Tuesday, June 16, 2009

On Palin

Okay, I've held my tongue long enough.

The apparently brain-dead governor of Alaska (see interview with Matt Lauer here where she has several d'oh! moments) is milking a joke about her told by David Letterman for all it's worth and then some, and people are letting her get away with it. Let's get some facts straight, shall we?

1) SNL joked about INCEST in the Palin family, and the good governor still saw fit to appear on SNL after that. Clearly her indignance level is selective at best.

2) Jay Leno made a similar joke to Letterman's and he wasn't called on it either. Because that's what comedians do.

3) Letterman has apologized twice--no one else ever has for their jokes about the Palins. And it's not like they don't supply plenty of fodder for the comedians.

4) Letterman in no way made allusion to Todd and Sarah Palin's 14-year old daughter. They are the ones bringing her into this and shame on them for it.

5) If Governor Airhead hadn't embraced "abstinence only" and had instead talked to her children about birth control, perhaps she wouldn't have had an UNWED TEENAGE DAUGHTER. Truth hurts, doesn't it?

If the Republican party is pinning its hopes on this grotesquerie of a politician, then start buying your funereal bouquets now. Only the most hardcore idiots are still backing her. And yes, I do mean idiots. Sorry, gaypatriot, but it's the truth. If you're sooooo intent on being partisan and supporting Sarah Palin just because she's a "conservative"--if you can't see through this veneer of bullshit--then try some Visine. Because it's all over but the cryin'.

(And kudos to Matt Lauer for taking her to task.)

And AS FOR YOU, gay men and women who seem so surprised that Obama's not all he said he was: you should've listened to me.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I strongly disagree with it being ok to go after a politician's children. Frankly, I thought the treatment of Palin's children during the campaign was appalling. Partisans dragged Bristol and her situation through the mud, published highly dubious reports about Trig's paternity, and had a field day referring to two teenagers as Springeresque trailer trash.

It all went over several lines, and no one seems particularly remorseful about it either.

If Bristol wants to take all that and try to turn it into something positive, that's fine. She should be left to it. Any national figure who wants to continue to bash her should be met with scorn. Note: Bristol has said several times she knew all about birth control when she got pregnant. She made a dumb mistake, which kids who don't receive abstinence education make all the time. So the child didn't live up to the parent's standards. Yeah, just like 95% of everyone else's kids.

Also, I don't think it was exploitative to note that Willow was on the trip. If you're already on the defensive (what parents wouldn't be when their children are being assailed on national television?), I could see them putting Willow and Letterman's joke together. He was sloppy in not making it clearer.

All this isn't to say Palin's the brightest moose wandering the oil field. Her interview last week where she denounced socialism and praised Alaska's payments to residents was one of the most hilarious cognitive disconnects I've ever seen. She doesn't belong on the national stage at this point (though, neither does Obama, but yeah, we're screwed).

She may very well be an idiot, but that should not be invoked in defense of the fact lots of very powerful media people have gone after her children in ways that deserve nothing less than the strongest condemnation we can muster. No one has to like or approve of her in order to retain human decency enough to say "Enough with the kids already."

Jamie said...

I don't agree with going after a politician's children either. But[i]I[/i] had no doubt what Letterman was talking about--the 18 year old. I groaned when he made it, and even so, he has admitted the joke was in poor taste.

My point is that the disparity between the right's reaction to this--between the Palin's reaction to this and the other instances I mentioned shouldn't be overlooked. The selective indignance is not fooling anyone.

Anonymous said...

I honestly thought he'd meant Willow when I first saw the jokes. But then, I'm probably one of about ten people who knew Willow was even on the trip. I'd learned it from reading a story about the autism fundraiser.

To your points, I would say it's political circumstance. In a campaign where you have very limited time left to get your point across before the election, getting into a pissing match with a comedian is a very bad idea. McCain tried it with Letterman and ended up in one of the deepest ruts of his campaign. It consumes media oxygen in a negative way, makes you look petty, and though we may worship victims, we certainly don't tend to vote for them.

It would've been a bad idea politically for Palin to get into it at that time. However, now we're quite far from a campaign, and she can get into with media figures at her leisure.

I think the entire hullabaloo is taking up far too much of people's attention. I mean, really, protestors? Over this? Those people should be scooching on over towards the health care hell we're all about to suffer. Taking time out of your day to mill around a television studio is so very pointless and so very small.

But Letterman is still a total asshole.