by Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n
PJ Media<\/i><\/p>\n
The Demise of David Letterman<\/strong><\/p>\n I had a number of exchanges on the Palin-Letterman controversy (see below). Where to start on David Letterman\u2019s attack on Palin on her visit to New York to do charitable work, accompanied by her 14-year-old daughter Willow?<\/p>\n The hypocrisy of the Left that used to monitor slurs about women\u2019s appearances, sick jokes about statuary rape, demonization of women with charges of promiscuity \u2014 all this rightly was taboo? But now silence? (But then no one seemed bothered either by the rather shameless instance of plagiarism on the part of Maureen Dowd, the\u00a0New York Times<\/em>\u00a0columnist, who habitually accuses Cheney\/Bush\/Rumsfeld of lying and other moral lapses.)<\/p>\n The metrosexual, hip David Letterman offered an apology I think that essentially was something along the following lines. Here\u2019s my paraphrase: \u2018Sorry, I confused the 14-year-old Willow Palin with the 18-year-old Bristol Palin, so I was wrong for suggesting the younger Palin girl would be \u201cknocked up\u201d during a baseball game by Alex Rodriguez, or draw in Eliot Spitzer for sex, when I really meant that Bristol certainly would.\u201d (Note the silence about calling Governor Palin \u201cslutty\u201d looking. So if some right-wing nut says that Michelle Obama is \u201cslutty\u201d looking, are we to expect no consequences?)<\/p>\n Misopalinism<\/strong><\/p>\n What it is about Sarah Palin that drives the Left insane? Her charisma? Her authentic blue-collar roots? The accent? Todd? The pregnancies? The ability to galvanize crowds. Joe Biden tried to fake his working class origins, but Palin seems to live, not romanticize, the life of the middle strata, so would not the Left appreciate someone from the non-elite?<\/p>\n I suggest two reasons for the fury of the aristocratic Left. One was Palin\u2019s stance on abortion. In the elite feminist mind, the perfect storm would be for a 40ish career woman, on the upswing of her\u00a0cursus honorum<\/em>, getting pregnant and, then, heaven forbid, delivering the child with full fore-knowledge of chromosomal abnormality. Or having her 17-year old come to full term with a child, unmarried, and without money?<\/p>\n The Shadow of Abortion<\/strong><\/p>\n For most upscale, educated liberals, a daughter\u2019s future career is ruined by pregnancy, and abortion is often the answer. Second, Todd Palin, the Palin accent, the Wasilla connection, the whole notion of Alaska, all this conjured up the elite liberal notion of \u201ctrailer trash\u201d \u2014 and we all know from Obama\u2019s clingers speech, that the white Christian working class is the last group in America that can be caricatured and slurred with impunity. To the liberal urban elite, poor \u201cwhites\u201d are those responsible for racism and other sins associated with the dominant culture, and thus by association taint the white aristocracy unfairly.<\/p>\n Race, Again, All the Time<\/strong><\/p>\n I received a lot of angry mail about a recent prediction that the Obama administration would acerbate not diminish racial tensions, by its addiction to identity politics and the constant invocation or racial difference. Nothing since his ascension has disabused me of that observation. Obama himself, in unusual fashion, has given a number of speeches abroad emphasizing his African heritage, his middle name Hussein, and his father\u2019s Muslim\u2019s connection.<\/p>\n We have heard the Attorney General call his countrymen \u201ccowards\u201d for not talking more about racial identity. We have heard our Supreme Court nominee state on repeated occasions that a Latina is intrinsically better at being a judge than a white male counterpart. Now Rev. Wright has reemerged to suggest that Obama will no longer meet with him because \u201cThem Jews ain\u2019t going to let him talk to me \u2026.\u201d (a new book about Obama suggests he and Wright met in secret during the campaign after the Wright racist outbursts).<\/p>\n He\u2019s Back<\/strong><\/p>\n Note as well, that Wright, in his anti-Semitic diatribe, employs the now customary straw men \u201cthey,\u201d which we\u2019ve become well accustomed to. (I note here that what was most disturbing about the Letterman Palin jokes and his \u201capology\u201d was the audience laughing at his crudity \u2014 reminiscent of the standing ovations in the Trinity congregation that met Wright\u2019s profanity, racist outburst, and damning of the United States. This country has a long way to go.)<\/p>\n This racialism will continue. Why? Because Obama discovered long ago than racial identification brings as many dividends as does the content of one\u2019s character or achievement. It is a force multiplier and foolishly left untapped. I fear more, not less, of this, as the tab for Obama\u2019s charge-it economy comes due at about the same time dubious players abroad conclude that serial apologies amount to a green light for adventurism. When his popularity dives, I think critics will be seen as biased and prejudicial.<\/p>\n What was ironic about all Wright\u2019s accusations of Obama\u2019s Jewish hypnosis, was that in just the first six months of his administration Obama has proven to be the most anti-Israeli President since the founding of the Jewish state. Wright should be delighted not disappointed; perhaps his unhappiness is the inability to bask publicly in White House visits, rather than ideological discord.<\/p>\n Doctor Faustus<\/strong><\/p>\n (Remember that Obama\u2019s connection with Wright was premeditated: in the Chicago racialist atmosphere, his career was going to be stalled at the state level, since he lacked, as a half-white, half-African Harvard graduate, fides as an authentic African-American from the Chicago neighborhood. Wright gave Obama just that authenticity \u2014 the more Wright laced his sermons with racism and hatred, the better Obama might resonate with the community as a Trinity devotee.)