16 @ 3:58 pm #
Danger,
Thank you for the compliment, but among the PW commentariat I’m a piker really; and am in no way comparable to our host. If he’s a person, then I’m a mere amoeba. You just haven’t had the pleaseure of reading his work as he’s been on a sojourn working on personal projects since you started visiting. He is among the best I’ve ever run across at clearly articulating classical liberal principles and rival just about all of the national level writers I know of. It is truly a mystery to me why he isn’t in syndication…yet!
And as far as running for office? I used to fantasize about it sometime when I lived in the peoples republic of Maryland; wanting to turn back the Democrat tide and all. But, as I was musing about with Ric the other day, I wouldn’t want to put my family through the embarrassment of having to answer for some, ahem, colorful episodes from my mis-spent youth…
Instead, I work at the local level, out of the eye of the investigative press and opponents that can afford traveling private investigators; that and behind the scenes for national level figures that I support…
No, we all need to wait for folks, perhaps like you, who didn’t come of age in the free love, and everything else, 70’s and wild and wooly 80’s, and who made decisions that didn’t stain their “permanent record”.
Thanks again
Best Wishes
Comment by thor on 6/16 @ 3:59 pm #
Comment by B Moe on 6/16 @ 4:03 pm #
Speaking of musical guests, if donald is still lurking about this is the dude I introduced you to at our show Saturday.
Comment by B Moe on 6/16 @ 4:04 pm #
I agree. But rather than slapping them back in the face I say we kick them in the nuts.
Comment by B Moe on 6/16 @ 4:05 pm #
I am not a Christian, I don’t go much for that eye for an eye thing. You blind me in the eye I am taking your ass out.
Comment by ghost707 on 6/16 @ 4:07 pm #
Whine all you want thor, even you know it’s true; Obama is his own worst enemy.
Else you wouldn’t be here trolling.
Protein Wisdom is one of the best forums on the net.
A person of your low caliber has no chance of ruining it.
Comment by happyfeet on 6/16 @ 4:08 pm #
ok I will help with the foxhole thing but I am increasingly disheartened, Danger. The ABC thing this morning on Drudge is not something that happens in our little country unless something has gone horribly wrong.
Comment by thor on 6/16 @ 4:10 pm #
And no, BMow, just because I don’t want to write a treatise on demand for JHo, curser of all fiat money, doesn’t equate to my not having any principles to stand on.
Eye for an eye? Fuck that, you steal my lawnmower and I take your feet off with a lawnmower, that’s how I roll.
Comment by Danger on 6/16 @ 4:13 pm #
Bob,
I have read some of Jeff’s excellent essays. While my last post was meant a compliment to you it was also meant as a challenge to Jeff and encouragement to guys like Happyfeet.
It was meant to be subtle but I guess I dont do subtle very well. With a callsign like Danger that probably houldntdoesn’t suprise you
Comment by B Moe on 6/16 @ 4:15 pm #
How about the fact that you never espouse any core principles, or use them to support a coherent argument? Can I equate that with you not seeming to have any?
Comment by JHo on 6/16 @ 4:15 pm #
You got nothing, thor, but I repeat myself.
But you can’t have anything, can you? Selfishness and spite aren’t principle.
Comment by JHo on 6/16 @ 4:16 pm #
So I don’t hold it against you, thor, it’s just who you are. You should forgive you too.
Comment by B Moe on 6/16 @ 4:18 pm #
Hell, I am usually trying to avoid answering for my mis-spent last week.
Comment by Danger on 6/16 @ 4:21 pm #
My laptop is lagging way behind my key strokes and I sent that last responce out early by mistake. My aplogies
It is late here and I need to restart this computer so good night all
Comment by B Moe on 6/16 @ 4:21 pm #
Take care, dude.
Comment by JHo on 6/16 @ 4:24 pm #
Which is so handy.
A decade ago the left was agog at Clinton’s prowess at single handedly balancing the budget and saving the nation from Reaganonomics, gone roughly a decade earlier, along with the ravages of the only Republican congressional majority in like thirty five years, but whatever.
Today — as in today — O! stands athwart BarneyHarryNancy yelling 10% unemployment and the left are agog again, mouths moving in the unison usually reserved for the clinically brainwashed. It’s embarrassing.
But it’s so principled.
Comment by Abe Froman on 6/16 @ 4:25 pm #
And no, BMow, just because I don’t want to write a treatise on demand for JHo, curser of all fiat money, doesn’t equate to my not having any principles to stand on.
You should write a treatise. I can’t say I’m looking forward to it given your penchant for hate-fucking the written word, but if you had the balls to go out on a limb people here might have at least a modicum of respect for you.
Comment by Bob Reed on 6/16 @ 4:26 pm #
I’m a little slow on the uptake sometimes, Danger…
That kinda goes with the wild-eyed rocket scientist thing I guess…
Best Wishes
Comment by ghost707 on 6/16 @ 4:27 pm #
Thank you for your service Danger.
Many Americans know and appreciate what you do.
Comment by thor on 6/16 @ 4:28 pm #
I’ve got Foucault. And I spout lots! I relieve myself on your sacred principles, that’s one of my more basic principles.
Comment by JHo on 6/16 @ 4:28 pm #
thor sees “fiat money” and thinks Sarah Palin, Abe. Mind like a hamster wheel.
Because thor is all about protecting the property and rights of the little people…that he vehemently protests fraud. That’s thor.
And that’s the left.
Comment by JHo on 6/16 @ 4:29 pm #
I don’t have sacred principles, thor. Just original principles. And your peeing on them argues your case just swell.
Comment by B Moe on 6/16 @ 4:33 pm #
thor thinks fiat money is what Chrysler is about to be phat with.
Comment by thor on 6/16 @ 4:36 pm #
You want a treatise? I’ll email Jeffe the Word Warrior and ask for a platform then.
My pillars of principle will not be kind. Wear goggles. My aim is legendary.
And JHo, econ genius, unemployment is a way-lagging metric, meaning the Bushian collapse is still haunting us today, but of course you know that, you being a cheap shot snark blower and all.
Comment by Bob Reed on 6/16 @ 4:36 pm #
thor,
What will happen if the fed keeps monetizing the debt by buying treasuries, causing the rates to climb ever higher. Mortgage rates climb, right. That won’t be good for home sales or the refinancing one either…
And, what do those higher interest rates bode for in the coming 18 months..? Do you really think that the deflation of real assets will continue to balance the rising inflation? Is it a good thing of it does?
I’m curious about your view on these questions, given your expertise…
Comment by ghost707 on 6/16 @ 4:44 pm #
Media claim 12% unemployment now full employment.
News at 11:00.
Comment by thor on 6/16 @ 4:45 pm #
If rates rise because of the government issuing debt in a auction market then they go up. It’s not like they’re very high as of today.
That’s the price we’ll have to pay for that Reaganomic bullshit you propeller heads foisted on us. Deny all you want, but the fwee-mawket as defined by you meat heads meant quick-easy-and-stupid ruled the hen house. I’m at a loss why you can’t see the obvious.
Comment by happyfeet on 6/16 @ 4:49 pm #
I’m looking and looking but I can’t see it.
Comment by thor on 6/16 @ 4:53 pm #
See that spike up, hf? That’s the wooden stake in the heart of Reaganomics.
Comment by Ric Locke on 6/16 @ 4:53 pm #
What I’ve been wondering is: does that crap have a sell-by date?
At some time in the future, the All-knowing, All-seeing, All-wise Won is going to have to own it. Or are you going to ride it all the way down to little pieces of charred wreckage, shouting “Boooooooooosh! Boooooooooosh!” all the way?
Regards,
Ric
Comment by JHo on 6/16 @ 4:54 pm #
Uh huh…
How so? Jeenus.
Comment by thor on 6/16 @ 4:57 pm #
Duuuuuuuuuh, check the rev and earnings of the S&P 500 index the last two quarters of 2008.
Adjustments to wages and employment continue.
Did you think the biggest decline in history was just going to bounce itself back so as to suit your fancy notions?
ppppp
Comment by happyfeet on 6/16 @ 5:00 pm #
that spike was a choice what the Barack Obama made to steal monies and give it to his Chicago street trash thug friends. The Barack Obama has bitch-slapped our little country and he says you want some more is that want you want? Just keep crying yawls.
Comment by JHo on 6/16 @ 5:00 pm #
thor, you humpbacked wart on legs, I can bury you in two thousand nine indicators. I can soak your portfolio in enough recent, real monetary facts to have it enter the French sewer system by nightfall like some scared rat with a spatula for an oar.
