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6/23/2009
Burri: Sometimes people do stupid things. Let them go.
As I write this, the kerfluffle over David Letterman’s bad joke is about over.
Good riddance, I say, but with an uncomfortable dissatisfaction.
In case you’ve been asleep for the past few weeks, I’ll recap the story. On June 8, Letterman was joking about Sarah Palin’s visit to New York: specifically, her trip to a Yankees game with her 14-year-old daughter, Willow.
Letterman said of Palin: “During the seventh inning, her daughter was knocked up by Alex Rodriguez.”
Ah, yes, that old staple of televised comedy: the statutory rape joke.
There was some understandable shock about this. A brouhaha ensued, including through-the-media sniping, and then calls for a boycott against him and his sponsors. Letterman apologized on the air twice – the second time more sincerely than the first. Palin has accepted, albeit with more of an “I’m sick of this now” air than with obvious forgiveness.
The boycott is still on, but support dwindles, limited now to various corners of the internet.
For myself, I've been boycotting him since day one. Sort of. I haven’t watched Letterman since he made his “joke.” But I wasn’t watching him before the joke, either. Same with his sponsors. With the possible exception of Mars candy (I had a sugar cookie with M&Ms in it last week), I already wasn't patronizing his sponsors.
Here’s the thing, though, that keeps me from leaping wholeheartedly into the fray: this is stupid. Boycotting Letterman over a poorly conceived joke? Trying to get him fired? Stupid.
Even as I write that, I find myself disagreeing. Radio shock-jock Don Imus lost his job after he referred to the members of a female college sports team as “nappy-headed hos.”
Outrage, boycott, fired.
Republican Senator George Allen called a guy “macaca,” which derailed both his U.S. Senate re-election campaign and a potential presidential bid. In 1988, Jimmy “The Greek” Snyder’s broadcasting career came to a screeching halt after he suggested that slave-era breeding was the reason black athletes dominate some sports.
If them, why not Letterman?
Just as a thought experiment, imagine that Letterman’s joke had been aimed at Michelle Obama, instead of Sarah Palin. Imagine that it was one of Obama's daughters getting “knocked up by Alex Rodriguez.”
I’m guessing things would have been different, then. There’s a double standard: some people can be insulted, others can’t. Some people can do the insulting, others can’t.
If a Republican admitted to plagiarism, he’d be done for good. But if a Democrat does it, and then makes condescending remarks about a black primary opponent, he can still become Vice President.
It’s wrong.
But, you know what? Come on. We’ve all done it. We’ve all – most of us, anyway…some of us? Just me? Fine. I’ve done it. I have, from time to time, made an unwittingly offensive comment. As I’ve grown older, I’ve become more likely to realize it faster. To apologize right away. In my younger days, I was more apt to bluster through, accuse the insulted party of having no sense of humor, and only later realize that, yeah, I shouldn’t have said that.
Sometimes people do stupid things, and we have to be able to let them go.
Ash Wednesday, 2003: hyper-lib Ted Turner noticed people in his office wearing ash marks on their foreheads and called them “Jesus Freaks.” He later apologized, saying he had stupidly and wrongly mocked someone else’s religion.
Incident over. That’s how it should be. And because it was a hyper-lib, insulting a Right-tending group, that’s how it was.
At least, that's how it looks, right or wrong.
Lance Burri is a contributor to the Badger Blog Alliance and The TrogloPundit.
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