Posted on 06/21/2009 7:12:23 AM PDT by presidio9
I don’t think much of Sarah Palin as presidential timber, but if you hired me to write a speech praising her virtues (it would have to be a considerable sum), I am sure I could compose what my mother would call a doozy.
Maybe compare her to Joan of Arc or the Virgin Mary. Sarah Palin: a saint in armor maligned by the dark knights of the leftist press. Little Sarah, brave enough not to shed her country-girl accent, the feisty farm girl, the loving mom — willing and eager to rise each morning to milk the family cow.
You go, girl.
Go ahead. Hire me to compose a diatribe sinking fangs into the jugular of Nancy Pelosi. It would commence with a reminder that little Nancy was a privileged sorority girl, driven to school each day in the family limousine. Spoiled girl who always gets what she wants. Look at her scowl.
Blah, blah, blah.
I am not sympathetic to either of these views, even if they isolate facts. What caught my attention and got me going is the attention paid to the controversy stirred up after a David Letterman monologue in which he reported in mock fashion that on her visit to New York, Palin bought makeup at Bloomingdale’s “to update her slutty flight attendant look,” and that later she went to a Yankee game accompanied by her teenage daughter, who, during the seventh inning stretch, “was knocked up by Alex Rodriguez.”
Comments offensive I found these declarations to be offensive, and whether you consider yourself liberal or conservative, Republican or Democrat, I hope you agree.
First of all, Letterman’s excuse that he was referring not to Palin’s 14-year-old, Willow, but to her 18-year-old daughter Bristol is no excuse at all.
Come on. Even though Bristol conceived out of wedlock, she is still a kid. Leave her alone. If we can’t muster enough evidence to attack a candidate’s record, we should reconsider the validity of our own views.
The standard here is to think of Bristol as our own child who did not ask to be a public figure. Ridiculing her violates an elementary standard of decency ignored, if not trampled on, by Letterman and his writers. And yet, there’s more to the Letterman-Palin controversy. Something even more troubling.
Frat-House humor As Amanda Fortin notes in Salon, it’s an example of “frat-house” media, a standard that permits and beckons boys and men to regard women as chattel and nagging bitches. I have to laugh at the hypocrisy often attending this judgment. The other day I overheard a group of guys loudly ridiculing the portly shape of a woman sitting at an adjacent table.
“Look at her butt,” a goon declared as his friends guffawed their approval. The guys apparently failed to note the speaker’s gut hanging over his extended belt, a sight that might repel his mother. It is not an uncommon sight. Often, these judges of feminine pulchritude could not catch a girl, even if they had nets large enough to corral a whale.
Yet, these summary assessments thrive in the work place, at bars and in lounges by men who would be fighting mad or deeply hurt if the objects of ridicule were their daughters.
Even if you are a Letterman fan, we all must acknowledge that with his frat-boy declaration, he stepped in it big time. He also gave Palin an opportunity to present herself as a champion of feminine dignity.
Wow! Sarah Palin and Gloria Steinem. What a team.
Love that picture.
Letterman is nothing more that a trained monkey that is really good at reading his lines from the teleprompter,
The "joke" came from his staff of writers and was approved by the CBS editorial board and the network censors.
It was intended and malicious.
Anyone who believes otherwise is naive about the way television works.
My favorite too, although I like this one as well...
The screen that you'll see will look like this below. You apparently don't need to be a registered member of the site to send comments:
http://lateshow.cbs.com/latenight/lateshow/top_ten/index/php/20090608.phtml#
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From NewsBusters.org, June 9, 2009...
Seven months after Election Day, and the attacks on Sarah Palin keep coming.
On Monday, CBS's David Letterman on the "Late Show" shamelessly went after the Alaska governor and her family during his opening monologue, as well as in his "Top Ten" list.
