Letterman REALLY apologies for joke

[chefdennis]

lol, as i said, the heat was coming fromothr places and he was feeling it.....

 

[Turtle]

What are you saying? You think it may be manufactured controversy?

No, I'm saying that it doesn't appear that he apologized to save his ratings, since his ratings were sky high for the two days immediately after this happened.

Then again, maybe Letterman and Palin got together a la Andy Kaufman and Jerry Lawler and cooked this whole thing up. I doubt it, tho.

I wonder if we'll ever hear Palin apologize for calling Letterman a pedophile.

Anyway, here's the full video of the apology. Seems pretty straightforward and honest, not manufactured at all.
Video: David Letterman apologizes to Sarah Palin--The Live Feed

 

[Tennesseahawk]

I wonder if we'll ever hear Palin apologize for calling Letterman a pedophile.

I wonder if Letterman will apologize to A-Rod for calling HIM a pedophile.

 

[Turtle]

I wonder if Letterman will apologize to A-Rod for calling HIM a pedophile.

Wow. Excellent. That's a grand slam dunk right there. LOL

 

[Turtle]

Here's kind of an interesting article from Paul Farhi at the

One thing Farhi misses in his analysis is what happened to McCain with Letterman during the campaign. McCain was scheduled to appear on Letterman's show, then at the last minute canceled, telling Letterman in a telephone conversation that he needed to get back to Washington. That was when the financial crisis was exploding, and McCain didn't want to appear on a non-serious show at that time, except that's not what he told Letterman. McCain instead hung around New York for a sit-down interview with Katie Couric. Letterman was not pleased.

McCain eventually did appear on Letterman after Letterman had several days of McCain-bashing monologues that led up to it. And once on the show, Letterman hammered McCain for the lie. McCain apologized and said there was no excuse, but coincidental or not, it was pretty much at that point when the McCain-Palin ticket was flushed down the toilet. McCain announced his candidacy on Letterman, and then killed it on the same show.

Palin may still harbor some ill feelings towards Letterman for that.


washingtonpost.com (if you're registered there)

Palin gag? Comedy?s all in mis-timing - Washington Post (if you're not)

Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
WASHINGTON - Did Sarah Palin not notice when late-night comedians were making fun of her daughter's pregnancy last fall, or did she simply get fed up with one-too-many cracks when a now-contrite David Letterman weighed in last week? Bristol Palin, the Alaska governor's then-pregnant 17-year-old, was a punch line for almost all of the late-night TV crew -- Jay Leno, Conan O'Brien, Jon Stewart, as well as Letterman -- almost as soon as her mother was chosen as Sen. John McCain's Republican running mate.

Facing enormous criticism for his Palin-daughter joke, Letterman on his show last night apologized to the Palin family, saying it could not "be defended."

Yet similar jokes never drew much objection from Palin's camp until Letterman's gag last week about Palin's daughter getting "knocked up" by baseball player Alex Rodriguez during a visit to a New York Yankees game -- a line Palin suggested was really a reference to her 14-year-old daughter, Willow, who attended the game.

On Sept. 2, during the presidential campaign, Leno, for example, told this joke on "The Tonight Show": "Governor Palin announced over the weekend that her 17-year-old unmarried daughter is five months pregnant. And you thought John Edwards was in trouble before! Now he has really done it."

On Oct. 10, O'Brien, then host of "Late Night," quipped: "Sarah Palin is going to drop the first puck at the Philadelphia Flyers hockey game. Then Palin will spend the rest of the game trying to keep the hockey players out of her daughter's penalty box."


Never fully disappeared
While the pregnant-daughter theme was most common on late-night shows during the fall campaign, it has never fully disappeared. And Letterman told far fewer of these jokes than some of his late-night brethren.

Through mid-March, Leno had made 15 jokes about the Palin daughter's pregnancy, Stewart had told four on "The Daily Show," and Letterman checked in with eight, according to an analysis of late-night humor by the Center for Media and Public Affairs, a nonpartisan research organization affiliated with George Mason University.

The comedian most likely to bash Bristol Palin? O'Brien, with 20 jokes at her expense.

"Saturday Night Live" has also parodied the Palin family in questionable ways. In a skit last September, a mock reporter joked about incest in the vice presidential candidate's family, saying, "I mean, come on. It's Alaska!"
Palin not only didn't protest, she appeared as a guest on the program a few weeks later.


Why now?
So why did Palin ask Letterman — and only Letterman — for an apology? And why did she wait until last week?