O! is a visible failure. There isn’t a shred of credibility to the pelosibot obamisms that cost us a trillion already and that Obie himself tacitly admits were bullshit.
2010 is going to be a riot. I mean, fun.
Comment by N. O'Brain on 6/16 @ 5:02 pm #
whore ain’t no cancer.
A lip canker, maybe.
A cold sore.
An STD, possibley
NOT a cancer.
He’s not that far up the evolutionary ladder.
Comment by happyfeet on 6/16 @ 5:02 pm #
Did you think the biggest decline in history was just going to bounce itself back so as to suit your fancy notions?
That must be what the Barack Obama thought cause his rape of our treasury doesn’t even really get going until next year. The Barack Obama and his dirty socialist media lied about the stimulus package. NPR lied and MSNBC lied and Newsweek lied. Cause they hate America is why. Rabidly.
Comment by JHo on 6/16 @ 5:03 pm #
The problem is systemic, thor. How many times do you need to be told. Not that it matters, but Bush didn’t make the system.
And Obie is Keynesian through and through; this we know. One wonders just when you admit he’s the biggest banker tool yet.
Bwa. Hilarious isn’t it.
Comment by N. O'Brain on 6/16 @ 5:05 pm #
“And JHo, econ genius, unemployment is a way-lagging metric..”
It’s O!bama’s, baby.
Learn it, love it!
You’re an igorant fuck, you know that whore?
Comment by thor on 6/16 @ 5:05 pm #
I’ve got a poetry reading to go to.
I must warm the pipes and prepare the stanza artillery.
JHO, you pot-bellied jackal, you got nothing but John Birch Society re-prints. You couldn’t beat an egg with your crazy voodoo econ arguments.
Comment by JHo on 6/16 @ 5:07 pm #
Actually, it’s years of Democrap congresses, N O’Brain, meaning today it’s all Obie’s ’cause Obie signed him all that Democrap pork.
Obie signed it.
Obie.
Learn it, love it, thor.
Comment by N. O'Brain on 6/16 @ 5:07 pm #
“Comment by thor on 6/16 @ 4:57 pm #
Duuuuuuuuuh, check the rev and earnings of the S&P 500 index the last two quarters of 2008.”
Check the first quarter of 2009.
In the fuckin’ O!bama TANK, baby.
Learn it, love it.
Comment by JHo on 6/16 @ 5:08 pm #
Good poetry, thor. Regale!
Comment by N. O'Brain on 6/16 @ 5:08 pm #
“Comment by thor on 6/16 @ 5:05 pm #
I’ve got a poetry reading to go to.”
No he doesn’t, he’s going down to the local playground to look at the little boys.
Comment by Ric Locke on 6/16 @ 5:08 pm #
And I notice you didn’t answer my question. Of course I’ve got to go, too. Critters to feed…
At some point the WO!n has to take ownership of the situation. If not, he’s just a nonentity, an empty suit flailing in front of the adoring audience.
Regards,
Ric
Comment by B Moe on 6/16 @ 5:09 pm #
Can you try to limit the techno jargon like this in your treatise? It over revs my propeller.
And what is wrong with the Pub as a platform for your bullshit? Seems pretty fair for someone Jeff has asked to leave, after all.
Comment by SDN on 6/16 @ 5:09 pm #
baxtrice: Straw, camel’s back, etc. is the motivation on Letterman. After 8 years, enough is enough.
As for those other things you mention, it pretty much boils down to with CBS being a private enterprise, with sponsors it must please, we can actually do something about it by our own efforts with a boycott. In foreign policy, OTOH, it’s very much the President’s show in terms of immediate action. And O! has already demonstrated how responsive he is to pressure, even from his own side.
Domestically, we have a little more leverage, since the Congress will have to stand for election before the ACORN conducted Census makes the election process Safe For Democrats, by counting enough noncitizen and fake voters in Blue States to finish off any peaceful opposition. Personally, I’m keeping an eye on the Iranian protesters for tactical tips on transitioning to an armed revolt; by 2013, we’ll need them.
O! has pretty much demonstrated that there’s 52% of the country too dumb to pound sand let alone see through the unchallenged propaganda of the Democrat Media Arm. Things will have to get lots worse (and they have and will) before the cluebat is big enough to penetrate through that DMA helmet. Last time, it took 3000 dead Americans. This time, add a couple zeroes.
Comment by N. O'Brain on 6/16 @ 5:09 pm #
“If not, he’s just a nonentity, an empty suit flailing in front of the adoring audience.”
Bing-go, Ric.
Comment by JHo on 6/16 @ 5:11 pm #
If thor’s tacit premise is to hold water, all we have to do is believe that a government-spent dollar has positive gain: Every dollar the Fed prints makes us a buck twenty. Or something. All we need is more ink and more electricity.
So goes this hyper Keynesianism of Obies that even ole John Meynard would never sigh his name to.
What we have is servitude by debt in a system what’s debt cannot be paid, ever. Think it through, thor. Free lunches. Money on trees. It’s your theory, own it, poetry boi.
Comment by thor on 6/16 @ 5:12 pm #
You’re the missing link in a Darwinian poodle chain, P’Brain.
Comment by N. O'Brain on 6/16 @ 5:13 pm #
TANSTAAFL.
And I still want a Lunar Republic flag.
Comment by JHo on 6/16 @ 5:14 pm #
thor sez the Iranians can piss off. They ain’t them no Russians.
Obie!
Comment by N. O'Brain on 6/16 @ 5:15 pm #
“Comment by thor on 6/16 @ 5:12 pm #
You’re the missing link in a Darwinian poodle chain, P’Brain.”
Wow, what an INSULT! I have to go lay down on the fainting couch!
Not.
Now go ogle your little boys, Tourette’s Syndrome boy.
Comment by Cave Bear on 6/16 @ 5:17 pm #
Thus spake Hammer Boi:
“That’s the price we’ll have to pay for that Reaganomic bullshit you propeller heads foisted on us. Deny all you want, but the fwee-mawket as defined by you meat heads meant quick-easy-and-stupid ruled the hen house. I’m at a loss why you can’t see the obvious.”
Short version:
“LOOK! BUNNIES!!!!”
Comment by Bob Reed on 6/16 @ 5:40 pm #
“Hell, I am usually trying to avoid answering for my mis-spent last week.”
That is roll on the floor funny BMoe…
I guess that goes with the musician thing though…
Comment by Nine-of-Diamonds on 6/16 @ 5:57 pm #
“You’re the missing link in a Darwinian poodle chain, P’Brain.”
Lulz – someone REALLY oughter stick to the Jamaican rape fantasies & Russkie man-whores. Even Frank Marshall’s little Affirmative Action bastard isn’t this dumb (b/c of course he doesn’t believe his own economic nonsense). He DOES, however, depend on Whore & likeminded people to have faith in his Keynes-ian trash.
Comment by Bob Reed on 6/16 @ 6:04 pm #
You see that spike in the monetary base chart thor? That’s a wooden stake in the heart of our economy!
Booooosh! isn’t responsible for the spendulus bill nor the O!ne’s first omnibus spending bill, you know, the one he let Reid and Pelosi write for him; the one that’s chock full of all the phony-baloney redistributionist wish list items that the Democrats had been jonesing for these past 8 years…
Fannie/Freddie, and the governments incentivising the mortgage market via subsidy, were corrupt and flawed from the mid nineties on; and here’s a clue poet, these places weren’t run by any RethugliKKKans. No indeed, folks like the esteemed and capable Franklin Raines, Jim Johnson, Jamie Gorelick, and Rahmbo were among the alumnus. These people made irresponsible decisions and cooked the books to line their own pockets…
You are quick to blame the eeeeeeevvvollll greeeeeeedy! wall street dupes for buying all the securities from these outfits they could, regardless of the unsustainable nature of their portfolio. But, why shouldn’t they? This paper was effectively backed by the full faith and credit of the US Government; at least that’s what was advertised. And, you also like to fault the banks that originated the paper, but between the mau-mauing and Fan/Fred buying all of this paper they could, can they really be faulted? While there were sketchy players in the pile, as always, the blame lies with the GSE’s and the corrupt Democrats that blocked 23 attempts by Booosh! and the Rethugs at increasing regulation and oversight…
Booosh! asleep at the wheel is a convenient talking point oft parrotted…
CRA was a major driver in the current economic crisis…
Booooosh! and the Rethugs tried repeatedly to put the brakes on the process, but were blocked by Barney Frank and Chris Dodd in their respective comittees both before and after 2006…
Inconvenient truths for you to face, I know. But someone with your background, education, and experience should have the intellectual honesty to admit to facts instead…
Oh, and I never even opened the falling dollar due to monetization can of whup-ass; what about that revoltin’ development and the drivers of inflation..?