Top Ten Highlights Of Sarah Palin's Trip To New York
10. Visited New York landmarks she normally only sees from Alaska
9. Laughed at all the crazy-looking foreigners entering the U.N.
8. Made moose jerky on Rachael Ray
7. Keyed Tina Fey's car
6. After a wink and a nod, ended up with a kilo of crack
5. Made coat out of New York City rat pelts
4. Sat in for Kelly Ripa. Regis couldn't tell the difference.
3. Finally met one of those Jewish people Mel Gibson's always talking about
2. Bought makeup from Bloomingdale's to update her "slutty flight attendant" look
1. Especially enjoyed not appearing on Letterman
"One awkward moment for Sarah Palin at the Yankee game, during the seventh inning, her daughter was knocked-up by Alex Rodriguez."
(WARNING: looong download time for dial-ups)
Posted on Wednesday, June 17, 2009 10:15:30 AM ET by ETL:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2273569/posts
There is no decency anymore, and the childish frat-boy humor proves it.
Letterman and all of the CBS executives responsible for slandering Palin and her family are scum. One of the many reasons (lying Dan Rather is one of the reasons) I never watch anything on CBS.
This is true and is why we need to stand up for what we know is the right way to respect each other. The media double-standard must die.
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Sarah Palin's 2008 RNC Convention Speech (YouTube, 44 mins)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vKgNrb3baNM
i didn’t read past the word ‘timber’, which should be spelled timbre when used in this context. Some journalist. I only came on to read Freeper comments :-)
Go Sarah!!!!!!
LOL! The “timber” thing jumped out at me, too.
In any case, at least the author was willing to acknowledge that this was way out of line.
And what is it with Palin’s “accent” that drives journalists crazy? She sounds perfectly normal to me and I can’t even determine what they’re hearing that makes them so crazy.
The word “timber” is correct. The metaphor is that potential candidates are like so many trees, and the goal of the parties is to find the ideal tree.
“timbre” = musical quality.
[The standard here is to think of Bristol as our own child who did not ask to be a public figure. Ridiculing her violates an elementary standard of decency ignored, if not trampled on, by Letterman and his writers. . .]
The writer may not like Gov. Palin but he stands up for her and her family in this current battle.
Personally, I don’t see anything wrong with guys at a bar making comments about a woman’s butt - amongst themselves when there is no intention to hurt. Letterman on the other hand was out to slander someone in a public and humiliating way. That’s not funny, that’s just plain cruel.
Well, that’s probably true now. I suspect that it’s because of the differences in American and British English spelling.
Originally, timbre referred to temper or tone (for example, of a bell), and was also used to refer to the innate qualities of a person.
So now we have “timber,” which is a logical transformation that one sees in all languages throughout history (I’m a Spanish linguist, and the transformations from Latin to Spanish are remarkable and often amusing).
“Personally, I don’t see anything wrong with guys at a bar making comments about a woman’s butt...”
Someone made a joke about Dave’s wife’s butt...he was showing them a picture of her face at the ime...JUST A JOKE DAVE....
"Now we are all frat-house comedians".
Sara Palin is “an outsider” and is not profoundly corrupt. That’s change that you can believe in (unless, of course, you yourself happen to be an insider or profoundly corrupt).
Sounds okay to me -- people who grow rapturous listening to the Massachusetts brogue of a droning Kennedy U-boat captain or the hypertrophied, broad pronunciations and cadences of a sometime Southern black Babdiss preacher like Jesse Jackson shouldn't be complaining about Sarah's accent.
That’s interesting, thanks!
I guess the other accents you mention are politically correct. Both the Boston Irish and the black Baptists have been voting Dem for generations; maybe the Swedes didn’t.
Actually, if memory serves, the Swedish and Norwegian immigrants became a mainstay of the Democrat-Farmer-Labor Party in Minnesota, which of course was the home of many liberal stalwarts: Hubert Humphrey, Walter Mondale, Paul Wellstone. Ancher Nelsen was my congresscritter when I was a boy living near Duluth on a NORAD base in 1959; he was a standup DFL liberal.
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