As it happens, Palin finally got what she was looking for last night, when Letterman offered a lengthy apology and explanation for why his joke went so wrong. He said he understood that his reference was unclear about which daughter he was referring to.

"I told a joke that was beyond flawed, and my intent is completely meaningless compared to the perception," he said. "And since it was a joke I told, I feel that I need to do the right thing here and apologize for having told that joke. It's not your fault that it was misunderstood, it's my fault. . . . So I would like to apologize, especially to the two daughters involved, Bristol and Willow, and also to the governor and her family and everybody else who was outraged by the joke."

It's conceivable that Palin was aware of the late-night jokes made about her daughter during the campaign and wanted to fight back, but kept quiet as a strategic matter, says Tim Graham, the director of media analysis for the Media Research Center, a conservative media watchdog organization.

"I think the [McCain] campaign said, 'Is that really the fight we want to have?' " he said. "Especially at that point in the campaign, making an issue of it might have [backfired]. They knew that those late-night clips would be on the Sunday morning shows, would be in the blogs and mentioned in the newspapers and everywhere else. So why give the comedians more to work with" by protesting the jokes?

A more cynical view may be that Palin had more than enough media attention last fall, and that her Letterman broadside was designed to renew attention when the spotlight is dimming. Palin may even have been aware of a Gallup poll released last week showing that she attracted less than 1 percent of Republicans who were asked to name the "main person who speaks for the Republican Party today."

A spokeswoman for Palin did not reply to an e-mail seeking comment.

Making sense
As a rhetorical strategy, Palin's timing actually makes a great deal of sense, said Richard Vatz, a professor of political communication at Towson University and a self-described conservative. Noting that the pregnant-daughter jokes had been dying down, Letterman's crack stood out, making him easier to isolate for criticism, he said.

"If a large number of people are doing something against you, it's hard to take on the whole group," Vatz said.
What's more, Letterman's use of the phrase "knocked up" made his comment seem especially crude and nasty, said Vatz: "I'm not defending the things that Leno or O'Brien said, but that phrase implies sexuality in a very negative way."
Even if his anti-Palin jokes have been less numerous than others', Letterman may be a more polarizing figure than other late-night comics -- and thus a ripe target for Palin, says S. Robert Lichter, the CMPA's director. "He's everything that Palin is not. He's urban, he's ironic. More importantly, he's everything that Sarah Palin's supporters aren't. He's becoming the Dan Rather of political comedians."

One irony in the Palin-Letterman saga: McCain announced his candidacy for president on Feb. 27, 2007, during an appearance on . . . David Letterman's program.

 

[layoutshooter]

It is about time. He screwed up and needed to admit it. He did. He, and all others, should now lay off the families of candidates UNLESS it is something that affects the nation. We will continue to have a difficult time finding quality candidates. It would be a very hard choice these days for a quality candidate to run, most GOOD people would NOT want to put their family through the garbage.

 

[LDB]

Watching the video I believe he's either sincere in his apology or a very good actor, a far better actor than comedian. I'd give this latest apology a B/B+ overall. Making the joke about RG diluted it just a little. Had he done this exact apology the day after or no later than the second day after I think it would have been far better but at least it finally was done. Was the loss of a major advertiser by CBS.com the reason? We'll likely never know but he's now made a sincere apology not just another comic monologue based on the incident. Good for him.

 

[Tennesseahawk]

Turtle... one other thing that the author misses, is that none of the jokes during the campaign could possibly be misunderstood to be targeting Willow.

 

[Turtle]

Turtle... one other thing that the author misses, is that none of the jokes during the campaign could possibly be misunderstood to be targeting Willow.

True, but he included those jokes because people said that Letterman shouldn't be making jokes about a minor, and at the time those jokes were made, Bristol was a minor.

I really do think the McCain spanking by Letterman is something that Palin is still mad about. I can't say I blamer her, really. While what McCain did was wrong, I think Letterman abused his power, so to speak, when he hammered on McCain every...single... night for what, a week, two? in his monologue and at the desk, until McCain finally made an appearance. He should have maybe mentioned it once, that first night, and then moved on to something else.

Then again, he did that to Oprah for like a year. lol

 

[highway star]

McCain deserved the spanking from Letterman. Instead of lying, all he needed to do was tell Dave something like, "my plate's really full right now, I'm going to postpone my appearance for a week or so." Dave probably would still have been mad, but he would have had less to criticize.