How will that help the proletariat, moi droog?
Comment by Stephen M on 6/16 @ 7:33 pm #
You can blow yourself Jeff G.
I happen to agree with you. Dumbass.
I just hate whiny types.
Quit crying.
Comment by happyfeet on 6/16 @ 7:37 pm #
and you would be who?
Comment by ehhh on 6/16 @ 7:39 pm #
Stephen came here to whine and cry. Because he hates that kind of thing.
Fucking retard.
Comment by Pablo on 6/16 @ 8:13 pm #
SDN,
Letterman is almost irrelevant. CBS can and should be the target. Remember when they tried to swing an election with obviously fake documents? (Remember that a blogger pwned them with Microsoft Word ferchrissakes.) Remember when they edited many hours of Sarah Palin tape down to make her look as stupid as they possibly could?
They’re leftcult, and drinking deeply of the Kool Aid. They’re probably fuming as we speak that ABC gets to move into the White House and pimp the socialization of the American health care industry, and they’re probably pissed at Katie Couric for being dumber than Sarah Palin, because Dan Rather would have gotten that gig over that Charlie Gibson stiff if it wasn’t for those meddling kids. CBS is a boil on the ass of America.
Fuck it. Flense them, Do it for Imus, the stupid old fool. (His words, not mine.)
Comment by Pablo on 6/16 @ 8:29 pm #
I’m watching coverage of the protest at the Ed Sullivan Theater and while it’s Letterman-centric, there a lot of heat being thrown at CBS and the Imus thing keeps coming up. I like it.
Comment by serr8d on 6/16 @ 8:49 pm #
Pablo, where are you seeing that? I’m TV deprived. Because of the slime.
Comment by happyfeet on 6/16 @ 8:58 pm #
I just noticed Kellogg’s is a sponsor of Letterman. They fired Michael Phelps and Mr. Phelps was just a nice guy who didn’t make lewd humiliating jokes about young girls. That’s so weird.
Comment by Pablo on 6/16 @ 9:03 pm #
serr8d, On The Record, with that mushmouthed Greta somethingorother. Faux Noise roolz!
Comment by tash on 6/16 @ 9:18 pm #
The Palins were the primary tatget but that joke was an affront to many of us and his jokes were an insult to airline steardesses and A Rod also. I was angered and insulted and I have not accepted that non apology. Governor Palin is a politician and has to accept more flack. I do not and I agree that he crossed the line and must pay. This stuff of ridiculing women and conservatives will continue and resprout unless the first weed is pulled. Fire Lettermen, CBS must be convinced that decency needs to reinstated not vulgar sexist jokes about an attractive woman and her children.
Comment by guinsPen on 6/16 @ 9:42 pm #
Baldertash.
Comment by thor on 6/16 @ 10:51 pm #
Bob, look, I don’t want to argue you point for point. Read all my previous posts on this topic.
I can’t help you, or a Pablo, or a Jeff. I know how CDOs and Mortgage-backeds work and the role of the investment banks in their creation and distribution, it’s not as you describe, OK. ANd the failure at FNMA and Freddie was because of their lack of capitalization, not because of freakin’ the CRA of Barney Frank, that’s wittle boy politicky talky – it ain’t real.
Billions in real money doesn’t burn because of evil farts from invisible Prog-o chimeras. You have to understand the basics of capital structure and capital formation to understand how it can fatally collapse. If you want to understand then get an education, it’s not hard to grasp, that’s all I can say.
Like that tax theory that you spout that doesn’t make sense because, after all, you don’t actually know any tax and econ theory. It get complicated.
Comment by lee on 6/16 @ 11:00 pm #
People I respect more than you disagree. I’ll take their word for it…
Comment by thor on 6/16 @ 11:01 pm #
I used to buy millions and millions of Texas Utility PCR (pollution control rev.s) tax-frees from Bear Stearns, Jeff X at Bear was the trader’s name who was the axe in that paper. I’d call their traders all the time plus I had my own assigned rep who’d track down what I needed from Bear.
The axe controls the pricing and volume of an issue because he has the largest pieces placed, this usually is because his Co. was the lead underwriters of the original offerings. In other words they have the inventory and control it’s flow on the street. Jeff X probably had the TXU PCRs placed at Calpers because he was on one of the Cali desks. That’s how that works.
Bear Stearns isn’t just a thing to me. I actually know what they do, know real well.
Comment by happyfeet on 6/16 @ 11:04 pm #
Riskier mortgage lending practices, imposed by government, were what set the stage for many mortgage payments to stop and thus for the financial disasters that followed. Political rhetoric, echoed in the media, seeks to obscure that painfully plain fact.
Comment by thor on 6/16 @ 11:07 pm #
Why didn’t I call Calpers and bid ‘em straight? Because Calpers would hang-up on me after requesting that I send any further inquiries to Bear Stearns. They gave Bear the responsibility of handling the pricing of that part of their inventory.
Comment by happyfeet on 6/16 @ 11:08 pm #
All I know is the dirty socialist media begged and wheedled and suffered and pined for a recession and damned if they didn’t get it. I know this cause I listened to NPR. They were like crack whores needing a fix until finally recession glorious recession.
Creepy.
Comment by thor on 6/16 @ 11:20 pm #
That’s a lie. A fuckin’ lie meant to cover for the fact you don’t have a clue as to how those bonds were put together and the why and what-for of who held them.
You’d rather bob your head in agreement to black helicopter talk than grasp a more complicated reality of how the mortgage debt market works, specifically how it worked in mortgage-backeds.
Fuckin’ lies. Complete lies. Utter fabrication.
The Bush administration’s role in this economic disaster was complete.
This might be impossible to fix as well, since we have the bobble-headed know-nothing r-wingereds pimping lies and yearning for the failed days of deregulation, because, as you know, Rush said so.
Bap, between your eyes! Goddamn right this country is going to change, one way or the other, meaning we will get effective management of the pillars of our financial system else we’ll repeat another collapse and we won’t be able to borrow our way out of another – so boom! Then China and Europe will own us.
That’s how serious this is, but not so much in the empty heads of black helicopter chasers! In the end we can collapse this country for nothing other than being ignorant peoples. And we are close.
Comment by lee on 6/16 @ 11:23 pm #
By the way, thanks for the props happyfeet.
I’m not the most educated in these parts, but I hold my own in common sense, and I still value honor, decency and liberty.
I don’t call for the government to censer Letterman, I respect free speech…including your right to lawfully go after someone you think is engaging in libel, slander, incitement… or just bad taste. You and I have that right; just as Letterman didn’t break the law by calling a young woman he knows nothing about a whore, we aren’t putting the republic in jeopardy by calling him a dirty old man.
Oh yeah, free speech isn’t limitless…and while I’m not necessarily saying Letterman is engaging in the legal definition of those crimes (I am not a lawyer either), I also know I wasn’t doing away with the 1st amendment when I decided not to buy any Dixie Chick albums. I was benefiting from the 1st amendment, just as they were. The same goes here.
All that is necessary for evil to prevail is for good men to do nothing…
Comment by lee on 6/16 @ 11:27 pm #
Uh huh.
and:
So what is it sore-boy…politicky talky or not?
Comment by thor on 6/16 @ 11:32 pm #
Get an education and we’ll talk about it.
Duuuuuuh, who increased leverage ability of the investment banks, duuuuuuh, Hank Paulson, duuuuuh, who was Sec. of Treasury of the Boooooosh administration.
I’ll spank the weak tea out of ya, Lee.
Comment by happyfeet on 6/16 @ 11:33 pm #
you bet, lee …
thor, that what I said was just a quote I pulled from the Thomas Sowell article.
So. Did mortgage standards get more riskier over time and was this cause of government policy and who supported that policy and who opposed that policy?
oh. I would prefer Chinese rule to Barack Obama rule I think. It’s more honest.
Comment by thor on 6/16 @ 11:36 pm #
Thomas Sowell is wrong.
Barack Obama is a great American.
I’m going to bed.
The numbers. The truth lies in the numbers. Wall Street funded the subprime market, not FNMA.
