Letterman REALLY apologies for joke

[Tennesseahawk]

hawk I would've never thought of you as a conspiracy theorist(can you hear the sarcasm in my typing?) You are so predictable it's not even funny, it actually makes me chuckle.

How can something be not even funny and make you chuckle? You're a walking contradiction of terms, witness. LOL

When you can actually add to the THOUGHT process of debate, I'll start taking you seriously. Until then, drone on, my friend.

[witness23]

How can something be not even funny and make you chuckle? You're a walking contradiction of terms, witness. LOL

When you can actually add to the THOUGHT process of debate, I'll start taking you seriously. Until then, drone on, my friend.

You are right, its not funny, its actually quite sad that you are so predictable.

In this thread what are debating? How about we debate on if Palin should owe Letterman an apology for calling him a pedophile, just throwin' it out there.

[Tennesseahawk]

You are right, its not funny, its actually quite sad that you are so predictable.

Quite sad, huh? Well that's in your own mind, which doesn't cause me concern in the least. So my answer to you calling me predictable is me calling you empty of any original thought. I look forward to you proving me wrong.

In this thread what are debating? How about we debate on if Palin should owe Letterman an apology for calling him a pedophile, just throwin' it out there.

If you think you could make the case, go for it. I'm not stopping you.

[davekc]

What is sad is reading the other thread with this and the folks that for some reason decided to defend Letterman. I wasn't here over the weekend so I didn't respond.
I could care less whether one is a democratic or republican.
But it was foolish for some of the comments I read.
Finally he saw how ridiculous he was, and apologized.
If this joke came from someone else that wasn't a democrat, this when have been like the end of the world.
So folks on the left, yes..........there is a media double standard.
Even Letterman has finally acknowledged that.

[Pilgrim]

For those doubting Thomases who said e-mails and boycotts of Letterman's sponsors would be insignificant:

Letterman's Palin Joke Costs CBS an Advertiser, Spawns Campaign for His Firing
By Tim Molloy Mon Jun 15, 1:30 PM PDT


David Letterman's comments about Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and one of her daughters has prompted a hotel chain to pull its advertising on CBS' website — and spawned a campaign to fire the Late Show host that includes a planned protest outside his studio.

Embassy Suites, part of the Hilton Hotels Corp., pulled advertising on CBS' site because of complaints, company spokeswoman Kendra Walker told TVGuide.com. The company was not an advertiser on Late Night with David Letterman.

"We received lots of e-mails from concerned guests and we assessed that the statement that he made was offensive enough to our guests and prospective guests that we elected to take the ads down," Walker said.

CBS did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday.

Letterman joked last week about Palin's daughter being "knocked up" by Alex Rodriguez during a New York Yankees game. He later clarified that he was referring to 18-year-old Bristol Palin — who, he said "was knocked up." But the Palin family and Letterman critics said he was referring to the governor's 14-year-old daughter, Willow, who attended the Yankees game with her mother.

"It's a disgraceful comment and it needs to be stopped," said Michael Patrick Leahy, one of the organizers of the "Fire David Letterman" campaign. "It is totally inappropriate and disgraceful for a 62-year-old man to sexually insult a 14-year-old girl, period. These comments are more egregious than those of Don Imus, and CBS fired him for those comments."

Leahy, who also helped organize the anti-tax "tea parties" in cities across the country earlier this year, estimated anywhere from 50 to 300 people would attend a protest planned outside Letterman's studio in New York City on Tuesday.

The campaign has also urged advertisers, including Embassy Suites, to pull their ads.

What do you think? Should Letterman be fired?

Television show - TV Show - Yahoo! TV

Still wondering about the motivation for his REAL apology? And to think, I've only gone without M&M's Peanuts for less than a week.

[chefdennis]

lol, as i said, the heat was coming fromothr places and he was feeling it.....

[Turtle]

What are you saying? You think it may be manufactured controversy?

No, I'm saying that it doesn't appear that he apologized to save his ratings, since his ratings were sky high for the two days immediately after this happened.

Then again, maybe Letterman and Palin got together a la Andy Kaufman and Jerry Lawler and cooked this whole thing up. I doubt it, tho.

I wonder if we'll ever hear Palin apologize for calling Letterman a pedophile.

