The Letterman Joke Deception, Smears and Cynicism of Sarah Palin
The Letterman Joke Deception, Smears and Cynicism of Sarah Palin
Sarah Palin owes the American people of very sincere apology. She owes David Letterman an apology. She owes her own children an apology. Her actions and statements have been dangerous, exploitive, divisive and deceptive
I am disappointed that the media pundits commenting on this case did not point out that Sarah Palin conveniently used a 6 second joke by a non-political figure to divert the discussion away from the role Palin’s recent political rhetoric has played in creating a hostile and dangerous political climate in America over the past year. Palin’s outrageous comments falsely connecting Obama to socialism, falsely creating a completely unfounded fear of Big Brother government and stoking up political paranoia on the Right is dangerous and in poor taste. Her kind of rhetoric can directly be connected to the recent murders by Right-Wing extremists at the Holocaust museum in DC and in Kansas. She stoked the paranoia and inflamed their misguided passions and twisted political world view.
The Palin-type of extreme political rhetoric from the Republican Right has been feeding a growing domestic terrorist problem in America. This kind of dangerous rhetoric routinely comes not only from Palin herself, but also, from Right-Wing talk radio hosts like Rush Limbaugh and Michael Savage, extremist Right-Wing websites like Free Republic.com and, unfortunately, from many, many Republican Party officials and activists. Examples of Right-Wing political hate speech on talk radio are legion. Free Republic.com has thousands of posted comments of the most extreme nature. At about the same time that Palin was making her most recent inflammatory comments, the Republican Party held a political fundraiser that raised over $15 million dollars where a second rate actor called Obama “dangerous” and made many other hate-filled comments about our President.
We all remember the Sarah Palin rallies during the 2008 Presidential campaign where the crowd contained numerous Right-Wing nut jobs who shouted “kill him” when Obama’s name was mentioned. We all know about the Right-Wing conspiracy theories that contend Obama is a secret Muslim and/or not really an American citizen. We saw hundred if not thousands of signs to this effect at the McCain-Palin rallies in 2008 and at the Fox News/Republican sponsored anti-tax “tea parties” earlier this year. The man who committed the political murders at the Holocaust museum in DC wrote in support of these whack-job Right-Wing conspiracy theories on the Free Republic.com web site!
I have personal reasons to believe that the Anthrax Mail killer of 2001 was in part inspired by Right Wing talk radio shows like Neal Boortz and/or Right-Wing nut job websites like Free Republic.com. Sarah Palin intentionally taps into this political paranoia and Right-Wing political extremism with her over the top rhetoric. Her political career in Alaska has always been connected with extremist and political fringe groups. No other major political figure in America is as closely connected to political extremist groups as Sarah Palin.
Palin was certainly going to face a firestorm of political criticism over her rhetoric and extremist political connections in the immediate aftermath of the Holocaust Right-Wing political murder! The criticism had just started when Palin made a huge political controversy over a 6 second David Letterman joke! It was an effective, intentional and cynical political move on her part.
Letterman apologized but Sarah Palin refused to accept the apology and let the matter drop. Doing so would not have helped her divert public attention from her rhetorical role in promoting Right-Wing extremism. It would have been the best outcome for her daughters but not for the political career of Sarah Palin. She placed her political ambition first over the emotional well-being of her daughters.
David Letterman did tell a rather crude joke, obviously referencing the 18 daughter of Sarah Palin, who is an unwed mother. It was in poor taste. Yes, it was a cheap shot. Comedians do that kind of thing every day to people in the public arena. Comedians go for the funny without regard to political correctness.
However, it is clear that Sarah Palin victimized her own daughter by putting her daughter in the public limelight just to advance Sarah Palin’s political ambitions without considering the possibility of the inevitable public humiliation that her daughter would face. Sarah Palin made her daughter’s unwed mother status and difficult relationship with her baby’s father front page news. This was done by Sarah Palin, not David Letterman. It was done for political reasons.
The controversial joke would never have been told if Sarah Palin had followed the example of President and Michelle Obama in how they insisted the media treat their daughters. The Obamas did not routinely exploit their daughters during the political campaign the way the Palin children were blatantly exploited by their mother. The Obamas continued to try to shield their daughters from excessive media attention once elected.
Comedians are not political operatives. They are not and should not be held to the same political standards of behavior as journalists, officeholders, candidates or political spokespersons. Behaving badly and pushing the envelope of social acceptability are the norms when it comes to comedians. Nearly all comedians tell less than politically correct jokes. While the jokes told by political figures should meet at least some minimum standards of political correctness, the same certainly does not hold true for comedians.
