Was going to post this in the AM, but thought I’d look at it again. Good thing, since there’s more. Now with Bill Maher and hot HBO-canceling action!
So David’s apologized; good. Not going to carp. My work here is done! Yes, my piece in the New York Post pushed him over the edge, and activated his contrition glands. (Kidding, in case you’re tone-deaf.) It would seem mulish to continue the matter – and it’s not like there aren’t greater matters to consume us. (I say that reluctantly, since one of the gotcha tricks of modern discourse is pointing out that you’re talking about this when you should be talking about that, as if riding a hobbyhorse somehow hobbles every other steed someone might wish to mount.) But I am a bit perplexed by “areader” in the comments, who said, in the tone of someone orderingwry on toast:
I’m just relieved that Steve in OR, our host Mr. Lileks and most of his commenters have finally embraced political correctness. Anything is possible.
Well, anything is possible, including Mr. Areader signing in with a valid email address. (At least Mr. Letterman put his real name beneath his remarks.) It is interesting that objecting to the Letterman remarks constitutes “political correctness,” but of course that snide aside isn’t meant seriously. It might be proof the term has no serious meaning anymore – if it ever did, that is. I think it was used without sarcasm or irony for about 16 minutes in 1981, when a girlfriend of mine wore a button that said “Politically Correct,” next to her “Go Reds Smash State” button. (I remember that her dad subscribed to I. F. Stone’s newsletter, which at the time I found impressive. Hard core!) But to repeat the point, again, tiresomely: network comedians making sex jokes about the teenaged children of politicians on the wrong side of the political fence ought to be offensive to grown-ups. Just because some people have diluted the concept of “offensive” by equating it with “I experienced contradiction, and did not enjoy it” doesn’t mean some things are not offensive in the broad sense of the term.
It’s not a novel observation; some columnist for the Village Voice said the same thing, i.e., right-wing blogs are suddenly PC – and of course only someone on the right would find the remarks questionable or worthy of dissent, which speaks volumes of his assumptions about people on the left. Chats with friends of all political persuasions on the issue haven’t fallen neatly on party lines. Why should they?
Even the one person with whom I spoke who found it funny couldn’t explain what we gain by making the children of politicians fodder for sexualized jokes. As a general rule for future behavior.
In any case, it’s not a matter of prudery. It’s just a matter of decency, to use an outmoded word that connotes all sorts of oppressive Victorian horrors that led to clothed piano legs. I have a high threshold for bawd, but context and targets matter. I don’t care if Bill Maher swears on HBO. (I don’t think cable content should be regulated, either.) But this – well. I was going to cancel HBO anyway, since the end of The Wire, Rome, and other shows left nothing but stuff I can get from Netflix, but that made me grab the phone and cancel on the spot.
One of the things I found interesting about the matter was the position Palin continues to occupy in many people’s minds; it’s as if the Right was making Geraldine Ferraro jokes deep into the opening measures of the Reagan administration. As I may have said before, I’m less interested in Palin herself than what she does to other people, because it’s funny. Today’s example comes from Matt Yglesias, (h/t contentions) blog, and it has to do with the real story of the day, Iran. It’s interesting to see people unwittingly demonstrate that they don’t spend a lot of time dealing with disparate opinion:
Ahmadinejad is in most ways a classic right-winger, a demagogic nationalist and cultural conservative. In a manner somewhat reminiscent of a Sarah Palin, however,
You’ll be forgiven if you bale out at that point, be you left or right; it’s like a conservative commentator ruminating about whether Kim Jong-Il uses the rhetoric reminiscent of Rev. Wright. Perspective. Proportionality. But note how “cultural conservative” becomes conceptually elongated, so “right-wingers” who may, for example, not wish to redefine marriage become bunkmates with someone who denies the existence of homosexuals, and whose regime hangs them from lampposts. Well, we know the right-wingers here would, if they could, right? It’s only the possibility of bad PR that keeps Dick Cheney from setting his daughter on fire. As for demagogic nationalism, one suspects that Yglesias finds demagogy in anyone who talks about love of country and the great things America has done without landing with both feet on a big wet BUT, and then goes on read the syllabus from a Howard Zinn course.
I didn’t love America any less in the Clinton years than I did in the Bush years, or vice versa; I don’t conflate my opinions about transitory leaders with my opinion about the nation’s role in history and its exceptional, if occasionally improvised, conflicted, and compromised struggle to do the right thing. I mean, go back in history and find another one of us. (Note: small ethnically coherent Nordic states that can’t project power six feet over the border really don’t count.) But unqualified love of country unnerves some people, as though the lack of qualifications means you don’t recognize qualifying factors. Me, I think they’re obvious; we’re made of humans, after all, and every house we build has beams of crooked timber. But I don’t recall a lot of FDR speeches laying out a litany of American sins in order to bolster the case for why America should fight Hitler, despite all those troubling similarities. After all, we lynched Jews, too, ergo we must face our own demons as well as those abroad. And so on.
