DAVID LETTERMAN - LETTERMAN APOLOGIZES TO PALIN -- AGAIN

LETTERMAN APOLOGIZES TO PALIN -- AGAIN

David Letterman on his Monday-night Late Night show apologized a second time for his joke about Sarah Palin's daughter. This time, he appeared less off-handed in his apology than he did last week. "I told a joke that was beyond flawed, and my intent is completely meaningless compared to the perception" by many viewers, he said. "It's not your fault that it was misunderstood, it's my fault." Letterman said that needed "to do the right thing here and apologize." He concluded "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." Palin later issued a statement saying that she accepted the apology "on behalf of all young women, like my daughters, who hope men who 'joke' about public displays of sexual exploitation of girls will soon evolve." However, on CNN's Larry King Live , comedian Jeff Foxworthy, who said that he was the father of two teenage girls, came to Letterman's defense. "As a comedian, you look at what Dave does," Foxworthy said. "You're trying to do this night after night, year after year, decade after decade -- at some point in the road, are you going to throw one out there you shouldn't have? Yeah." Indeed, Letterman himself remarked that he had received a phone call from his mother earlier in the day telling him that she was siding with Palin. And, in a feature, the Washington Post asked today, "Did Sarah Palin not notice when late-night comedians were making fun of her daughter's pregnancy last fall?" It quoted several of their jokes, including one by Letterman's now direct competitor Conan O'Brien, which came uncannily close to Letterman's own "Sarah Palin is going to drop the first puck at the Philadelphia Flyers hockey game," O'Brien said. "Then Palin will spend the rest of the game trying to keep the hockey players out of her daughter's penalty box."

16/06/2009