Letterman Lunacy

Another week, another stupid and essentially insignificant gaffe blown out of proportion. For those of you who somehow aren't aware of the Letterman joke at the Palin family's expense, he basically made reference to Palin's daughter being knocked up again. Yeah, really controversial to talk about a girl who got pregnant at an early age getting pregnant again. But wait! That's apparently not what the joke was about.

Palin and her menagerie twisted the joke to suddenly be about Palin's younger daughter, Holly. Oh, and it was no longer about becoming pregnant by not being careful, but rather about rape! This is clearly not what was intended by the joke, but they're rolling with it for the purposes of their moral outrage. Oh, and by the way, Palin knows a thing or two about that awful crime.

So where should comedy be limited, if anywhere? I've always been of the mind that if speech is not inciteful, it should be allowed. Period. Yes, that includes some forms of hate speech; slippery slope arguments aside, it's difficult to draw a line which isn't arbitrary besides "if it's directly inciting the commission of a crime or a panic, it's not allowed." And when it comes to comedians on television or the radio? I don't think there should be limits.

I had a discussion with a friend several months back with a similar subject. She posited that since minorities are downtrodden and ganged up on, it's unfair to make fun or joke about them. Speaking from a position of mostly-majority identities (heterosexual, male, white, middle class), I can't disagree with this more. I am a minority in my religious/spiritual beliefs, and honestly? I don't let jokes about atheists/agnostics bother me. Getting angry at Jim Norton for telling a misogynist joke is like getting angry at Edward Norton for playing a neo-nazi in American History X. You're raging against a character and not a person.

I choose not to use language that might offend people, and some people do not. I choose not to tell misogynist/racist jokes, because I know the power that language has to hurt people. But being hurt by speech isn't a reason to remove others' ability to use said speech. If you don't like it, though, you're completely welcome to not listen. But I digress!

Letterman's joke was harmless. It wasn't very funny, but it wasn't the malignant shot at the Palins that people are making it out to be. Despite Letterman's long winded apology on Monday, there were still protests outside his studio during his taping yesterday. They marched up and down the street, threatening (inevitably impotent) boycotts of Letterman's advertisers should he not be fired immediately.

Oh, and Nate Silver's best friend John Ziegler was on hand to rage against the comedian yesterday as well. I'm sure he delivered a speech free of ad hominem attacks (JZ: The purpose of the question, you pinhead, was we wanted to determine the Tina Fey Effect.) and finger-pointing toward some vague liberal elitist media.

The best part of the protest, though, was Sirius-XM Radio's own East Side Dave going ballistic within the confines of the protest. He was holding a sign reading "I'm a Right Wing Lunatic," which managed to get him confined to the PROTEST CAGE, as seen here:



Apparently Dave was going crazy the entire time, shouting random phrases and generally weirding everyone at the event out. As phrased by the Daily Beast:

Ziegler scowled as a huge red-bearded man carrying a placard reading “I’m a Right-Wing Lunatic” whirled around and shrieked such sentiments as “I hate it when people tell jokes on television!” “Jesus is speaking to me!” and “Letterman is worse than Hitler!” (Turns out the guy was a plant from the Ron & Fez Show on Sirius XM Radio.)

Who would be proud to have these people as supporters?