On Tue, Jun 23, 2009 at 12:39 PM, David Bruggeman <[email protected]> wrote:
> > http://ethicist.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/22/the-ethics-of-lettermans-palin-joke/ > > They buried the lede/conflict of interest here. Who, besides Donz, knew > that the NYT Ethicist used to write for Letterman? > I knew that - mostly because it is mentioned very prominently in the "About Randy Cohen" box on the right of his column (in addition to being the focus of the last two paragraphs). Cohen gets it about right - if anything he is too hard on Dave. He writes (accurately, IMO) "Alas, the joke does have ethical shortcomings. Although Bristol is a legitimate subject, she is a slightly pathetic one, beleaguered by her family, pressed by her circumstances, abandoned by her boyfriend, making the joke a bit bullying." He also writes, less accurately (IMO): "More disheartening, sexism permeates the joke. Letterman has ridiculed Bill Clinton, Eliot Spitzer, John Edwards and, here, Alex Rodriguez for licentious excess — embarrassing conduct, perhaps, but Letterman treats it with nothing harsher than a sort of smirking envy. Bristol is condemned on moral grounds — she’s loose, she’s easy, she’s held to the standards of a 1950s high school. Nobody envies the tramp. A joke is an expression of its teller’s persona; context counts. The night Letterman told this joke, his Top 10 List was “Highlights of Sarah Palin’s Trip to New York.”<http://lateshow.cbs.com/latenight/lateshow/top_ten/index/php/20090608.phtml>No. 2 was “Bought makeup at Bloomingdales to update her ‘slutty flight attendant’ look.” Male politicians are not so relentlessly mocked for their appearance, and when they are, it is for being a fop or a doofus, vain or foolish. Women politicians are evaluated for their sexual allure; they are put in their place. In his initial response to this contretemps, Letterman said of No. 2, “I kind of like that joke.” He should reconsider. He should retire the word “slut.”" I would like to see a montage clip of Dave's Clinton and Spitzer jokes over the years; I would defy anyone to watch it and conclude that Dave's tone is "smirking envy". He clearly had lost all respect for Clinton by the last two years of that administration, and since then his jokes have continued to hit pretty hard, not just going for the easy and sleazy, but also to Clinton's fundamental flaws, lack of integrity, decency and trustworthiness. The joke on Spitzer is never "wow, he gets to have sex with lots of women" - it is always "he likes to have sex with whores". There is nothing envious about that - it is entirely condescending and judgemental (and appropriatley so). My take on the Bristol Palin joke was exactly the same as Cohen's here, but the opposite on the slutty flight attendant look joke, which, like Dave, I kind of liked. The joke here is not that all female politicians are slutty, or that all attractive female politicians are slutty, or even that female politicians have a sexual dimension to their personas that males do not have. The joke, clearly, is on the behavior of this particular female politician, who used a flirty persona (and was used by the old white men running the McCain campaign) to try to win votes - including of course,, spending lots of money on fancy clothes at places like Bloomingdales. Clinton used his purported sex appeal with women to get votes, and was called on it by comics. There is nothing wrong with comics making a similar (but much, much, milder) call on Palin. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ TV or Not TV .... Smart (TV) People on Ice! You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TV or Not TV" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/tvornottv?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