Stop the lies.
Comment by lee on 6/16 @ 11:40 pm #
I got enough education to know shit from shinola feces boy.
You can claim it’s all Bushes fault, but you look stupid saying it.
For an educated man that is…
Comment by thor on 6/16 @ 11:43 pm #
You are shinola stupid.
Comment by happyfeet on 6/16 @ 11:45 pm #
The stimulus wasn’t designed to stimulate. Not this year it wasn’t. I can’t get over that kind of reflexive and fundamental dishonesty. It’s not the stuff of great Americans. Barack Obama and his media lie and lie and lie and lie and it’s killing our little country to where I think it might could die.
Comment by happyfeet on 6/16 @ 11:46 pm #
So. Did mortgage standards get more riskier over time and was this cause of government policy and who supported that policy and who opposed that policy?
Comment by happyfeet on 6/16 @ 11:47 pm #
If Mr. Sowell is hornswoggling me I’m gonna give him the what for.
Comment by lee on 6/16 @ 11:49 pm #
Not according to his Grandma.
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Comment by Nine-of-Diamonds on 6/17 @ 3:25 am #
“Bear Stearns isn’t just a thing to me. I actually know what they do, know real well.”
Bwahahaa! Whatever happened to our favorite rape fetishist’s literary degree? BTW – gotta love the howlin’ about China owning us even as he supports the mongrel-in-chief’s unsustainable spending. Then again, why would you expect a rapist wannabe’s economic pontifications to make sense???
Comment by SDN on 6/17 @ 4:26 am #
The only lie is that Wall Street wasn’t encouraged / commanded to fund the subprime market via government incentive, including the explicit threat to either regulate them out of business or just stand by and let Barack’s ACORN comrades sue them into oblivion / take over their buildings / threaten their families. And unlike hammerboi, Wall Street workers can’t hide behind pseudonyms.
Oh, and Republican attempts to reform the mess throughout the Bush administration are documented in the Congressional Record, as are the Democrats threats to tie up the whole country in time of war unless they got their way leaving Fannie Fwank’s boyfriend in charge of the same old mess.
thor is a thoroughly dishonest liar, and will be called one every time he posts, under whatever name he posts.
Comment by JHo on 6/17 @ 5:39 am #
Foolish little wart on legs. How you can deliver that speech, hold a candle to O! and BarneyHarry, and conclude we’re on the right track boggles the mind.
For one and a half seconds. We have collectivists in office, thor, you myopic, denial-ridden piece of partisan filth. Tyrants. Takers. Market crushers. Investment capital destroyers. Disencentivizers. Industry wreckers. International production de-levelers. Cronies, banker’s tools, selective Wall Street enablers, and financial neo-establishmentarians. Printers and inflaters. Insiders. Fools and thieves who push recovery away. Political hacks with personal debts. Liars.
And about money, clown-show, the reason to finally obsolete fiat currency for a basket of something real has nothing to do with replacing it with gold, you mighty, fantastic, sensationalist John Birch debunker, you. It’s because making cash from air is the surest way to induce and incite making cash from air, you peabrained, nut-trading, rote little socialist chimp, which is to say, the surest way to cause all that crap and indebt ourselves into eternity at the hands of the unscrupulous and oppressive.
You’ve become what you once despised, you sad conflicted oaf. Your trust of the untrustworthy is complete, young theft-lover. If only Fidel could see you now, sucking the life out of la revolución and trading on the backs of the people.
Gah. Enough with you and your faint integrity and predictable, self-indulgent, presidential glute-kneading mendacity. Go read weepy fictional central American prose and be an arteest someplace.
Comment by B Moe on 6/17 @ 5:48 am #
Why were they under-capitalized, thor?
Comment by serr8d on 6/17 @ 6:00 am #
It’s the debt load what’s going to bring us down.
There’s no way this massive debt bubble won’t bust, just like the other bubbles burst. We are printing money to finance this ‘recovery’; monetizing the debt. That strategy has never been successful. That Keynesian economics fail is factualized.
The economy, right now, is like the Twin Towers, burning, fueled by the Treasury’s printing presses.
We know what happens next.
Comment by JHo on 6/17 @ 6:03 am #
Heh. Why is the US a dozen trillion dollars in debt?
None so blind as they who refuse to see. Mitey tjhor! KIller of phgantoms, runer of mythe! The verytible eiye of Sauron hersef!
Comment by JHo on 6/17 @ 6:19 am #
serr8d, see “The International” and watch for the brief dialog between the Interpol guy and the capitalist who advises him and the DA that banking exists not to foment international crisis so as to control its new demand markets, but rather to foment international crisis so as to enslave to the debts incurred thereby.
When monetary system’s managers devise eternal hock, naturally debtors become enslaved to numbers on screens and money basically vanishes — how will you pay the paper interest on a balance bloated by constant new paper debt and its new paper interest? Is it possible to pay a debt that by nature sums balance and interest together perpetually higher than the principal? Isn’t the system ultimately closed?
Our resident rebel disappoints me, what with all the lackey under the skin.
Comment by N. O'Brain on 6/17 @ 6:25 am #
“That’s the price we’ll have to pay for that Reaganomic bullshit you propeller heads foisted on us.”
You’re a stupid fuck, ain’t you, whore.
Regan had to wring inflation out of the economy from another fuckheaded, incompetent democrat president, Jimmah “Feel My Malaise” Carter.
And like I before the election, we’re going to be looking back on the Carter presidency with nostalgia and longing.
Comment by serr8d on 6/17 @ 6:27 am #
JHo, you should construct a post on the subject. You could modify the timestamp so’s Jeff’s post stays on top. We need a new thread for economicspeak; this Letterman thing is going away. Thankfully. Sarah garnered major points and gracefully exited. Letterman is wounded beyond repair. Was this the right thing to have happen? Probably not, puristically speaking.
But Imus is grinning ear to ear, I’ll warrant…
Comment by N. O'Brain on 6/17 @ 6:33 am #
“The numbers. The truth lies in the numbers.”
How’s 10% unemployment sound, you knuckle-dragging mouth-breathing neanderthal troglodyte?
O!bama’s 10% unemployment.
Eat it.
Comment by N. O'Brain on 6/17 @ 6:35 am #
Maybe The Mouth of Sauron.
With O!s creamy goodness running down his chin.
Comment by JHo on 6/17 @ 6:46 am #
I don’t know if the thing has traction, serr8d. Nobody can believe it until it’s too late. Take a look at that goof Larry Kudlow; a cranium packed with innumerable details, a full dance card, and no discernible monetary macrovision, so to put it.
What Obie’s doing is taking the last stand on Big Leverage and its a hell of an effort, as doomed as it is, per your second link in 583. The whole mess cannot stand on its own so we prop it up all over again. The bigger they are the harder they fall.
Comment by Bob Reed on 6/17 @ 6:50 am #
“…the failure at FNMA and Freddie was because of their lack of capitalization, not because of freakin’ the CRA of Barney Frank…”
Why is that I wonder? Could it be that their portfolios become unbalanced due? Were they possibly writing too high a percentage of their yearly total loans for too low an interest rate; too low for even them to make money given the sweetheart rate they borrowed money at? Were they simply holding too many loans which had been defaulted on..?
Or was there simply so many pigs at the trough “gettin’ theirs” that too much money was simply stolen for them to stay afloat..?
Why were they undercapitalized thor?
Comment by Bob Reed on 6/17 @ 6:57 am #
Oh and thor,
Barney Frank is directly responsible for both blocking reform of regulation and, with the help of Maxine Waters and others, preventing any serious investigation of operational deficiencies at Fan/Fred…
He and Maxine engaged in full throated praise of Raines; who of course was later implicated in the scandal of cooking the books at the GSE’s…
And the Democrats in congress won’t even hold hearings on what happened, because they’re terrified this stuff will come out…
How can you defend Barney Frank on this..?
Comment by donald on 6/17 @ 7:04 am #
David Letterman’s son got ass raped by a big greasy messican.
I tell ya, anyway you tell that joke, it is just as funny as Letterman’s “material”, written for him by professional “writers”.
I would laugh (Hey, some irony I get!) if David Letterman got fired, but of cousre, I’m not aware that anybody watches him anymore anyway. I think he’s a vanity project for CBS.
Comment by serr8d on 6/17 @ 7:20 am #
Ouch, Donald.
That hurts even me. And I’m the insensitive sort, naturally.
