It’s tough to miss when you’re joking about Sarah Palin, who is a one-woman political parody and media caricature. But David Letterman certainly missed. Anybody’s teen-aged daughter and the words “knocked up” should be off-limits, especially to a mainstream, network comedian. No matter how late the hour. No matter that the Palins have become the poster family for hypocritical, media-mongering child rearing.
To Letterman’s credit, he apologized. To his discredit, it was parsed. He framed the “knocked-up”-joke incident as “intent” vs. “perception.” He reminded his audience that “If you have to explain a joke, it’s a bad joke. I told a bad joke. Beyond flawed.”
He then apologized to the Palin daughters and the rest of the Palin family and said he “will try to do better in the future.”
In other words, Letterman apologized for telling a misperceived joke, not one that was inherently in extremely poor taste. It’s tough to look more self-serving in public than Sarah Palin, but David Letterman managed to do just that.