In case anyone is unaware, sometime last week Letterman made a joke on his late show that went something like this:
"Sarah Palin got a real surprise last week when Alex Rodriguez impregnated her daughter in the 7th inning of a Yankees game."
Apparently Palin actually attended the game with her 14-year old daughter, Willow, and not her 18-year old daughter, Bristol, the one who recently had a child. There's been a lot of outrage about this, people claiming Letterman to promote statutory rape, slandering the girl for being a prostitute, all this kind of stuff.
I think this is kind of getting out of control. Let's take a look at some of the facts:
-Palin is a public figure. She's controversial, polarizing.
-She had a young daughter who got preggers.
-ARod is a public figure. He's controversial, polarizing, and seemingly has no sense of humor about himself.
-His sexuality has been a bit of an issue recently, and something to poke fun at.
Letterman apologized for his joke, saying that he had intended to combine the elements of Bristol's pregnancy with ARod's absurd public persona, which have both been topics of jokes on his and other shows for months. He didn't mean to suggest it was supposed to be Willow, I guess he didn't do his homework about which daughter it was who was at the game, and he didn't clarify which daughter he meant at the time. I guess it's one of those things where theoretically it's funnier if he lets the audience decide, but in reality it just turns out to be much more controversial. Looking at this list of facts about the situation though, and knowing he's a comedian, who makes jokes for a living, and belongs to a community of comedians who do this sort of thing all the time, is it really so ridiculous for him to make the joke? He'd basically be doing his job wrong if he didn't take advantage of a highly public situation like that, a perfect opportunity to utilize the coming together of two divisive personalities. It turned out it was not a funny joke, one that people kind of cringed at, but that doesn't mean he should lose his job. A lot of comedy is sick and twisted. If you thought comedians were actually in favor of all the topics they discuss during their acts, I think they'd all be arrested no questions asked.
Not saying he made the right decision by making the joke, but he apologized, it's kind of an absurd reaction for people to have to attack him like this. I'm not even a huge fan of his, really, and I never watch the show. But he's a comedian. He's supposed to utilize shock value. Maybe it would be more effective to go out there and picket all the ACTUAL rapists and pedophiles out there? As opposed to someone who mistakenly made that reference during a stand up comedy routine. Just a thought.
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