David Letterman made a couple of crude remarks. David Letterman has no appreciable viewing audience. If the rest of the media hadn’t fed the fire, scarcely anyone would have known the incident ever happened. As it is, he managed to publicly insult the Palin family, a major league baseball star, the entire industry of flight attendants, deride women in general and effectively give tacit approval of statutory rape. David Letterman should be fired.
Last night I heard someone refer to him as, “The Wal-Mart greeter of late night talk hosts”; it’s a pretty accurate description of the current state of his ‘act’. Ol’ Dave has been around for a long time — maybe too long.
A few years ago Don Imus was fired for a disrespectful, off-the-cuff remark uttered in response to something said by one of his morning show accomplices. Later that day, he made a sincere apology to the girls he had offended and a few days later spent several hours with them in caring conversation, even though he had already been released from the station and had nothing to gain, except the preservation of his self respect.
On the other hand, the statements made by Letterman were premeditated. They had been written, approved, recorded, edited and finally delivered under the pretense of a ‘joke’ — no fewer than five opportunities for someone to realize the material was in poor taste and eliminate it. After five days, no comment has yet been made by CBS and nothing approaching a serious apology has slipped through the gaps in Dave’s teeth.
Given his own record of fatherhood, one has to be surprised he would even raise the subject. Throwing stones at Conservative women seems to have become good sport for ‘the other side’ and Sarah Palin might as well wear a bullseye on her back. Maybe it’s because she IS, in fact, everything many of her Liberal counterparts only talk about but never achieve. I think she scares the hell out of them. Anyone with the ability to draw a crowd of 20 or 30 thousand people just by reading the Yellow Pages will do that!
Whether or not there was anything political fueling Letterman’s intent is, at best, secondary. First and foremost, he was simply stupid. Imagine the outcry if a Conservative had said that Hillary Clinton had a “slutty flight attendant look” or that one of Obama’s little girls had been “knocked up” by a professional athlete.
Alleged funny man, or whatever the excuse, as someone in the public eye David Letterman is charged with a certain responsibility — and when he elects to abdicate that responsibility, there must be consequences. If Imus can be fired for tossing pebbles onto the basketball court, what should be the penalty for hurling boulders at the innocent? Letterman must go.
R.S.F.
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