Anyway, here's the full video of the apology. Seems pretty straightforward and honest, not manufactured at all.
Video: David Letterman apologizes to Sarah Palin--The Live Feed

[Tennesseahawk]

I wonder if we'll ever hear Palin apologize for calling Letterman a pedophile.

I wonder if Letterman will apologize to A-Rod for calling HIM a pedophile.

[Turtle]

I wonder if Letterman will apologize to A-Rod for calling HIM a pedophile.

Wow. Excellent. That's a grand slam dunk right there. LOL

[Turtle]

Here's kind of an interesting article from Paul Farhi at the

One thing Farhi misses in his analysis is what happened to McCain with Letterman during the campaign. McCain was scheduled to appear on Letterman's show, then at the last minute canceled, telling Letterman in a telephone conversation that he needed to get back to Washington. That was when the financial crisis was exploding, and McCain didn't want to appear on a non-serious show at that time, except that's not what he told Letterman. McCain instead hung around New York for a sit-down interview with Katie Couric. Letterman was not pleased.

McCain eventually did appear on Letterman after Letterman had several days of McCain-bashing monologues that led up to it. And once on the show, Letterman hammered McCain for the lie. McCain apologized and said there was no excuse, but coincidental or not, it was pretty much at that point when the McCain-Palin ticket was flushed down the toilet. McCain announced his candidacy on Letterman, and then killed it on the same show.

Palin may still harbor some ill feelings towards Letterman for that.


washingtonpost.com (if you're registered there)

Palin gag? Comedy?s all in mis-timing - Washington Post (if you're not)

Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
WASHINGTON - Did Sarah Palin not notice when late-night comedians were making fun of her daughter's pregnancy last fall, or did she simply get fed up with one-too-many cracks when a now-contrite David Letterman weighed in last week? Bristol Palin, the Alaska governor's then-pregnant 17-year-old, was a punch line for almost all of the late-night TV crew -- Jay Leno, Conan O'Brien, Jon Stewart, as well as Letterman -- almost as soon as her mother was chosen as Sen. John McCain's Republican running mate.

Facing enormous criticism for his Palin-daughter joke, Letterman on his show last night apologized to the Palin family, saying it could not "be defended."

Yet similar jokes never drew much objection from Palin's camp until Letterman's gag last week about Palin's daughter getting "knocked up" by baseball player Alex Rodriguez during a visit to a New York Yankees game -- a line Palin suggested was really a reference to her 14-year-old daughter, Willow, who attended the game.

On Sept. 2, during the presidential campaign, Leno, for example, told this joke on "The Tonight Show": "Governor Palin announced over the weekend that her 17-year-old unmarried daughter is five months pregnant. And you thought John Edwards was in trouble before! Now he has really done it."

On Oct. 10, O'Brien, then host of "Late Night," quipped: "Sarah Palin is going to drop the first puck at the Philadelphia Flyers hockey game. Then Palin will spend the rest of the game trying to keep the hockey players out of her daughter's penalty box."


Never fully disappeared
While the pregnant-daughter theme was most common on late-night shows during the fall campaign, it has never fully disappeared. And Letterman told far fewer of these jokes than some of his late-night brethren.

Through mid-March, Leno had made 15 jokes about the Palin daughter's pregnancy, Stewart had told four on "The Daily Show," and Letterman checked in with eight, according to an analysis of late-night humor by the Center for Media and Public Affairs, a nonpartisan research organization affiliated with George Mason University.

The comedian most likely to bash Bristol Palin? O'Brien, with 20 jokes at her expense.

"Saturday Night Live" has also parodied the Palin family in questionable ways. In a skit last September, a mock reporter joked about incest in the vice presidential candidate's family, saying, "I mean, come on. It's Alaska!"
Palin not only didn't protest, she appeared as a guest on the program a few weeks later.


Why now?
So why did Palin ask Letterman — and only Letterman — for an apology? And why did she wait until last week?

As it happens, Palin finally got what she was looking for last night, when Letterman offered a lengthy apology and explanation for why his joke went so wrong. He said he understood that his reference was unclear about which daughter he was referring to.

