You had me, and then you lost me.

[apocalypsos]

This ... kinda gets to the heart of my problem with the Palin/Letterman thing.

A quick summation for those who've missed it: Sarah Palin takes her daughter to a baseball game. Letterman then makes a tasteless, not-really-funny joke about A-Rod knocking up the daughter. Letterman thought she took Bristol except, oops, no, she took 14-year-old Willow. Palin calls him on it, and Letterman apologizes on his show.

If it had ended right then and there, I probably would have stayed on Palin's -- or at least her daughter's -- side.

But of course, we're talking about Sarah Palin here, and as you can tell in that article she went on the Today show this morning, took the opportunity to sarcastically call Obama "the candidate who must be obeyed," and also said this:

Host Matt Lauer questioned the Governor on the Letterman flap, pressing her on some of her more provocative statements about situation, asking, "Are you suggesting that David Letterman can't be trusted around a 14 year old girl?" Her response: "Take it how you want to take it."

Okay, putting aside the fact that Obama is not secretly writing jokes for Letterman's show and therefore has nothing to do with this particular instance of bad form, making some snotty comment that Letterman's probably some sort of pedophile is probably even more crass than what he said. Letterman made a joke -- a lame, awful sexist JOKE -- about A-Rod, in which your daughter was simply a prop. (The prop part is skeevy, I'm not going to deny that.) You went into an interview and implied in a flip manner that Letterman couldn't be trusted around pre-teen girls.

Do you have any idea how appalling that is?

You had me. You HAD me. For one blessed moment, I was like, "I can't believe I'm saying this, but I'm on Palin's side." A broken clock's right twice a day, right? Eventually you had to come up with something that wasn't completely tone-deaf and selfish.

And then you proceeded to do what you always do -- open your mouth and speak.

I'm surprised I expected anything better of you.

EDIT: RT @Kaydeb: someone is exploiting palin's daughter for publicity, but it ain't letterman... | Exactly. Exactly.

Comments

[sxyblkmn.livejournal.com]

you have a twitter?

[bluesteelstars.livejournal.com]

Right?? She just needs to stop talking already. Way to make an otherwise valid complaint of a tasteless joke into something even more ridiculous and tasteless, and, "catalyzing."

[lothlorienbaby.livejournal.com]

Exactly x3. All she had to say was that she was appalled by his joke but she appreciated that he apologized. End of story. But she figures she can get some more press and sound bytes out of it. Which backfires on her because now she's made an appalling accusation. Whether Letterman will shrug it off or demand an apology remains to be seen. I kind of hope he asks for an apology.

[valarltd.livejournal.com]

14 is not pre-teen. Many 14s are already sexually active.

And no, I wouldn't trust Letterman around my 14 year old daughter. He's skeevy.

[shadow-phoenix2.livejournal.com]

Sexually active 14 year olds? =/
I thought I was relatively open-minded, but apparently not. 14 is so young! I know I sound naive, but are there really many as opposed to well, less than "many" [in my opinion not-so-well-brought-up] children sexually active in Western society? Because that seems... inappropriate.

[shadow-phoenix2.livejournal.com]

Just realised that "not-so-well-brought-up" may have come across differently than I meant it to. I didn't mean to imply that sexually active 14 year olds haven't been raised well, that they're not good, decent people. In the context of a teen (tween?) relationship however, 14 just seems so very, very young to be engaging in such behaviour. It makes me wonder at the parents who allow their children to be unsupervised with their boyfriend/girlfriend or in social situations often enough for them to be regularly sexually active.

Probably a more a reflection on my upbringing than anything else. =P I have a younger brother who's 15, and a younger sister who just turned 14. They're not allowed to go to adult-unsupervised friends homes or parties (where we know/trust the adults in question), and if they go out with people socially at night, it's always to a planned activity like roller-blading or the cinema, rather than just loitering around town. If (somehow) either one of my siblings was sexually active at this age, I can assure you they'd not be leaving the house for anything other than school for a long, long time. Ha, we sound so conservative. =/

[valarltd.livejournal.com]

Yes, 14 is young. I have a 14 year old son who hasn't even made it through puberty yet.

My sister and daughter were both active at 14. It's not about raising. It's about opportunity, internal drives and external pressure. (I was under external pressure to wait: no boy would look twice at me)

Average age is about 16. But that is an average, which means about half the kids are active before that.

[shadow-phoenix2.livejournal.com]

"Average age is about 16. But that is an average, which means about half the kids are active before that." I'd never realised that before. O_o

You make a good point, and have given me a lot to think on. ^_^

[agent-mimi.livejournal.com]

Letterman made a joke -- a lame, awful sexist JOKE -- about A-Rod, in which your daughter was simply a prop.

I thought the joke was part of a series of jokes he did about Sarah Palin, not A-Rod. I guess I don't recall what order the jokes went in, but I thought he first called her a "slutty flight attendant" then immediately went into the "daughter got knocked up by A-Rod" thing.

Either way, yeah, the girls were being used as props for his joke. And the girls are still being used by Sarah for her little revenge thing. Those kids are getting screwed on all sides, and I'm really just sick of it. It no longer has anything to do with politics.

[lilacsigil.livejournal.com]

Letterman thinks it's appropriate to make jokes about 14-year-old girls, I think not trusting him around your daughter is a reasonable response. But I agree he's far from the only one exploiting those poor kids.

[beanarie.livejournal.com]

It sounded like when he made the joke, he thought he was talking about Bristol, who is not fourteen and has had many jokes about her sex-life told the world over. And if he thought it was appropriate, he probably would have railed about the injustice of Palin's reaction, right? Dave's not one for hiding when he's pissed off.

[lilacsigil.livejournal.com]

I just commented to apocalypsos below that I thought from the description that the joke was that she took Willow, not that he was joking about Bristol. But now I understand! Yes, Bristol is an adult and also being a public figure, so fair enough.

[apocalypsos.livejournal.com]

But he wasn't making the joke about Willow. He thought it was Bristol. It's not much better, of course, but he wasn't making a joke about a young teenager, he was making a joke about an adult.

[lilacsigil.livejournal.com]

I thought you meant that the JOKE was that she took Willow and Willow got pregnant! OK then - Bristol is indeed an adult.