Posted on 06/15/2009 5:21:19 PM PDT by Sub-Driver
Letterman to Make Full Apology Tonight for Joke About Palin's Daughter By Brent Baker Created 2009-06-15 20:10
“David Letterman is making a full-throated apology for his controversial joke about Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's daughter,” TV Week reported a short while ago [1]. “During a taping of tonight's [Monday 6/15] edition of his CBS Late Show, Letterman went much further than his last explanation of the joke, in which he quipped that a baseball player had 'knocked up' Palin's daughter,” Josef Adalian wrote.
Though Palin and conservatives were outraged and demanded an apology [2] and retraction for a “joke” seemed aimed at the 14-year-old daughter though Letterman said he was referring to the 18-year-old daughter, it took the liberal columnist Mark Shields on PBS to convince Letterman he had a problem. Letterman will explain:
I was watching the Jim Lehrer Newshour -- this commentator, the columnist Mark Shields, was talking about how I had made this indefensible joke about the 14-year-old girl, and I thought, 'Oh, boy, now I'm beginning to understand what the problem is here. It's the perception rather than the intent.' It doesn't make any difference what my intent was, it's the perception. And, as they say about jokes, if you have to explain the joke, it's not a very good joke.
On Monday's show last week, Letterman's monologue included [2]: “One awkward moment for Sarah Palin at the Yankee game, during the seventh inning her daughter was knocked-up by Alex Rodriguez.” That Late Show also featured the “Top Ten Highlights of Sarah Palin's Trip to New York” with this entry: “Bought makeup from Bloomingdale's to update her 'slutty flight attendant' look.”
TV Week provided “a transcript of Letterman's comments, as supplied by CBS publicity.” The full text which should match what he'll say on tonight's Late Show [3]:
"All right, here - I've been thinking about this situation with Governor Palin and her family now for about a week - it was a week ago tonight, and maybe you know about it, maybe you don't know about it. But there was a joke that I told, and I thought I was telling it about the older daughter being at Yankee Stadium. And it was kind of a coarse joke. There's no getting around it, but I never thought it was anybody other than the older daughter, and before the show, I checked to make sure in fact that she is of legal age, 18. Yeah. But the joke really, in and of itself, can't be defended.
The next day, people are outraged. They're angry at me because they said, 'How could you make a lousy joke like that about the 14-year-old girl who was at the ball game?' And I had, honestly, no idea that the 14-year-old girl, I had no idea that anybody was at the ball game except the Governor and I was told at the time she was there with Rudy Giuliani...And I really should have made the joke about Rudy..." (audience applauds) "But I didn't, and now people are getting angry and they're saying, 'Well, how can you say something like that about a 14-year-old girl, and does that make you feel good to make those horrible jokes about a kid who's completely innocent, minding her own business,' and, turns out, she was at the ball game. I had no idea she was there. So she's now at the ball game and people think that I made the joke about her. And, but still, I'm wondering, 'Well, what can I do to help people understand that I would never make a joke like this?' I've never made jokes like this as long as we've been on the air, 30 long years, and you can't really be doing jokes like that. And I understand, of course, why people are upset. I would be upset myself.
"And then I was watching the Jim Lehrer 'Newshour' - this commentator, the columnist Mark Shields, was talking about how I had made this indefensible joke about the 14-year-old girl, and I thought, 'Oh, boy, now I'm beginning to understand what the problem is here. It's the perception rather than the intent.' It doesn't make any difference what my intent was, it's the perception. And, as they say about jokes, if you have to explain the joke, it's not a very good joke. And I'm certainly - " (audience applause) "- thank you. Well, my responsibility - I take full blame for that. I told a bad joke. I told a joke that was beyond flawed, and my intent is completely meaningless compared to the perception. 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. That it was misunderstood." (audience applauds) "Thank you. 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. I'm sorry about it and I'll try to do better in the future. Thank you very much." (audience applause)
Is that Helen Thomas?
‘Bout time. I’m still not going to watch him though. Jerk. He need to be Imus’d, if you ask me.
Fire the Pig.
He’s still a scumbag and goes to show that all the money on earth can’t buy class.
Dave must’ve really hurt the CBS brand here to finally really apologize? I’m sure CBS’s bigwigs forced his hand once they started hearing from ther sponsors.
OK, Letterman - it took you a WEEK to THINK about your INTENT??????
That's almost as believable as the Clinton guy testifying that he had lied to his diary!!!
This IS a Letterman joke, right. No, it's Letterman himself, who is a JOKE.
The change has not been for the better. It's no wonder Letterman wants to keep her hidden away.
Too little, too late...
Resign you angry, bitter, bigoted moron
He is saying it was OK for the joke to be about an 18 year old, and he MADE SURE she was of legal age to be raped. How conscientious of him... Makes him more complicit if you ask me.
Oh, and Dave, were any of the other jokes that you told about Sarah and her family in bad taste, or just the knocked-up teenage girl jokes? So you can assure us that all of the Palin jokes that you have told since last summer are in good taste? Should we review them all.
I said it before, this is his grenade and he needs to diffuse it or hold on to it until it matures. No one should diffuse it for him.
> I was watching the Jim Lehrer Newshour — this commentator, the columnist Mark Shields, was talking about how I had made this indefensible joke about the 14-year-old girl, and I thought, ‘Oh, boy, now I’m beginning to understand what the problem is here. It’s the perception rather than the intent.’ It doesn’t make any difference what my intent was, it’s the perception. And, as they say about jokes, if you have to explain the joke, it’s not a very good joke.
Surely NumbNuts isn’t that oblivious. Nobody on this planet is that oblivious. “Oh gee, it’s the Perception rather than the Intent! I get it!”
He ought to be fired for being oblivious. Nobody who is that oblivious has any business being on television, far less making millions of dollars while he’s at it.
Shorter Letterman: Because the girl was 18, and because she’s the daughter of a politician I disagree with, it’s OK for me call her a whore and a hooker.
Now it is the time for us to increase the pressure on Letterman’s advertisers.
Too little too late. If he was sincere he would have apologized the next day, not a week later. And people don’t seem to realize that he made other jokes about Sarah and sex for months. This is not the first time he has said something sexual about Sarah Palin..first he said he wanted to have sex with her, then he said how she was the hottest(or sexiest) vp candidate ever..then in last week’s “apology” he said that Sarah can come on his show but to “Leave Todd at home.” Ziegler said today on his radio show that it is obvious that Letterman has a sick sexual attraction to Sarah, he never leaves her alone..its always sex with him..Sponsors are dropping him, that is why he came up with this bogus apology, it’s PATHETIC
I guess the affiliates put pressure on the network
Oh, they’re leaving alright. I got an e-mail from a sponsor that I’d contacted informing me that they will no longer be advertising on Lecherman.
No, the premise now is that he didn’t know that there was a daughter at the game at all.
Regarding the use of "misunderstood:" He should have said that it was clearly inappropriate to even try to make a joke of that nature.
I choose to interpret his comment "It's not your fault that it was misunderstood, it's my fault that it was misunderstood." to mean that he takes responsibility for his team misunderstooding the nature of the subject they were making a joke out of, and now they realize how inappropriate it was to even go there.
I'm going to assume that he didn't mean to say that it was his fault that the joke was told poorly, and therefore, misunderstood.
I still don't watch him, though, and never will.
-PJ
He’s hoping to prevent the planned protest in front of his studio tomorrow.
LOL regarding your comment that Hillary could look slutty! Yeah, maybe to someone like Letterman!
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