"I told a joke that was beyond flawed, and my intent is completely meaningless compared to the perception," he said. "And since it was a joke I told, I feel that I need to do the right thing here and apologize for having told that joke. It's not your fault that it was misunderstood, it's my fault. . . . So I would like to apologize, especially to the two daughters involved, Bristol and Willow, and also to the governor and her family and everybody else who was outraged by the joke."

It's conceivable that Palin was aware of the late-night jokes made about her daughter during the campaign and wanted to fight back, but kept quiet as a strategic matter, says Tim Graham, the director of media analysis for the Media Research Center, a conservative media watchdog organization.

"I think the [McCain] campaign said, 'Is that really the fight we want to have?' " he said. "Especially at that point in the campaign, making an issue of it might have [backfired]. They knew that those late-night clips would be on the Sunday morning shows, would be in the blogs and mentioned in the newspapers and everywhere else. So why give the comedians more to work with" by protesting the jokes?

A more cynical view may be that Palin had more than enough media attention last fall, and that her Letterman broadside was designed to renew attention when the spotlight is dimming. Palin may even have been aware of a Gallup poll released last week showing that she attracted less than 1 percent of Republicans who were asked to name the "main person who speaks for the Republican Party today."

A spokeswoman for Palin did not reply to an e-mail seeking comment.

Making sense
As a rhetorical strategy, Palin's timing actually makes a great deal of sense, said Richard Vatz, a professor of political communication at Towson University and a self-described conservative. Noting that the pregnant-daughter jokes had been dying down, Letterman's crack stood out, making him easier to isolate for criticism, he said.

"If a large number of people are doing something against you, it's hard to take on the whole group," Vatz said.
What's more, Letterman's use of the phrase "knocked up" made his comment seem especially crude and nasty, said Vatz: "I'm not defending the things that Leno or O'Brien said, but that phrase implies sexuality in a very negative way."
Even if his anti-Palin jokes have been less numerous than others', Letterman may be a more polarizing figure than other late-night comics -- and thus a ripe target for Palin, says S. Robert Lichter, the CMPA's director. "He's everything that Palin is not. He's urban, he's ironic. More importantly, he's everything that Sarah Palin's supporters aren't. He's becoming the Dan Rather of political comedians."

One irony in the Palin-Letterman saga: McCain announced his candidacy for president on Feb. 27, 2007, during an appearance on . . . David Letterman's program.

[layoutshooter]

It is about time. He screwed up and needed to admit it. He did. He, and all others, should now lay off the families of candidates UNLESS it is something that affects the nation. We will continue to have a difficult time finding quality candidates. It would be a very hard choice these days for a quality candidate to run, most GOOD people would NOT want to put their family through the garbage.

[LDB]

Watching the video I believe he's either sincere in his apology or a very good actor, a far better actor than comedian. I'd give this latest apology a B/B+ overall. Making the joke about RG diluted it just a little. Had he done this exact apology the day after or no later than the second day after I think it would have been far better but at least it finally was done. Was the loss of a major advertiser by CBS.com the reason? We'll likely never know but he's now made a sincere apology not just another comic monologue based on the incident. Good for him.

[Tennesseahawk]

Turtle... one other thing that the author misses, is that none of the jokes during the campaign could possibly be misunderstood to be targeting Willow.

[Turtle]

Turtle... one other thing that the author misses, is that none of the jokes during the campaign could possibly be misunderstood to be targeting Willow.

True, but he included those jokes because people said that Letterman shouldn't be making jokes about a minor, and at the time those jokes were made, Bristol was a minor.

I really do think the McCain spanking by Letterman is something that Palin is still mad about. I can't say I blamer her, really. While what McCain did was wrong, I think Letterman abused his power, so to speak, when he hammered on McCain every...single... night for what, a week, two? in his monologue and at the desk, until McCain finally made an appearance. He should have maybe mentioned it once, that first night, and then moved on to something else.

Then again, he did that to Oprah for like a year. lol

[highway star]

McCain deserved the spanking from Letterman. Instead of lying, all he needed to do was tell Dave something like, "my plate's really full right now, I'm going to postpone my appearance for a week or so." Dave probably would still have been mad, but he would have had less to criticize.

The republicans knew that the Bristol Palin situation was major baggage. Personally, I don't see what Sarah has to offer that makes dealing with that worth it. While I was taken with her at first, she's impressive when she's rehearsed, she's far less impressive when it's "off the cuff".