Here come the crazies
I’m so over sensationalism in the news that even though there’s been plenty to talk about, I haven’t had the inclination to post lately. I didn’t want/have/need anything to add to the noise. But yesterday I heard something that just plain pisses me off.
So by now, you’ve probably heard about the flap over Letterman’s joke about the Palin daughter and A-Rod. It got to the point where Dave graciously apologized on air to the Palin family even though the joke really wasn’t that bad and even though he really didn’t have to. But those who are fans of David Letterman know that whether you care for or don’t care for his brand of humor, the one thing you can count on is that he is as authentic and down-to-earth person as there is. I love his humor. But that’s me. And it may not be for you. No biggie. There’s plenty of other late nite talk for you to tune into if you prefer. And I don’t really give a rat’s ass over how you think he’s caustic, cynical, rude, mean, whatever. That’s where some of this frustration comes from for me. I don’t go around haranguing people for not watching David Letterman so I don’t really care to listen to you waste your breath trying to explain why he’s not your cup of tea. I’m not trying to be mean. Really, I’m not. But just SHUT UP ALREADY!
Anyway, Sarah “I can see Russia” Palin gets all high and mighty about a joke, Letterman apologizes and you’d think that’d be the end of it, right? Wrong. Get a load of this article from the Huffington Post. What can only be described as some die-hard crazies from the Palin “base” are suddenly calling Letterman’s son a bastard, his wife a slut, and calling for Letterman’s ouster. Notice what’s absent from the article? Any outrage from Ms. Palin herself. Typical neo-con crazy behavior.
Among the many things that bother me about this are the following 2 points:
1. If you (and by “you” I mean any radical, crazy, neo-conservative, ditto-head) are so egregiously wronged by these episodes, why do we never hear from you when one of your own makes a comment like, oh, I don’t know, an escaped gorilla being related to Michelle Obama? Yeah, that’s sarcasm. Recognize it? It’s also rhetorical so I’m going to go ahead and answer for you…it’s because you’re CRAZY.
2. If Sarah “drill, baby, drill” Palin considers this a good strategy for establishing her bona fides ahead of the 2012 election, she’s even dumber than I thought. If you want the public at large to take you seriously, you need to treat your political reputation as something a little more important than a front page article in Us Weekly (right next to the articles about whether Jon or Kate cheated and with whom and when.) Fighting with David Letterman doesn’t make you look like a savvy politician or a “family values” advocate. It makes you look like a petulant child.
This one incident in particular was just the straw that broke the camel’s back for me. After the killing of Dr. Tiller and the attack on the Holocaust Museum in DC and the shocking dust-up at Fox News over one of their anchors actually saying something that came close to really fair and actually balanced about hate groups being associated with the right-wing of the Republican party, I thought we had reached a point where maybe, just maybe, even some of the most delusional wingers might take a step back and consider that there’s more middle ground here than they had originally imagined there to be. But no. Stupid just breeds more stupid.
