Letterman's Late Apologies: Two Down, 59,948,238 To Go

As all the world knows, last week the CBS network broadcast sexually abusive remarks about the governor of Alaska and one of her teenage daughters on its popular TV program "The Late Show with David Letterman". Since then the hospitality-challenged host has made a tedious, almost nightly ritual of rendering forced apologies on camera to Gov. Palin and her daughter. Pundits have joined the "debate" about the gravity of the entertainer's offense, the adequacy of his apologies, and the responsibilities of the network. Today's paper carried the news that Gov. Palin had accepted Letterman's apology. I wouldn't doubt that Letterman and his staff of half-witty "writers" are combing the Milton Berle treasury for a joke about classiness to turn on Palin.

It is frankly deplorable that the governor of Alaska should even have been put in the position of deciding when a television personality's abusiveness had been atoned for. After all, this was no accidental gaffe or "script malfunction", a joke that in a more tasteful era Bob Hope would just have passed up. Sarah Palin and her daughter, like Alex Rodriguez, were merely props Letterman used for an insult aimed at others and not yet apologized for. Does the CBS network attract millions of viewers to hear personal abuse thrown at moms and their daughters? Of course it doesn't. The real objects of David Letterman's abuse were not Mrs. Sarah Palin and her daughter, but the Republican nominee for Vice-President in the recent election, and those who voted for her. The message of Letterman's abuse was that the Americans who supported the Republican ticket cast their votes for a candidate so contemptible that she could be called "slutty" on network TV and nobody would have a right to complain. So they'd better not vote for white trash again if they want to feel welcome when they turn on the set. You and I, readers, are the ones that CBS and its employee David Letterman are deliberately abusing. They owe apologies to 60 million Republican voters, and indeed to all American citizens in what media-minds might call the adult or non-immature "demographic". I'm not holding my breath while I wait.

As the governor of Alaska Sarah Palin has a serious job, which is more than anybody could say about the host of "The Late Show with David Letterman". And by all accounts Gov. Palin does her demanding job well, which also cannot be said of CBS's 11:30 attraction, certainly not this week. But the overmatched Letterman should ask himself this: when in his "career" as a standup did David Letterman ever kill the way Sarah Palin did in her address to the Republican National Convention? Face it, Letterman: you aren't either funny enough, or important enough, to be part of Gov. Palin's act.