<\/p>\n But there is nemesis in the world. And once one makes a pact with Mephistopheles, well, read Marlowe and Goethe. Wright is Obama\u2019s Fury, one of his Keres as it were.<\/p>\n Is there anything that explains all these strange developments? Yes, a postmodern view that the tawdry means justify the utopian ends, that a Letterman is cool and progressive, that a Wright means well in the end, that a Dowd is on the right side of the political attack on the Bush administration-and therefore sexism, racism, and plagiarism are, well, simply alternate narratives rather than violations of absolute norms and protocols.<\/p>\n Letterman Goes After Palin<\/strong><\/p>\n For a few NRO postings on Palin, see below. Smug, hip David Letterman offered a smirky non-apology about his ongoing class and sexist slurs against the Palins, his apparent social inferiors.<\/p>\n \u201cWe were, as we often do, making jokes about people in the news and we made some jokes about Sarah Palin and her daughter, the 18-year-old girl, who is \u2014 her name is Bristol, that\u2019s right, and so, then, now they\u2019re upset with me . . .\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThese are not jokes made about her 14-year-old daughter. I would never, never make jokes about raping or having sex of any description with a 14-year-old girl. I mean, look at my record. It has never happened. I don\u2019t think it\u2019s funny. I would never think it was funny. I wouldn\u2019t put it in a joke\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n Examine the logic. First, Letterman makes a gutter joke about Palin and her unnamed 14-year-old daughter attending a NY Yankees game. Then when a bit of outrage follows, he apparently claims he really meant to slur the other 18-year-old daughter who, back in Alaska, of course did not attend the game but was not named by Letterman. That would be okay, you see.<\/p>\n Second, then he evokes the now common straw man \u201cthey\u201d who are apparently \u201cupset\u201d with him, hoping to play the victim card. Then he dribbles out something about his \u201clast show\u201d as if we are to weep that some mob is out to silence him. (But the reason he picked the Palins, and not the Obamas, Gores, Bidens, or Kerrys, was precisely because he knew it would not equate to his \u201clast show\u201d).<\/p>\n Third, he strangely amplifies his joke by confessing it really was about \u201craping\u201d and \u201chaving sex of any description,\u201d but just not with a \u201c14-year-old girl,\u201d suggesting it would have been okay had he just been more explicit and named Bristol, the 18-year-old. In Letterman\u2019s world, because Bristol is 18, she is a year past most statuary rape clauses and thus the joke would have only been about \u201craping or having sex of any description with a [18-year-old] girl.\u201d<\/p>\n Nothing offered about his slurs against airline attendants and Governor Palin herself, when he sneered that she had a \u201cslutty flight-attendant look,\u201d or his remark that Palin \u201cwas keeping Eliot Spitzer away from her daughter.\u201d Indeed, he seemed to boast that he was proud of his \u2019slutty\u2019 joke, as if hard-working flight attendants really do look slutty (they don\u2019t to me), or that Palin looks slutty (she doesn\u2019t to me).<\/p>\n The self-serving, creepy apology was as bad as the initial slur. Letterman is emblematic of an aging, baby-boomer culture, that dresses up street vulgarity with a tie and coat. The only thing that saves him is his care to do this with the Palins from Alaska who don\u2019t figure into the usual no-go race\/class\/gender paradigm.<\/p>\n Part II. Still a Boor and Coward.<\/em><\/p>\n Then I was attacked by one Jason Zengerle for the above and responded with the following:<\/p>\n A Letterman apologist named Jason Zengerle at the\u00a0The New Republic<\/em>\u00a0blog claims logic is not my strong suit since I defended Sarah Palin\u2019s family and thought Letterman\u2019s apology was, well, like most of what he does these days, infantile and cowardly:<\/p>\n \u201cI know logic isn\u2019t VDH\u2019s strong suit, but is it really so hard to believe that the joke Letterman was making about a Palin daughter getting \u201cknocked up\u201d was about the Palin daughter who, you know, got knocked up?\u201d<\/p>\n Is that supposed to be funny in a Lettermanesque way?<\/p>\n Zengerle apparently cannot follow basic logic, so here it goes:<\/p>\n The girl at the game with Gov. Palin was not 18-year old Bristol, but 14-year-old Willow. So logically we are to assume that when Letterman refers to Palin and her daughter at a recent baseball game, he means the actual Governor and the actual daughter who actually attended it.<\/p>\n The intent of Letterman\u2019s tripartite sexual reference was to suggest that the Palins were synonymous with female promiscuity (cf. Letterman\u2019s further references to the Gov.\u2019s \u201cslutty\u201d look, and remarks about former Gov. Eliot Spitzer\u2019s interest in a Palin daughter (e.g., the \u201ctoughest part\u201d of Palin\u2019s visit \u201cwas keeping former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer away from her daughter.\u201d)<\/p>\n Cf. that logic: (a) Palin is in NY with her 14-year-old daughter. (b) former NY governor Spitzer was caught visiting a young prostitute. Ergo\u2026(c) Sarah Palin will naturally have to \u201ckeep\u201d a randy Sptizer away from a likewise randy 14-year-old with dug-out propensities.<\/p>\n
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\nPart I: A Boor and a Coward<\/em><\/p>\n