Comment by donald on 6/17 @ 7:27 am #
Serr8d, that was grotesquely unfair of me. After all, Letterman did not say that Bristol, or Willow was raped. So let me correct that.
David Lettermans son was ass fucked by a big greasy person of indeterminate eastern European origin at the Milford Yacht Club in Milford Connectitcut during Saturday tea.
I feel better.
Comment by donald on 6/17 @ 7:28 am #
I swear I can spell usually.
Comment by Bob Reed on 6/17 @ 7:56 am #
“In the end we can collapse this country for nothing other than being ignorant peoples. And we are close.”
so true thor,
I fear we’re on the brink of it. Brought here by the subversion of the educational system for political ends. The dumbing down of America thor. Brought to you exclusively by guy like Bill Ayers, the NEA, the AFT, and your man O!…
Because it’s better to indoctrinate kids in the ideals of multiculturalism, minority exceptionalism, and equality of outcome, instead of opportunity as the founders meant it, cloaked as “social justice”.
They’ve taken a once strong and cohesive society and fragmented it into victim-hood groups who’ve all been told they’ve been cheated of their part if the pie; can’t I just have some pie?
Classic divide and conquer, started by the communists in the cold war days, advanced by the useful idiots in academia, and the “romance of the revolutionary” in the 60’s, and all along covered, aided, and abetted by the corrupt agenda driven media…
And your boy O! is the logical outcome of that long march through our educational system; the entire decline was to facilitate his ascendancy…
Frank Davis and the Devil are in hell exchanging high-fives and putting up the “mission accomplished” banner!
Comment by Joe on 6/17 @ 7:58 am #
Deb Saunders channels Jeff Goldstein.
Comment by Luke on 6/17 @ 8:28 am #
When I was in 5th grade, I was a scrawny little dork who kept to himself. I had never been in a fight, or even been sent to the principal’s office. Ever. But all you had to do was look at me to know I was a wimp. At the same time, there was another kid in my school who made a habit of kicking everyone’s ass. He wasn’t particularly big, but he was a vicious little bastard and he fought dirty. One day, near the end of the school year this bully decided to beat me up. I tried EVERYTHING I could think of to avoid a fight, but when he pushed me down and I knew an ass-kicking was on it’s way, I decided to give him a taste of his own medicine and went absolutely berzerker on him. I fought him exactly the way he fought everyone else: dirty and ruthless. When it was all over, it was a draw. Sure, the kid pulled a fair-sized chunk of hair out of my head, but I managed to give him a fat black eye, a bloody lip, a loose tooth, and a nasty concrete burn on his ear.
My point is that I’m willing to be pushed around a bit. I’ll turn the other cheek, I’ll fight fair, I’ll stand on principle. Slings and arrows and all that. To a fucking point. There comes a point when you have to conclusively demonstrate that your dignity is, and your principles are, worth defending at ALL cost. The next time the vicious little bastard came looking my way angling for a fight, I calmly ignored him and he didn’t mess with me. I don’t care what the kid thought about my principles. I only cared that he knew better than to fuck with me.
It is absolutely time that conservatives and all of us intentionalists teach the Left that same lesson. Bush played pansy-ass with the Left for 8 freakin’ years. He went out of his way to play fair. And it got him worse than nowhere. The Left respected him less for it. They learned they could fight dirty and lie and cheat and slander him and they’d never suffer for it. In fact, they’ve been rewarded for it. I’m sick of it. If we sit around and ignore these slanders long enough the “moderate” voter eventually starts to think there must be some truth to the lie, because only a guilty party would ignore such outrage.
It’s time to practice going berzerker on the bullies on the Left. NOt because they’ll “respect” our principles. Not because they’ll listen to our reasoned arguments at some future date. But for no other reason than they’ll think we’re just crazy enough to fight like they do when they get cross-eyed with us.
Comment by SteveG on 6/17 @ 10:55 am #
Luke,
It’s all about the issue.
The Palin’s had every right to want to punch Letterman in the mouth and demand an apology, the conservative side did the right thing in backing her up.
I hope no one is serious about squelching Letterman’s right to be an ass, or for his followers right to enjoy his little fishbowl they bottom feed in.
I want the left to embarrass themselves in public, to feel bold enough to put their total world view out there on display.
Independents will find them repulsive and shun them.
Comment by B Moe on 6/17 @ 11:50 am #
Why were they under-capitalized, thor?
I didn’t really expect him to answer that one.
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Comment by thor on 6/17 @ 3:02 pm #
Lend the repeatedly fired-from-his-job Republicano Kudlow a break. It ain’t easy being a puppet head when you have a snout full of cheap blow.
He’s a lifelong coke addict for Chirst’s sake. Guy’s got to hump for a honest paycheck so he can score. You have to respect that in a junkie! He ain’t out fencing stolen IPods! He’s a moral man!
Comment by thor on 6/17 @ 3:11 pm #
In a humorous ironic sort’a way they were victims of there own success, eh.
A PUBLIC COMPANY RAISES WORKING CAPITAL IN THE DEBT AND EQUITY MARKETS. doh!
Hehe. Cap lock works.
They had a ceiling on debt and preferred pricing, stupid, namely if they loaned money out at X-rate they had to raise money at Y-rate, Y being lower than X, obviously. So if the market wouldn’t buy their bonds or preferreds at Y then it limited their ability to raise capital in teh fwee mawket, for above the Y-rate was a money losing proposition, and you do remember that the Boooooosh administration artificially lowered rates to do the Keynsian-in-denial stimulation dance – think Greenspan after 9/11.
Comment by thor on 6/17 @ 3:17 pm #
I’m not going to come over to your place and fuck you.
So go fuck yourself.
Well-fingered butthole of a troll, and poster boy of all hick-cowards.
Comment by thor on 6/17 @ 3:37 pm #
I took the knife out of the hand of a person who was stabbing me with it. Yes, it cut my left side.
I missed with a left-hook, sort’a. It’s my punch but it was short. I rarely miss with that punch. All it did was take a nasty chunk out of the lip. There was no skin, just pink lip meat showing, didn’t bleed much. Then I hit the stabber with a overhand right, launched low to high. It wasn’t just a typical blood fountain, the stabber’s huffing and puffing created a blood mist worthy of a cinematic blood-red snow storm. Two punches plus one begging shaking-scared knifeless ex-stabber equals a good story. Too bad it’s a true one.
Top that.
Comment by B Moe on 6/17 @ 3:38 pm #
So they were loaning money out faster than they could raise it. Which around here we call making risky loans. That would be betting money you don’t have. Betting on the come card, I have heard it called. The Republicans worried about this, and Barney Frank and Chris Dodd said it was all good. I heard them. It’s on tape. Then the market crashed, because all those risky loans that they couldn’t really afford drove up the housing market artificially high and then the bubble broke and there we were.
Only if you view success as making a lot of loans. See I view success as getting a lot of loans paid back. But I don’t know a lot about finance, like you.
Comment by B Moe on 6/17 @ 3:39 pm #
Christ you are an idiot.
Comment by JHo on 6/17 @ 3:44 pm #
Well, he does get half the money picture, B Moe…
Comment by Pablo on 6/17 @ 3:47 pm #
Is there anyone you know of that more people have tried to kill that you, thor?
Comment by thor on 6/17 @ 4:07 pm #
I’ve only had three weapons pulled on me.
But yes, I’d give that award to Matt Taibbi. You right-wingered tough guys ought to seek him out. He writes for Rolling Stone nowadays. Real Left-o, he is, and he’s a casual acquaintance of Sean Penn! Sean Penn!
Matt doesn’t respect numbers. And that’s crazy. I’ve seen him pull a guy from a crowd and beat the fuck out of him in front of his friends, real knuckle to nose beating. I respect numbers. Not pussy-Lefty-MSM-Jounalist Matt Taibbi, he’s fuckin’ tough. Go get a piece of him, Wonnie Weagan wingereds!
Comment by Bob Reed on 6/17 @ 4:16 pm #
Again! with the Matt Taibbi man-crush…
Is this because he lived in Russia?
Comment by Pablo on 6/17 @ 4:16 pm #
So, that’s two guns and one knife then, apart from the thousands of fists to your face? What’s Taibbi’s record?
Comment by Bob Reed on 6/17 @ 4:18 pm #
and thor,
I’m not a right wingered tough guy…
I’m pretty good with my left too!, and either foot, both elbows, shoulders, and my forehead too if necessary…
Are you trying to intimidate me?
