Sarah Palin Vs. David Letterman (Egads!)

Anyone hear any good jokes about Sarah Palin recently?

If you haven't heard this by now, and frankly it'd be near impossible not to, Mr funny-pants David Letterman made a few relatively minor jokes earlier this week which implied that Sarah Palin's daughter (who's names I really haven't found worthwhile to research,) was impregnated during a few social events with family. The crux of the material was based on Palin's 18-year old daughter whom is pregnant and unwed. However the events discussed in those jokes had Palin's 14 year old daughter present. A seemingly small matter one would think, and I'm guessing one that should be minor, since most of the population could figure out exactly who Letterman was referring to.

Well, not everyone apparently. It appears that Sarah Palin couldn't. And as a result, we're all forced to ride a media shitstorm.

Ye gods, this whole situation is so comically bad, that it should only be coming from the mouth of some pampered celebrity, not someone who's supposed to be a functional member of the United States government. Palin has taken a relatively minor joke (and I know he has gone far lower than that in his distinguished career for a chuckle,) and suddenly made it an attack on family values. She's even gone so far as to accuse Letterman of things like "rape," and "contribution to the abuse of young women," and "erodes a young girl's self esteem." To sum up, she basically called him a dirty perverted old man. How dare he say such horrible things about a 14 year old girl and so forth?

I'm not sure about you world, but I'm inclined to believe Letterman. Material like that is right up his alley, and I don't think he spends huge amounts of time researching every little detail of a situation just to make sure he's got his facts straight for what equals eight seconds of joke. Best I can tell, the guy's got more than enough workload on his plate to consider the logistics of what daughter went where.

Was it in poor taste? Probably so but hey, the man admits it. What more do you want?

And that's the thing, Sarah Palin doesn't seem to want anything. She seems pretty content just sitting around screaming "atrocity!" Public apologies (though admittedly, and hilariously tongue in cheek) didn't work, invites to be a guest didn't work. I'm not even sure burning at the stake would work in this case.

So Governor Sarah Palin, if you are reading this, (natch!) let us go over a few things. Firstly, you are not so important that someone like Letterman is going to invest huge heaps of time tracking down every movement of your family. Sorry, but you're not. You are a crutch, a topic that still has some comical value and can be used at any time to fill up space. That is your current role in the grand scheme of things.

Secondly, don't you have a state to run or something? Maybe it's because my governor has a fancy new post, but I've never heard him make time to bitch about shit like this. Frankly, I've never heard any governor bitch about shit like this. And the reason why, I'm guessing, is that they're pretty busy people. So, Letterman's busy, governors in other states are busy, what the hell are you doing?

Thirdly, if we break down the linguistics of Letterman's joke, we shall see that never once implied your daughter (either of them) was raped. What he did imply, was that your daughter is a slut. And it's an implication that everyone in the world pretty much agrees with. These men mentioned in the jokes were not suggested to have taken advantage of your daughter so much as having your daughter thrust upon them in the throws of passion. See the difference?

And finally, considering how you managed to be a guest on all sorts of comedy programming and poke fun at yourselves when you running for vice president of this country, it looks really childish that you'd whine about being the butt of a joke now that you're a loser. Seriously, you stood there with Tina Fey and bobbled your head around like you were one of the team. You sure seemed prone to laugh it off when you thought you might get promoted. But now that you find yourself still being a governor, you can't handle the heat? Sorry lady, that doesn't fly with me. If you wanted to run a serious campaign and be taken seriously, then great. But you didn't, you took the lighthearted approach and went pop culture. That shit comes with consequences.

So Mr. Letterman, if you're reading this, I'd like to offer a suggestion: Make no more jokes about Sarah Palin. Not because this controversy is important, and not because the topic material isn't rife with parody, but because she's basically a big baby. And while babies tend to make easy targets, the fact that you're picking on them always feels kind of cheap. And I know you're better than that.

UPDATE

Unbeknownst to me, Sarah Palin had also referred to Letterman's jokes as being about "about the statutory rape of my 14 year-old daughter." As I learned many years ago, in high school no less, there is no legal term called statutory rape in the articles of law. You'd kind of figure someone who holds a high office like Governor would know that.