Letterman and Palin: An American Anti-Love Story

Ed note: this is by frequent AlterNet commenter Tom Degan, who writes the blog, The Rant.

DISCLAIMER:

Let me start this thing off by saying that I thought the joke David Letterman made last week on his program at the expense of Sarah Palin's daughter was, to be polite, in questionable taste. Dave and his writers made their reputation for their wit and sophistication. They can do better than that.

The other day, a spokesman for Sarah Palin made this incredibly suggestive statement: "It would be wise to keep Willow [Palin's fourteen-year-old-daughter] away from David Letterman." When asked yesterday morning by NBC's Matt Lauer exactly what that statement implied, Palin callously replied, "Take it however you want to take it." Nice!

I've seen some sleazy politicians in my day, but what Sarah Palin did this week, exploiting her underage daughter - using her name as an imaginary victim of an imaginary rape by a man five decades her senior - was, beyond a shadow of any doubt, the most despicable thing I've ever witnessed in the circus arena that American politics has become.

The joke Letterman made, distasteful as we might find it, was not about Governor Palin's fourteen-year-old daughter Willow.

It pertained to her oldest daughter Bristol - the same daughter whose main claim to fame is her current status as an eighteen-year-old, unwed mother.

Sarah Palin must know this. She can't possibly be as stupid as she comes off in every single public forum she has ever participated in - no one's that dumb! Let's be as blunt as we possibly can be, okay? It was Bristol Palin who practiced unprotected sex with her boy friend Levi Johnson. When her mother was being vetted by the McCain campaign late last summer as a possible running mate, Bristol was already well along into her pregnancy, a fact her mother conveniently concealed from McCain's handlers. Something like that might not play too well with the "Family Values" Mob, you know what I mean? When they were no longer able to hide the fact that Bristol was "in a family way", the campaign's spin machine desperately tried to put a cute little smiley face on the situation:

"Isn't that sweet? She chose life!"

And good for her for doing so....and God bless the child.

Thank your lucky stars for Sarah Palin. Her nomination as GOP running mate last summer is a text book illustration of what is wrong with that hideous, train wreck of a party. There were, quite literally, scores and scores of people far better qualified than she to take on the mantle of running mate (Kaye Bailey Hutchinson, Arlen Spector - even that nitwit Joe Liebemann - come easily to mind). The problem is that in the last thirty years, the Republican party has been hijacked by kooks, criminals and fools. They forced McCain, against his better judgment, to accept Palin. Had they tried, they could not have found a worse candidate. But for her nomination, President McCain would be sleeping in the White House this very morning. [SIGH OF RELIEF]

In a column in this morning's edition of the worst newspaper in the Milky Way (the New York Post), Michelle Malkin, the Far Right's favorite bloviating air-head/pin-up girl, addressed David Letterman directly:

Tell us, great comic genius, how tacking on four years to the target daughter makes it funny? We unenlightened dim bulbs who live outside of Manhattan's boundaries don't get the joke.

Of course they don't. They never do. Let me attempt to answer that question for Malkin and her fellow, unenlightened dim bulbs:

What little humor there is to be mined from this sad situation is based on the undeniable fact that Sarah Palin, from the moment she was vomited onto the American consciousness ten months ago, exploited her obviously dysfunctional family by portraying them as icons of virtue and purity. Single mom Bristol Palin is at this very moment a very visible spokesperson for "abstinence". How does "tacking on four years to the target daughter make it funny"? Because (like it or not) she is a grown woman and she's a hypocrite. American children are a lot more on-the-ball in many respects than their clueless parents. The "Do as I say and not as I do" lecture doesn't really cut the mustard with a lot of these kids. Malkin ended her piece this morning by screeching: