The Left is projecting again

Some of the most vile comments about Palin left in the comment section of places like ADN described Palin as "narcissistic," "craves attention," "can't stay out of the spotlight," "addicted to fame," "cares more about her popularity than the people of Alaska" and more.

But this weekend, their Dear Leader Obama will be a guest on five different news shows, with a final appearance on David Letterman's show on Monday.

As usual, the Left is projecting. The Obama-followers don't realize that Obama is the one who's addicted to fame, narcissistic and loves to see himself on TV and hear his own voice. He had two major primetime speeches this summer and also had the ABC health care primetime special. He's had so many speeches that Fox has finally stopped interrupting their primetime lineup for him because they're losing money. Even ABC news thinks that Obama is over-exposed.

The reason he does this is because he has no substance whatsoever. He has nothing to offer except the sound of his voice. He is a puppet whose campaign platform was "hope and change" with zero specific ideas on how to get anything done. And the voters fell in love with this "hope and change" rhetoric.

After McCain/Palin lost the election last year Palin hunkered down in Alaska and didn't make any appearances until the end of the congressional session. She was totally focused on her job and didn't give a whit about her "fame;" she only cared about doing what was best for Alaska. She accomplished so much when she got back, too. Because she has more to offer than lofty rhetoric.

The Left is projecting what they know is true about Obama onto Palin, which is a false projection. Palin is none of those things. While Obama is everything they accuse her of.

Political Punch
Power, pop, and probings from ABC News Senior White House Correspondent Jake Tapper
ABC News Blog

Obama Over-Exposure?
September 16, 2009 8:33 AM

This Sunday, President Obama will be interviewed on five shows -- ABC News’ “This Week With George Stephanopoulos,” CNN’s “State of the Nation”, CBS’s “Face the Nation”, NBC’s “Meet the Press” and Univision’s “Al Punto with Jorge Ramos."

It's a rare feat called "the Full Ginsburg." In modern media lore, the first time someone pulled a five-show feat was 11 years ago, in 1998, when Monica Lewinsky’s attorney William Ginsburg made the rounds to defend his client. Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-NY, did a Full Ginsburg in 2007 after launching her presidential bid.

For both Ginsburg and Clinton, Fox News Sunday made the cut, and Univision didn’t. Such is not the case for President Obama; Democrats say the Fox News Sunday audience is largely entrenched in their opposition to the president, essentially unconvincible, and thus submitting to an interview might not be the best use of President Obama's time.

Palin could be at the heart of a pop culture shift

After the dust has settled on the Letterman issue, it's revealed that Palin can fight against pop culture and win, something many conservatives in the past haven't been able to do.

Gary Bauer at Human Events wrote a fantastic article covering this subject. It's a great read and he shows how remarkable it is that Palin came out on top after Letterman's insults. Here is an excerpt of his article published today, along with my comments.

Letterman has enjoyed a temporary ratings boost, but there’s deeper meaning in the incident. The cultural left lampoons Palin because her values and life are completely foreign to them. They find it bizarre that she hunts, prays and says things like “you betcha.’” They can’t fathom that she brought a child with Down syndrome to term and that she didn’t pressure her daughter into aborting an unexpected pregnancy.

Letterman may not know anyone who would vote for Palin or a family that looks like hers. But his Palin joke backfired in part because scores of millions of Americans are living lives that more closely resemble Palin’s life than Letterman’s. Like Palin, they pray in churches, hunt and fish and raise imperfect families with unconditional love. They are more than uneasy about the culture’s sexualization of children and its infantilization of adults.

The cultural left mocks Palin’s values, but its taunts often fail to gain traction, because Palin’s politics and principles are much more main-stream than those of her critics. Sarah Palin is a false target for the popular culture. It can’t resist the temptation to ridicule and lampoon her, but she offers too much common sense and inspiration to make for good jokes.

"Sarah Palin is a false target for popular culture." So true. This could be the beginning of a huge cultural shift.

Before there was always a divide between the politicians and the regular citizens. The politicians were the men and women in suits who did the "arduous" task of representing the citizens in government, creating policy and voting on it. These politicians on both the right and left were largely very wealthy career politicians who placed themselves above the public. Two types of people - either you're in politics or you're one of the regular people, and never the twain shall meet. The liberal media could make jokes at politicians and get laughs because there was so much distance between politicians and regular folks. Even jokes made at the expense of Republicans could get big laughs from mainstream America because they couldn't really identify with them on a personal level either.

Bill Clinton in my memory was probably one of the first to break down the wall between politics and pop culture. Before Lewinsky, he integrated himself into pop culture by showing his personal side - playing the saxophone, going on comedy shows, joking, smiling, laughing, being sociable, showing a laid-back and at ease personality. There was very little compartmentalization with him. He was considered very "cool" but his life circumstances and extreme Leftist politics still separated him from mainstream Americans.

With Palin we have a completely different scenario. We have someone who the majority of Americans can instantly identify with. Now when the largely liberal media makes "jokes" about her, the public instantly feels like the joke is on them because she is just like them. She therefore empowers people to say no, I don't need to watch Letterman tell tasteless jokes. With her, the liberal media can't make "jokes" about politicians anymore because there is no more divide between politician and a real person - here is one who is both. What happens next is that what's popular and what makes money for comedians, movie makers, musicians and others in pop culture starts to slowly shift right. When more people feel empowered by that, more "real" politicians like Sarah Palin will start to emerge. Then we could potentially be in a place where our forefathers wanted us to be, with real everyday citizens running the country. The pop culture shift reinforces the political shift to the right and vice versa, and Sarah Palin is at the heart of it.