Comment by thor on 6/17 @ 4:22 pm #
Matt spent a couple of college semesters in one those foreign study programs in Leningrad and he later worked there so he speaks fluent Marx, hehe.
If you want your ass beat by someone in the evil MSM, Matt Taibbi is that wimpy journalist you need to meet.
Abe Froman knows all the sissy media boys in New York City, so he can tell you where Matt’s from.
Comment by Bob Reed on 6/17 @ 4:29 pm #
Personally, I don’t want my ass beat by anybody…
I prefer to turn cheek’s and all…But, that said, I won’t be punk’d on either…
Comment by thor on 6/17 @ 4:36 pm #
Sissy-beans Pablo thinks he’s funny. Yeah, having boxed when I was kid I can say I’ve been hit by uppercuts from whiteys, beaners and Negros who actually knew how to throw ‘em. Those suck, but not as bad as getting hooked to the body and then having to you’re OK and don’t have the wind knocked out of you.
Comment by thor on 6/17 @ 4:37 pm #
to pretend
Comment by Pablo on 6/17 @ 4:45 pm #
Yeah, I hate it when that happens.
Comment by thor on 6/17 @ 4:47 pm #
Matt Taibbi is a hero of mine. And a friend.
The guy is somewhat humble, is a liberal, plays good street ball, is thoughtful to the homeless and downtrodden, is a little crazy, reads poetry and will go medieval Frankenstein on your ass. Very cool guy, in my book.
Comment by thor on 6/17 @ 4:50 pm #
Maybe if you were smarter you wouldn’t have to pretend so much, Pablo.
Have you any updated lectures concerning the S.E.C. that you’d like to make before Jeff hits the light switch?
Comment by Bob Reed on 6/17 @ 4:56 pm #
thor,
If you live in south Florida at the beach, and Taibbi in NYC, how do you all get to hang together; or is it a past tense thing?
Comment by thor on 6/17 @ 4:58 pm #
Hey yeoman, FNMA’s primary function is that of conduit, buying loans, packaging them and then selling that package.
I agree with your self-assessed financial background.
Comment by thor on 6/17 @ 5:07 pm #
<blockquoteComment by Bob Reed on 6/17 @ 4:56 pm #
thor,
If you live in south Florida at the beach, and Taibbi in NYC, how do you all get to hang together; or is it a past tense thing?
We’re not best buddies. I used to hang with him when he wasn’t so busy, I’ll leave it at that.
You probably weren’t around when I lectured wingered-Dar on the normality of persons who work as journalists. All the animus blow-hard BS of rush Limbuagh, et al, is just convenient tripe to match the figments in of their imaginations. Working journalists work for a living. They don’t sit around and craft embedded narratives in beat work. It’s a deadline and a paycheck. A paid rate for word count. Most journalists are as normal as you or I, and very few ever get to gloss the NYT’s Op/Ed page. Silly wingers.
Comment by thor on 6/17 @ 5:10 pm #
His Dad lives in NYC. I would think he’s got digs in D.C. now. He hasn’t invited me over for chardonnay spritzers in awhile.
Comment by Bob Reed on 6/17 @ 5:13 pm #
Since I don’t know many jounalists, I’ll take your word for it…
I just don’t know how to square that with what I’ve read about the forum “journo-list” and that ultra-double-secret forum “townhouse” that Kos and other prominent members of the left-o-sphere used to all get on the same page…
People are people though, you’re right…
Who’s this Rush person anyway?
Comment by Mark A. Flacy on 6/17 @ 5:14 pm #
Since you’re including yourself, that’s a big chunk of the distribution curve.
Comment by Pablo on 6/17 @ 5:24 pm #
I don’t recall ever giving one. But perhaps you can now update your “NYSE is a government entity” screed, as it probably is now, or soon will be.
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Comment by B Moe on 6/17 @ 6:01 pm #
I understand that thor, and have repeated made the case that the moral hazard of that arrangement is the problem.
What I don’t understand is how you throw an over hand right from low to high.
Comment by cynn on 6/17 @ 7:57 pm #
WILL SOMEONE JUST EXPLAIN THE SPIRALING ECONOMY IN NON-PARTISAN TERMS???full stop. WHY IS IT THAT NOBODY KNOWS WHAT’S GOING ON. full stop. Tripped, fell down the stairs.
Comment by Jeff G. on 6/17 @ 11:14 pm #
Where’s my blood money, thor?
Comment by thor on 6/18 @ 3:28 am #
My sister had this problem once. Read the directions on the box! Pretty sure it’s why they have an applicator.
Comment by thor on 6/18 @ 3:56 am #
There was no moral hazard, douchebag. Almost the entire market for stated income mortgages was funded directly through Wall Street and bypassed FNMA. Grip or clue, need at least one of the two.
No decent boxer with his eyes open gets hit with a full over-hand right. Only a cement-booted dickwad sticking out his chin gets hit with that, a.k.a. you’re typical construction worker after a twelve-pack. Tyson could throw it fast enough to use it but you don’t see that kind of haymaker much in real boxing. You wouldn’t be standing if I hit you with a two-step over-hand right. And yes, you come in low and throw it over the top, idiot.
Comment by JHoward on 6/18 @ 4:49 am #
Good question, cynn; why is the US a dozen trillion dollars in debt it apparently cannot pay. Simple answer: You can’t print money for three quarters of a century and expect nothing to break.
Chinese and Russians calling for new international monetary standard, Chinese making all our stuff < various government hypercontrols < crashing world markets < credit market misbehaving < US housing bubble < excess cash*, inadequate regulation < Fed mismanagement < Greenspan arbitrarily determining interest rates < tech bubble bursting < various other bubbles bursting in the US boom/bust economic model < fiat currency (it ain’t money, it’s debt issued by the top) < US monetary system for some decades < paper standard going back to Roosevelt, I believe it was.
Call it trickle down, cynn, the kind that really matters.
*where does excess cash come from? And why wouldn’t banks just go apeshit with it? How does cash enter the system and what cost?
Comment by JHoward on 6/18 @ 4:51 am #
“It’s almost worth the Great Depression to learn how little our big men know.â€
- Will Rogers
Comment by t. dictson on 6/18 @ 5:20 am #
did Letterman step over the line with his comment about a girl being “knocked up”? YES!!several comedians make jokes about several people involved in politics. where are the jokes about the current president? Letterman has, frequently, done that in the past. Is Letterman/CBS scared of the current politicians or is Letterman/CBS being paid off by supporters?
Comment by meya on 6/18 @ 5:35 am #
Were you all at the protest? You guys looked good.
Comment by B Moe on 6/18 @ 5:54 am #
I am still working on my giant David Letterman puppet head, haven’t made it there yet.
Comment by B Moe on 6/18 @ 6:01 am #
That’s why you don’t lead with one.
A two step over hand right? Are you boxing, dancing or tying neckties?
Comment by B Moe on 6/18 @ 6:13 am #
Yowzah! And they call us hillbillies backwards!
Comment by SDN on 6/18 @ 8:49 am #
Thor is still a mendoucheous liar
Comment by SDN on 6/18 @ 8:53 am #
“He said his administration sought to address the “housing bubble” before the system broke down. “We tried to reform” mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, “but couldn’t get it through the vested interests on Capitol Hill.”"
And who was benefiting? Chris Dodd, Barney Fwank, Barack Obama. The common factor? That would be the D after their names.
Comment by SGT Ted on 6/18 @ 3:33 pm #
Holy Crap 640+ posts!
Comment by thor on 6/18 @ 5:36 pm #
Bob, I hate to be the one to inform you but you seem engaging and pleasant enough to possibly accept an unpleasant truth. You’re given to fantasies, cheap excuses, false narratives and race superiority type non-sense.
What skin color did the CEO of FNMA own when FNMA was forced to ask the government for additional capital? White. And were there accounting issues when the government injected capital into FNMA? Yes. Weren’t there accounting issues at FNMA for the last twenty years? Ah, yes, and much of the reason for that is because FNMA is a unique corporation with a unique structure and said scenario always lends itself to some unique accounting practices. I assure you that the CPAs who work for FNMA can defend their decisions in the real world and if they lose the debate then they have to re-account, ha!, but these accountants can’t defend themselves against you for you’re not the real world, you’re a fantasy guy, a guy who trumpets swirling evil wind fantasies, a believer that evil winds swept up FNMA when Raines was at the helm, but then and only then was such darkened evilness running amok!
Sure, Bob.
You don’t even make a lick of fuckin’ sense.
