Letterman’s Bad Form

By now, everyone knows about David Letterman’s tasteless and downright cruel monologue about Sarah Palin and her daughter, Willow, where he said Palin looked light a slutty flight attendant and said that A-Rod (of the Yankees) and knocked Willow up during the 7th inning stretch of a baseball game.

I will assert that Palin nailed Letterman to the proverbial wall in her interview with Matt Lauer. She managed to make Lauer accept some sort of objectivity as a journalist as well (okay, so maybe that’s taking it a bit far. That’s a lot to ask for, really…) I really thought she was spot-on when she said that Letterman didn’t need to apologize to her daughter Willow, but that he needed to apologize to women of all ages in our society for promoting and contributing to the cultural degradation of women, especially young women, that permeates pop-culture and dirties our society.

Of course, this entire scandal/issue brings to mind the Don Imus issue, where Imus called the Rutger’s Womens’ basketball team “nappy-headed hos.”

Both of these pompous assholes were way off base in making these comments. All comments were degrading to women; Imus’s comments were racially offensive; Letterman’s comments should have outraged women, mothers, fathers, brothers, etc.

I don’t, however, believe that Imus OR Letterman should have been/should be fired. They do, after all, work for privately owned media outlets in a country where a free press is a founding principle (although our media has been looking more and more like some extension of the State, but that’s another post….). I say, let Letterman be, because he’s going to have to deal with the long, painful consequences of his “jokes” as viewers and ratings dwindle, advertisers pull-out, and his show slowly sinks into his own angry little ocean.

I haven’t liked Letterman since he morphed from “Late Night Comic” into “Bitter, Politically-Charged Pitbull” during the ‘09 election. Letterman couldn’t hide his political alliances, which is also a freedom he can enjoy, but it’s not something viewers enjoy when they tune in and are expecting good-spirited jabbing at both sides.

To me, his ugly and downright evil remarks about Palin and her daughter are just a festering explosion of his pent-up hatred for anyone who doesn’t share his uber-liberal values.

So, CBS shouldn’t fire Letterman. Whether liberal, conservative, agnostic, Christian, purple, green, black, Muslim, Californian, or a New Yorker, I believe viewers know that this was a huge step over the line. The fact that Letterman made such a joke illustrates his character, and nothing about a nasty, sexist, bitter old man is very funny indeed.