Letterman apologizes for real

He apologized a second time, and it was sincere. Palin accepted it. I don't think he'll ever make a joke about it again. Let's move on.

What's funny to me is that in all the articles I've read about this ordeal, MSM refers to Bristol as an "unwed mother." Which of course, she is. But they use it as a justification for Letterman's joke. Like - "see, she's an unwed mother; it was appropriate. The Palins are overreacting!" They couldn't just say her name, Bristol. They had to put the unwed mother thing in there, too.

What the MSM doesn't want to admit is that's one of the reasons why people were outraged. Bristol was in a committed 3-year relationship with the father and they were engaged. Are all women who have a baby in their over 3-year relationships with their significant other allowed to be called "sluts" and be the subject of sexual jokes involving spreading their legs for Alex Rodriguez during a baseball game? I know it would have been better if they got married, and that everyone got married before having kids. But sometimes it just doesn't happen and the woman in question shouldn't be called a slut because of it. I just don't think that's slutty behavior, in my opinion.

Anyway, it's over now. I'm sure Letterman won't be making those kinds of jokes ever again and we can all move on now.

Responses from Letterman's "joke" and non-apology

First, Todd and Sarah issued statements regarding Letterman's "jokes" and his pathetic "apology."

Todd: "Any ‘jokes’ about raping my 14-year-old are despicable. Alaskans know it, and I believe the rest of the world knows it, too."

Sarah (through her facebook page): "Concerning Letterman's comments about my young daughter (and I doubt he'd ever dare make such comments about anyone else's daughter): '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, but it reminds us some Hollywood/NY entertainers have a long way to go in understanding what the rest of America understands - that acceptance of inappropriate sexual comments about an underage girl, who could be anyone's daughter, contribute to the atrociously high rate of sexual exploitation of minors by older men who use and abuse others.'"

Also, Missouri Senator Claire McCaskill spoke out: "Letterman jokes about Palin's daughter. Way over the line. If it were my daughters I'd be furious. He should seriously apologize."

And finally, after Dave's non-apology and invitation to appear on his show Palin spokeswoman Meg Stapleton issued this statement: "The Palins have no intention of providing a rating's boost for David Letterman by appearing on his show. Plus, it would be wise to keep Willow away from David Letterman."

And I loved Victor Davis Hanson's smackdown of Letterman's apology on the Corner today.

A Boor and a Coward [Victor Davis Hanson]

Smug, hip David Letterman offered a smirky non-apology about his ongoing class and sexist slurs against the Palins, his apparent social inferiors.

"We 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 — her name is Bristol, that's right, and so, then, now they're upset with me . . ."

"These 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't think it's funny. I would never think it was funny. I wouldn't put it in a joke..."

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.

Second, then he evokes the now common straw man "they" who are apparently "upset" with him, hoping to play the victim card. Then he dribbles out something about his "last show" 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 "last show").

Third, he strangely amplifies his joke by confessing it really was about "raping" and "having sex of any description," but just not with a "14-year-old girl," suggesting it would have been okay had he just been more explicit and named Bristol, the 18-year-old. In Letterman's world, because Bristol is 18, she is a year past most statuary rape clauses and thus the joke would have only been about "raping or having sex of any description with a [18-year-old] girl."

Nothing offered about his slurs against airline attendants and Governor Palin herself, when he sneered that she had a "slutty flight-attendant look," or his remark that Palin "was keeping Eliot Spitzer away from her daughter."

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't figure into the usual no-go race/class/gender paradigm.

06/11 11:21 AM Share

David Letterman is a bitter, angry, misogynistic, unfunny piece of trash

On his show Monday night Letterman made his top ten list about Sarah Palin and her trip to New York. He called her slutty, a hooker, drug addict, among other things - but the absolute worst was when he made a "joke" about Willow being "knocked up" by Alex Rodriguez. I can barely contain my seething white-hot rage. That was completely WRONG, sexist, perverted, cruel and ruthless attack on a child of a political figure - a 14-year-old girl!! In his mind it's okay to say those things about Palin and her family because he disagrees with her politically and she's a conservative. It's also perfectly okay to call a 45-year-old mother of 5 a slut. What a SICK man.

The other reason he did this was to give her a little taste of what's to come if and when she runs for POTUS. He's basically saying "I will attack your children if you run, and you can't do anything about it."

Palin was a guest on the brand new John Ziegler radio show yesterday and he asked her about Letterman's show.

“What a commentary there,” Palin said of the comment during an interview on conservative host John Ziegler’s Los Angeles-based radio show. “That’s pretty pathetic, good ole David Letterman.”

“It’s very sad to not recognize what this trip was all about,” Palin said, pointing to the autism event she participated in during a stop in Westchester, New York.

Ziegler asked her a question she was never before asked and that was "is it all worth it?" She said that she spoke with someone from the AP recently who seemed to relish in the fact that so many negative things were said about her and the AP reporter asked Sarah if she was having a rough week, and Palin responded that she had a great week because she got to speak to her son and her son is okay. Talk about some perspective! She also said this:

There are some rough days, but it's worth it. I don't want anybody who has a message of this love for America, this desire to help our country, to ever be told and to believe that they need to sit down and shut up. I cannot sit down and shut up. I'm speaking for the state of Alaska, for energy independence, for national security, for a stronger economy, for a better America. I will continue to do that and just keep taking shots, and yes I know what I'm in for. But we will continue to fight because we've got our young men and women fighting for us and our freedom to do such every single day in Iraq and at home.

I never watched Letterman anyway but now I never will. Let's boycott his show. He always seemed extremely bitter that Leno got the Tonight Show over him. His recent comments on Conan O'Brien being the new host revealed to me that he's never gotten over it. Just an angry bitter man, pathetic indeed.