Consistently you run toward convenient fantasy whenever your politics are in desperate need of such, specifically at those moments when your politics and reality don’t square well.
The capital that was erased from the books at FNMA was due to the pricing in the housing market going into a fast, extended decline. Housing prices declined and FNMA was unable to raise additional capital from our capital markets to fully counter that decline. Purely mechanical, Bob. No additional evil hysteria necessary.
I hope you can put that issue behind you. I’d hate to see you laughed from a room full of CPAs.
Bill Ayers is a smart guy, Bob. He’s not anything of historic genius, but smart enough. If you no-likey him, that’s really not the issue. I’ve both agreed and disagreed with some of what I’ve read from him. To agree or disagree is not a big deal, nor are his nipple rings.
The NEA is necessary and important to our country. Dweebie little engineering louts who suckle government hand outs to build ‘em x-ray-of-death defense systems that don’t work, they need their budget cut to shreds. I want my government welfare queens to be writers, poets and artisans, not unimaginative bigoted slimeballs who, for reasons unimaginable, think they’re God’s chosen and solely deserving of life-long payments from tax payers.
This revolution will be televised. And you’re going down, radical as it sounds.
O!
Comment by thor on 6/18 @ 5:49 pm #
Have you considered threatening Messrs Obama, Fwank, and Dodd with you crosshaired gun, hick-pussy?
If so, why not?
Comment by thor on 6/18 @ 5:50 pm #
If not, why not?
My bad.
Comment by lee on 6/18 @ 7:06 pm #
thor, you are such a poser.
Real bad asses don’t brag, an inconvenient truth for tough guy wannabe posers…
Comment by roht m'I ,iH on 6/18 @ 7:26 pm #
.em !0lB
Comment by Bob Reed on 6/18 @ 7:32 pm #
“You’re given to fantasies, cheap excuses, false narratives and race superiority type non-sense.”
The passage you were criticizing dealt with public education issues, not finance, and are matters of consensus(the debate is over!) among truly disinterested parties; that is, ones that don’t benefit from the continued connivance, either by status, power, or monetarily. But truthfully, as a society we all benefit negatively from the disservice done in the public education sector and the overall dumbing down of our society. We’re pouring billions into public education in America and not getting a very good return on that investment, less in fact than we used to recieve for far less money…
It’s time to privatize the education system, and provide folks with vouchers so that they can send their children to the school of their choice; let the free market incentivize schools to search out the best teachers possible, ones that are actually qualified and get results…
“Dweebie little engineering louts who suckle government hand outs to build ‘em x-ray-of-death defense systems that don’t work, they need their budget cut to shreds. I want my government welfare queens to be writers, poets and artisans, not unimaginative bigoted slimeballs who, for reasons unimaginable, think they’re God’s chosen and solely deserving of life-long payments from tax payers.”
Well, I think I’ll start by saying that the government pays me for prior services rendered; protecting your freedom to publicly engage in wild speculation that borders on fantasy itself sometimes. And, while I take some measure of personal offense at the whole “unimaginative” slur, especially considering the projects I was involved after leaving NAVAIR for NAVSEA, I can see where some people may develop that kind of prejudice.
As I mentioned when criticizing the public school system, they tend to focus more on social indoctrination than on teaching math, science, or factual history. Most of this focus on diversity training and social indoctrination comes under the guise of more humanities style classes, although Billy Ayers stresses the indoctrination to the point where word problems in math classes are structured in a way to re-inforce the other points of view they wish instilled. Instead of this indoctrination, they should actually recieve an education; we should stop applauding the fact that graduating seniors read at an 8th frade level, and wonder why they don’t read at a 12th grade level. We should stop worrying whether our middle schooler can speak spanish, but make sure that hey can all actually speak and write english…
Ya feelin’ me here?
Finally, once again you’ve insulted me in a vile fashion, by accusing me of bigotry and racism. I assume you did this to get my goat, as you know I asked you once before to not go there. thor, you don’t know what I look like, or much about me really. While I’m sure you have the image of a pasty, pocket protector wearing, geek in your mind, nothing could be farther from the truth. I’ll forget about physical dimensions for now, outside of saying that I’m larger than the average bear; 95th percentile, erconomically speaking…
But perhaps more importantly, I am considerable percentage Cherokee by blood, enough so that I could have gotten a free ride through college; but I chose to do the right thing and leave the subsidies for those who really needed it, instead of gaming the system. So you see thor, among the hierarchy of victimhood groups in the identity politics deck, I actually hold a trump hand. I have absolute moral authority based on the left’s own grievance narrative, and given that I’ve gotten where I am without any EEO preferances or set asides simply reinforces that; it makes me nigh on unassailable, at least to the usual “whitey-righty-evil-son-of-privilege-RethugliKKKan-hater-racist” meme…
And all notwithstanding the places I’ve lived, and among whom, as well as my time spent in a truly diverse institution-the US Navy…
So I’m afraid you’ve projected some of your own shortcomings onto me. And once again you’ve insulted me by trying to brand me a racist. While the former can probably be chalked up to ideological differences, the latter is either mistaken or just mean…
In either case, I believe you owe me an apology; I would be big enough to do the same if I had wronged you…
Are you?
Comment by roht m'I ,iH on 6/18 @ 7:33 pm #
.tiaw ,oN
.em wO!B
Comment by JHo on 6/18 @ 7:34 pm #
The Age of Obama is already drawing to an end, thor. From here on out, seems it’s gloves off.
U tuffguy, u.
Obama and The Gays: A Non-Love Story Getting Less Lovely By The Minute
Treasury Department Admits Challenging Independence of TARP Inspector General
We’re All Neocons Now
Treasury to Auction $104 Billion In Debt Next Week, a Record
Honeymoon Over: It’s On Obama’s Watch Now
Top Two in Amazon’s Bestsellers List
Poll: Public concerned about size of deficit
Obama Poll Sees Doubt on Budget and Health Care
White House admits Obama “benefits” speech simply political ploy, plan still being created after it was already announced
Japan warns that North Korea may fire missile at U.S. on Independence Day
Broader Fed role provokes wide dissent
And on it goes. Yer a mere snack tray of public sentiment, thor, in a sequined sleep mask. Would you like a nice Dodd & Durbin on the rocks to nod you off again? We’ll be landing in Reality soon.
Comment by roht m'I ,iH on 6/18 @ 7:37 pm #
And they call us hillbillies backwards!
.ti tuoba em lleT
Comment by guinsPen on 6/18 @ 8:21 pm #
the US Navy
Thanks for your service, BR.
Also, I’d like to e-mail discuss something with you.
guinsPen-at-comcast-dot-net, here.
Comment by bh on 6/18 @ 8:46 pm #
A two step overhand right that starts low and ends high? And here I thought it was a quick counter over a jab.
Comment by thor on 6/18 @ 8:50 pm #
Wouldn’t that be more commonly known as a counter right?
Comment by bh on 6/18 @ 8:53 pm #
Counter right can be lots of things. Cross if the guy is circling towards your power. Or a straight if they’ve thrown a few jab then overhands in a row. Or an overhand if he’s tired and bringing his jab back low.
Comment by thor on 6/18 @ 9:14 pm #
I’m not apologetic enough to keep up with your demands. I just can’t manufacture ‘em fast enough.
If you drank a few rum-runners in Haiti, got a massage in the Philippines and nailed a hooker in Thailand, I don’t think National Geographic is looking for ya, Bob. Could be more to those people and places you visited than your week-end layover allowed. I love me some third world. A man can really cut up in those place, you know, with one’s machetes a blazin’! Thanks for protecting our fine shores from all the fun, Bob. You’ve made boredom safe from tyranny. The Canadian navy is even better than ours, Bob, because nothing fun happens up there, unless you go to Montreal where those loose French chicks commit unspeakable sins.
These poorly cloaked race-ethic-culture-centric arguments you make very well could be based on your sincere naivete. If so, I’m sorry. It’s just that I want our school children filled to the brim with Flaubert, Foucault and Marxist class warfare narratives because I actually think Victorians suck all.
Agree to disagree?
Comment by happyfeet on 6/18 @ 9:23 pm #
hey. Here are some fake nuts! They look very tasty but you can’t eat them because they are fake nuts. You can get 4 dozen fake nuts for $28.25 plus also shipping. Fake nuts for you and me.
Comment by Lance Armstrong on 6/18 @ 9:26 pm #
That’s not funny!