The republicans knew that the Bristol Palin situation was major baggage. Personally, I don't see what Sarah has to offer that makes dealing with that worth it. While I was taken with her at first, she's impressive when she's rehearsed, she's far less impressive when it's "off the cuff".

 

[Tennesseahawk]

While I was taken with her at first, she's impressive when she's rehearsed, she's far less impressive when it's "off the cuff".

Sound like someone else we know? Difference is, Obama carefully molds his off-the-cuff so as not to say anything he shouldn't; and we end up with uh-uh-uh. Sarah can sometimes seem ignorant (not necessarily in a bad way), which makes me understand why most of America connects with her. She's not the typical rehearsed politician, born and bred from the lawyer factories. That's what we loved about Reagan... he was a capable speaker, who didn't come from the typical political mold.

 

[DougTravels]

Sound like someone else we know? Difference is, Obama carefully molds his off-the-cuff so as not to say anything he shouldn't; and we end up with uh-uh-uh. Sarah can sometimes seem ignorant (not necessarily in a bad way), which makes me understand why most of America connects with her. She's not the typical rehearsed politician, born and bred from the lawyer factories. That's what we loved about Reagan... he was a capable speaker, who didn't come from the typical political mold.

Do you really think "most" of America connects to Palin?

 

[Tennesseahawk]

Do you really think "most" of America connects to Palin?

In a 'hometown', matter of fact kinda way, yes, she does.

Not anything like the "ROPE! CHAINS!", err I mean "HOPE! CHANGE!" of Obama. That's just a simple type of mind manipulation. Repeat it, and you'll believe it.

 

[aristotle]

Olive Garden restaurant chain has just announced it will no longer advertise on the Letterman show.

 

[greg334]

Olive Garden restaurant chain has just announced it will no longer advertise on the Letterman show.

That's alright, it is not a real Italian restaurant anyway.

 

[aristotle]

That's alright, it is not a real Italian restaurant anyway.

No, but their advertising dollars were real.

 

[greg334]

No, but their advertising dollars were real.

Yea that's true,

Sitting there with my in-laws over a plate of salad, they were amazed at how Italian Olive Garden is but I didn't see any real table wine being handed out or real good Italian dishes I am used to, I asked them once for Pitta coi pomodori (brushetta styled pita) and the girl looked at me like my dog does when I tell her to get outside, tilting her head and her ears perk up in a way that I am a martian asking her for directions. I think they just discovered gnocchi, and it has to be frozen.

 

[Tennesseahawk]

Yea that's true,

Sitting there with my in-laws over a plate of salad, they were amazed at how Italian Olive Garden is but I didn't see any real table wine being handed out or real good Italian dishes I am used to, I asked them once for Pitta coi pomodori (brushetta styled pita) and the girl looked at me like my dog does when I tell her to get outside, tilting her head and her ears perk up in a way that I am a martian asking her for directions. I think they just discovered gnocchi, and it has to be frozen.

Ok, Greg... I think you're looking too much into this. Olive Garden is an AMERICAN restaurant, that is Italianesque. Do you think On the Border serves REAL Mexican food? Outback serves REAL Australian cuisine? China Star sells REAL Chinese food, complete with crab brains and chicken heads? All four are gimmicks that sell to Americans, along with the fake nostalgia. Olive Garden didn't last in Canada, because Canadians have a different view of Italian food, I guess. A lot of successful American restaurants fail in Canada because it's not America. Likewise, I doubt authentic Italian restaurants would do well to franchise here, because we know what we like... and it ain't Italian - tho we call it that.

The waitresses are girls down the street, who are expected to know nothing more than what's on the menu. They don't know Italian, other than what's in the menu; and half the time, they can't tell you what the words mean... just what color sauce is on it. You would do good to understand that at ANY franchise.

If you want REAL Italian food, I suggest you go to Italy. I'll go to Sammy V's in Wyandotte.

 

[greg334]

No T-hawk, you are wrong wrong wrong, I have nothing to do after my half day at Ford..... Bored bored bored.....

Hey that new transit connect is fun.... small but fun....

If they would get the sprinter sized version off the ground, then we will see that dominate the market.

 

[LDB]

Do you really think "most" of America connects to Palin?

That would be what, 50% plus 1? Obama's 52% of the vote was talked about using terms like "mandate". Give me a break. If we saw something like 7x% or higher that would be a mandate. He got just over half the vote. BUT, I'm sure if one said he got "most" of the vote that wouldn't be argued by some people because of the context.