CBS - PALIN LAYS INTO LETTERMAN

PALIN LAYS INTO LETTERMAN

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin used the platform of NBC's Today show today (Friday) to thwack CBS late-night host David Letterman for jokes in his monologue that referred to her daughter. (He remarked that when the governor attended a Yankee baseball game with her daughter, an "awkward moment" occurred "during the seventh inning when her daughter was knocked up by Alex Rodriguez." On his show Thursday, Letterman opened by remarking that he believed his relationship with Palin had improved since she had called and offered to take him hunting. He suggested that he had thought that Palin had attended the game with her older daughter, not with 14-year-old Willow, as was the case. "I would never, never make jokes about raping or having sex of any description with a 14-year-old girl," he remarked and challenged anyone to find any such mention in a previous show. (In her column, conservative commentator Michelle Malkin wrote, "Tell us, great comic genius, how tacking on four years to the target daughter makes it funny?") Nevertheless, he conceded, "I'm not necessarily proud of these jokes." But the governor was not mollified by Letterman's comments. "I would like to see him apologize to young women across the country for contributing to kind of that thread that is throughout our culture that makes it sound like it is OK to talk about young girls in that way, where it's kind of OK, accepted and funny to talk about statutory rape," she told Today show host Matt Lauer. "No wonder young girls especially have such low self-esteem in America when we think it's funny for a so-called comedian to get away with such a remark as he did," she added.

12/06/2009