Comment by thor on 6/18 @ 9:30 pm #
I’ve also been in one bad motorcycle wreck. Vroom, vroom! Love ‘em motorcycles. Cause I’m tough!
I once kicked a homeless 6-year-old-looking cannibal kid in Peru after he tried to bite me.
I climbed a steep mountain, once.
Fighter jet, flyin’ ‘em is a breeze.
I could be the most exciting guy in the world.
Comment by guinsPen on 6/18 @ 9:35 pm #
If you were one.
Comment by Bob Reed on 6/18 @ 9:49 pm #
For what it’s worth, most of my cruises were in the Caribbean, North Atlantic, Mediterrainian, Red Sea, and of course, Persian Gulf-several times. And shore time? I recall in 91 we were on cruise 189 days, and approximately 170 were spent at sea! Not much time for shore whores there…
And, we made boredom safe from tyranny; protected our shores from all the fun? I sense you’re trying to be witty here, and with the crack about the Canadian Navy; I’m not drunk nor spittle enraged enough to mistake that construct-I can tell it’s a backhanded compliment, I’ll take it…
I really don’t know what to make of the rest of it. Especially the last paragraph. I’m not aware of any “cloaked” arguments I was making. And Victorians? Is that where you think conservatives want America to stay in stasis? I really don’t get it…
But as always, yes, we’ll agree to disagree.
Comment by bh on 6/18 @ 9:57 pm #
From above, Bob, you mentioned you’re a big guy. What’s it like on a ship?
I couldn’t go Navy ROTC because of steel in my ankle, high school injury, but people were saying it’s a giant pain to be on a ship in you’re tall. Bit over 6′4” barefoot myself.
Comment by Bob Reed on 6/18 @ 9:57 pm #
Oh, and I recall your jet story, a back seat rider in a Russian trainer…
Son, I would have had you beggin’ for mercy in a Tomcat! I guarantee you didn’t pull any G’s in that bird, comparatively…
After you burned the first 6000 lbs of fuel, and lit the burner, she could go ballistic; accelerate in a pure vertical climb…
A tits machine for sure
Comment by Bob Reed on 6/18 @ 10:02 pm #
Yeah bh,
You would have had to duck a bit; I was 6 foot 3 prior to a back injury I sustained. Although I recovered completely, I lost nearly an inch!
It’s not as bad on a carrier as other ships; the cadillacs of the ocean-full disclosure though, I never went on any battleships. But, you always need to be mindful going through watertight doors…
And, I can’t elaborate much, but submarines are muuuuuuuch worse…
Comment by thor on 6/18 @ 11:14 pm #
Bob I also have no doubt you’re a heightist. Every educated Marxist knows the stuggles and war crimes among height classes. And since you lack said superior education, I’m sure you don’t have a clue.
It started in what is now the Congo, Rwanda and Burundi. Hundreds of years ago there was nobody there but Pygmies and gorillas. Then the capitalist-leaning Buntu tribes filtered down from the north. They were, darker, taller, farmers and cattle raisers. They started shaking the trees until the Pygmies dropped from their protective canopies and then enslaved ‘em or ate ‘em. You read that right, you tall-type bastards ate Pygmies. Pygmies were hunters, only eating what they killed and peoples who valued the bounty of land and nature, noble lower height class strugglers. The Bantu tribe became fat louts, having grown fat from all the food reaped from harnessing Pygmy power. The largest tribe of the Bantu were the Hutu, and their fate was also sealed when heightism reared its ugly head. The Tutsi came down from the north and stuck the shorter, fatter Hutu with spears, ate ‘em or enslaved ‘em, just as the Hutu had done to the Pygmy.
I’d tell you more but this seems like more than enough Marxism for you to handle in one post.
Comment by JHo on 6/19 @ 6:28 am #
“I know that most men, including those at ease with problems of the greatest complexity, can seldom accept the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as would oblige them to admit the falsity of conclusions which they have proudly taught to others, and which they have woven, thread by thread, into the fabrics of their life.” – Leo Tolstoy
Tolstoy on thor. Heh.
Comment by thor on 6/19 @ 7:49 am #
I always figured you were a immigrant son from Lower Slobovia, JHo.
Fuckin’ son of a Commie!
Comment by Bob Reed on 6/19 @ 8:06 am #
Son of a Commie!
I don’t recall JHo regaling us with tales of his adventures riding in the back seat of a Russian jet trainer. Didn’t you lose your lunch that time?
I can tell; you’re a red sympathizer! Communist on aisle 12! Frank Marshall Davis lovin’, Stalin quotin’, Lenin lovin’, Marx mumblin’, certified card carryin’ Commie!
But what I don’t get is, how can you be so easily amused by exploiting the poor workers, like Viktoriya, and those third worlders you loves yourself some of so much?
Almost…Oligarchal; bourgeois at least!
Yours truly,
The Heightist
Comment by thor on 6/19 @ 3:37 pm #
Questions, questions, so many leading moothah-fookin’ squisthtrons.
One is instructed not to eat lunch prior to flight. I follow instructions of my Communist masters. No lunch eaten and no lunch lost. Drool and drool only donated to the alter of G-forces.
Viktoriya made a career choice to enter into and offer domestic services. She cooked, cleaned and fucked select customers of her choice. Exploitation would have been paying her less than what was agreed upon or not paying her at all. She was not exploited. She was paid in full, even tipped extra, as is customary. Your conflicted objection may be cultural and/or you may have deep-seated repressed sexual inhibitions. Personally, I think you should raise your issues with Oleg, he banged Viktoriya more often than I. He was, as I recall, a true Russian sex machine.
To The Finland Station,
The Red Ranger
Comment by Bob Reed on 6/19 @ 3:54 pm #
Without a doubt thor, you are a real piece of work!
Inimitable always, and at times roll on the floor witty. Although of different worldviews, I can tell I would enjoy hoisting a few with you…
I thought the same of Bill CLinton, my one-time C-in-C. Although I disagreed completely with his politics, he would have been a hell of a guy to party with! You could be sure that there would have been no shortage of hawt chicks if you were rollin’ with Billy Jeff…
So, За нашу дружбу!, краÑный Ranger…
Enjoy whatever you get into on this lovely Friday evening…
Comment by thor on 6/19 @ 5:12 pm #
There’s a Russian cultural aspect of vodka which I believe you underestimate.
When one starts in on a 500-mg bottle it’s customary to consume it straight, one shot after another, there’s no sok, or juice, as Yanks call sweetened nectar.
You’re lucky if you get a pickle to chomp into to chase the vodka burn.
Inhibitions fade as quick as a bottle empties, Russian style.
Comment by Cole Minor on 6/19 @ 7:24 pm #
When Mister Robert Reed, God bless him,
Can get Russian Reds to yes him,
Then I suppose,
Anything goes.
Comment by guinsPen on 6/19 @ 9:49 pm #
[lillehammer is] at times roll on the floor witty
Link, please.
Comment by Bob Reed on 6/19 @ 10:12 pm #
Hey guinsPen,
I sent you an e-mail like you asked, just so you know…
Best Wishes
Comment by guinsPen on 6/19 @ 10:31 pm #
My use of “discuss” was sloppy.
“Have a question” would’ve been better.
Your further comments have answered my Q.
Thank you for your consideration.
Comment by guinsPen on 6/19 @ 10:54 pm #
Link, please.
Comment by geoffb on 6/19 @ 10:55 pm #
Vodka in solid powdered form. Injectable no doubt.
Comment by Bob Reed on 6/19 @ 11:12 pm #
guinsPen,
I’m glad you found out what you were interested in; even if I never knew what it was!
I presume though it had something to do with my Navy time…
Take it easy!
Comment by guinsPen on 6/19 @ 11:23 pm #
I blame Cole Porter.
Comment by guinsPen on 6/19 @ 11:54 pm #
Say it ain’t so, Cole!
Comment by Bob Reed on 6/20 @ 12:04 am #
Cole Porter was a great musical mind; at once a composer, lyricist, and musical playwrite…
Comment by Bob Reed on 6/20 @ 12:11 am #
Wow, that video of Hildegard Knef doing Cole Porters “Silk Stockings” was pretty cool. She’s quite a babe too!
The Germans were always into that variety show style programming, but I don’t know about lately. Last time I was there was around 7 years ago…
Best Wishes
Comment by Craig on 6/20 @ 5:23 pm #
There was a time in this country’s history when if you publicly stated that another man’s daughter was a slut, he would show up at your house with two pistols or swords and invite you to the nearest field for a meeting.
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