It is obvious that the remarks made by the Palins that strongly implied that a teenage girl would not be safe in the company of David Letterman were absolutely in poor taste and blatantly false. Using words like “perverted” were uncalled for by Sarah Palin. She used and continues to use them in reference to Letterman. Falsely stating that Letterman advocated underage sex and “rape” were beyond acceptable under any circumstances. Sarah Palin is smearing a popular comedian to drawn attention away from her role in creating a climate that promotes political violence by Right-Wing extremists.
Palin must know that late night talk show hosts are highly unlikely to write their own jokes. She knows the jokes are not meant to defame anyone. She must know the only goal is to draw laughter. Misconstruing the actions and motives of David Letterman tells us a great deal about the motives and character of Sarah Palin. While Palin clearly demonstrated that she has no sense of humor, media pundits should be connecting the dots concerning the clearly manipulative and political nature of the Palin-Letterman joke controversy.
Palin should apologize. If she does not apologize, we should all call for her resignation over this matter. Sarah Palin will seemingly do anything to promote her political ambitions including using her children, making false statements, engaging in character assassination and promoting a dangerous strain of political Right-Wing extremism. American political life and the Republican Party would be better off if Palin would retire from the public arena.
Written by Stephen Crockett (Host of Democratic Talk Radio http://DemocraticTalkRadio.com ). Mail: 698 Old Baltimore Pike, Newark, Delaware 19702. Email: [email protected]. Phone: 443-907-2367. Feel free to publish without prior approval.
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Some Right-Wingers out there have on a few sites attacked the Anthrax Killer connection to Boortz and Free Republic.com. I have posted about this before but will again.
In July 2001, Neal Boortz invited myself and my co-host at that time to guest host his show while he was on vacation via his staff. We accepted but asked to bring our own call screener. Boortz flipped-out, canceled the invitation and started attacking us over and over again.
The crowd at Free Republic.com joined in on attack. They vandalized our message board by posting nasty, obscene, racist and other truly vile content. It had been open to everyone but now is not because of this incident. I received over 10,000 hate emails in about a week. I received numerous phone calls including several death threats and a few letters along the same vain.
Among the letters was one from New Jersey that spilled an off-white clumpy powder all over my desk. It has a photocopy of a New York Post article about Clinton firing missiles at Bin Laden’s group in Afghanistan and Sudan in the aftermath of the attack on our naval vessel in Yemen. Written on paper was the phrase “You guys make me sick.”
I vacuumed up the powder, wiped down my desk with bleach and sprayed the entire area around my desk with to disinfect it. I keep the letter and envelope. A few days later, I received a flyer from Huntsville, Texas that had “Have you been checked for anthrax yet?” written on it. I showed it to my co-host and went on the Internet to research the what I thought was a slim possibility that there might be something to the threat. We had received all kinds of threats.
On the Internet, I discovered that there had been a recent rash of anthrax hoax letters sent to Jewish community centers and Planned Parenthood offices. I discussed the issue with my co-host and we decided that we did not want to motivate more hoaxes so we did not call in the authorities. Our research found no real anthrax attacks up to that time.
The letters went in our hate email and mail pile. Eventually the pile grew to a small box. In August 2001, I threw the box away.
When the real anthrax attacks happened, I was shocked to find that they were sent from the same place, the writing was the same as our New Jersey letter (the Texas letter was in a different hand-writing) and the real anthrax terrorist was apparently trying to create an Arab connection smoke screen. We no longer had any real evidence since we threw the letter away.
I know the same person was involved. I do not know if the anthrax killer was first a hoaxer and then a killer or if we just received an ineffective non-weaponized anthrax attack. I will never know if the way we handled this helped motivate real attacks instead of hoaxes or motivate the weaponization of the anthrax.
I might have helped prevent the anthrax deaths if I had handled this issue differently. Still to this day, I feel deep guilt that I did not immediately call the authorities.
Anyway, this is my personal reasons for believing their is a Boortz and/or Free Republic.com connection to the anthrax killer. I have no proof other than my co-host that this happened but it did.
Of course, neither Boortz or the Free Republic.com management were directly involved in the anthrax attacks. Not everyone who posts on the Free Republic.com site engages in the hateful actions mentioned above. Some are good people with mainstream conservative ideas. However, they tolerate the bad actors and enable their excesses by not policing their actions and more extreme statements on the site.
They should be denouncing their more extreme members actions and statements that might incite their more unstable characters to engage in politically motivated violence and domestic terrorism. Basically, the same thing should be said for the entire Republican Party and conservative movement.