Chicks Aren't Funny: on joking about the Palin girls
Posted at 2:10 PM Jun 15, 2009
By Andrea Grimes
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David Letterman is a skeev, a jerk and an asshole. He's also funny, charming and witty. So it goes with a lot of comedians: there's much about the man to find distasteful, but there's much to like. Good comedians expose the abject in being human; good comedians tell the truth. Sometimes good comedians lie, and sometimes good comedians say things we'd rather not hear.
Which is not to excuse the fact that last week, David Letterman made a pretty gross, inappropriate joke about, he says, 18-year-old Bristol Palin's trip to New York, implying she might need to be kept away from the likes of A-Rod and Eliot Spitzer, lest she be sexually assaulted. Sarah Palin promptly, and perhaps rightly, got incensed about the remark, especially since the daughter who traveled to New York was not Bristol Palin, but 14-year-old Willow. In a statement, Palin said:
Laughter incited by sexually perverted comments made by a 62-year-old male celebrity aimed at a 14-year-old girl is not only disgusting...(it) contributes to the atrociously high rate of sexual exploitation of minors by older men who use and abuse others.
I think Palin, in all her rage, has missed the point: Letterman's joke isn't only wrong because it was about a 14-year-old girl. It was wrong because its premise centered on powerful men taking sexual advantage of women, whether they be 18 or 14, and whether those powerful men be governors or television hosts. As long as people think sexually exploitative pseudo-rape jokes about women are funny, Letterman--and almost all comedians, since it's a pretty popular joke genre--will continue to have jobs.
To be clear: I don't think Letterman's joke was funny, but I don't think anyone--least of all Sarah "Lemme Tell You How To Handle That Womb Of Yours" Palin--has a right to tell him he can't say what he wants. I don't like living in a country where rape jokes are considered hilarious, but I'd like living in a country without free speech a whole lot less.
The actual funny part: Palin and her Republican co. have now decided to call for Letterman's firing. Of course, none of 'em was worried about misogyny and sexism when Palin was roped in as a token female veep candidate or when the Repulican Party was trying any number of its shameless attempts to make abortion illegal or impossible to obtain. No sir, but one tasteless joke on late night, and then it's time to fly our half-assed feminist flags? Puh-lease.
Comments
What about mis-leading young women into believing their only 2 options in life are complete and total abstinence or an unwanted/unplanned/ no-choices-whatsoever pregnancy, hm? I guess in Palin's world those ARE the only options. Yes, I agree that Letterman's joke was tasteless and probably should not have been done, but as a woman and a feminist, I also think Palin being paraded around as the token female is more offensive. I also think that all comedians should just refrain from mentioning her name, her daughter's name, her daughter's baby-daddy name, etc... All of this controversy does nothing more than keep her in the public eye and I think many of us just wish she would GO AWAY.
Posted 06/15/2009 at 02:24:55 PMYou're so right about keeping Palin out of the public eye, BorgQueen. Her posturing is a complete distraction from key issues.
Posted 06/15/2009 at 02:28:26 PMOne tasteless joke? Late night hosts have been making similar jokes about Bristol for awhile now....which just illustrates how selective Palin is in her "fight" for women's rights.
But am I the only one who didn't see Dave's jokes as having anything to do with rape? I thought they were more about her being pregnant at 18 and A-Rod/Spitzer being adulterers. I didn't read anything non-consensual about his jokes...I just thought he was calling her a slut...which carries it's own issues, but slut jokes are the media's bread and butter. I still think we live in a world where male/female rape jokes are not funny.
Posted 06/15/2009 at 03:32:37 PMOh god, "Bizarro Hillary" will not go away! Once the GOP trotted her out as their choice to run for VP, you could hear the sound of McCain's chances flushing down the toilet. People wanted Hillary as Prez not because of her gender, but due to her experience and political views. So naturally, the righties pick someone with minimum experience and a completely opposite agenda! The GOP was pretty much saying, "You want a pair of tits in the Oval Office? Well, ours are younger and firmer! Top that, lefties!"
Posted 06/15/2009 at 08:56:51 PMI hope he takes back his apology next show. The crowd would cheer.
Posted 06/16/2009 at 09:42:51 AMI think that you're stretching too far to try to be all feminist. The joke was bad, yes, but that was because it was just a bad joke, not because it's all anti women.
The premise of it was even pretty simple. Alex Rodriguez cheated on his wife. The target of the joke was the only Palin child that anyone cares enough about to put on the cover of national magazines--Bristol or whatever her name is. The girl is the butt of jokes not because she's had sex, but because she suffers from conservative thought that promotes abstinence above all over forms of birth control, even going so far as to not teach about other forms of birth control.
Hardly anyone would care about the Palin children if that one girl hadn't have gotten pregnant in a household that *still* promotes abstinence over teaching proper birth control techniques. She's a joke because she's a shining example of how abstinence only education fails. Quit trying to reach so freaken hard to get worked up and offended over "anti feminism" that isn't really anti-feminist at all. That's why NOW is failing--find some actual sexist issues to be offended about.
Posted 06/16/2009 at 11:43:01 AMDon't fall for the right wing talking point that it was about rape. Rape was never implied, it's just them reaching to take it in the worst possible way. And if he's calling Bristol a slut, he's calling Alex Rodriguez one too.
Thisisjustatest nailed it; the joke was about Bristol's inability to use birth control.
Posted 06/16/2009 at 03:46:18 PM