It’s interesting how he mentions Ahmadinejad’s demogogy, his “language of class resentment, painting his more pragmatic and reformist opponents as decadent elites out of touch with ordinary people,” and his populist use of oil revenues, and Sarah Palin comes to mind instead of Chavez – who, after all, called Ahamdi to tender a warm congrats. I swear, it’s the heels. They just make some men feel so small. In any case, when she gives a speech at the UN and later describes how she felt herself enveloped in a godly glow, give me a call.
I have a bad feeling about the Iranian uprising; something tells me nothing will change in the end, because the bad guys have too much highly motivated muscle. Brittle regimes crack when conscript troops refuse to fire on the people; it’s a different matter when you have imported thugs and strong-arm squads who not only draw a check for beating people back into place, but in some cases believe they have the Allah’s Good Mosquekeeping Seal of Approval on their side. So in the end the mullahs remain in charge, and after a decent interval, we do the indecent thing, and resume Talks.
It is an utterly futile path. They will never give up their nuke program. There’s no reason for them to give it up.
Here’s my most cynical, super-secret triple-cross intrigue theory: the mullahs planned to cock-up the election to provoke protests which would deter Israel from striking their nuclear facilities, because everyone wants to give the protests a chance, and an Israeli strike would change the subject.
No, I don’t believe it, but I’m sure some do. People believe all sorts of strange things. I remember one of the first tweets from a famous tech columnist after the uprisings began in Iran: “shows what happens when you let George Bush teach the world about democracy.”
You know, it’s not always about us.
But let me say THIS … Compared to Sarah Palin, Dan Quayle IS Jack Kennedy.
Sometimes it seems to me that those who expect politicians’ progeny to be off-limits have never heard Margaret Truman sing.
Sometimes. But not ordinarily.
Letterman is perverse and cruel – not amusing, not in the least. You have to think he was one of those kids who derived public glee from torturing insects and small animals: you know, putting them into stress positions so the wee creatures could not manipulate their remotes, then permanently scarring their psyches with endless sneering recitation of his misbegotten notion of jokes. I think it’s called Letterboarding.
Letterman’s recently promoted competitor is merely sophomoric, and no less painfully unfunny than the Dave itself. What say we ship the pair of them to Iran, just so Ahmadikneejerk can be filmed weeping other than crocodile tears for the Mohammedan Mensa Members whom swamis such as he persuade to turn themselves into human weapons delivery-&-detonation systems, Brave Shielders of Themselves With Gazan Moms & Babies, and Gallant Qassam Rocket Launcher Resistance Fighters Who Choose Schoolyards for Launch Pads.
The world has always, is now, and will always be in a human mess. What elevates some people above the mess, what ennobles the best of us, is decency, which has always been in short supply. And if you don’t think that’s not true let it be recalled that even in Roman times a hell of a lot of carpenters all over the empire made a good living out of hewing and mortising crucifix cross-ties (except for all those rate-slashing, freelancing do-it-yourself pikers at the Empire-Wide You Hewit Co-ops): their products were often crowd-pleasers in the same way that Letterman’s and Janine Garofolo’s and legions more “personalities’ ” and “talents’ ” products are crowd-pleasers. Which makes it hard to explain, in any day or age, why The Bleat’s become popular – why there just might be some decent folk out there in cyberland!
Sarah Palin has chutzpah. Nothing else. Just chutzpah. Thirty years on at mention of her name people will go: “Who?” She’ll get the same sanitized coverage as Letterman will get on those late Sunday night ‘Entertainment Tonight’ “Where Are They Now” DVR-keepers.
“Keep your blinkered, biased, one-sided partisan crap over on your screedblog, James”
Right up until that comment, I was fine with those that were respectfully requesting that topical commentary be relegated to the site set aside for that, although I thought it a presumptuous display of poor manners to ask.
This, though, is disgusting. This is exactly the type of “comment” that would have the contrarian in me devoting even more time and attention to airing views that Mr. Canuck would find offensive.
I also note that our frigid friend from up north follows up with an example of blinkered, biased, one-sided partisan crap of his own.
Classy.
teach5 writes:
“To crossdotcurve who muses that Rush Limbaugh has a”decades long history of disgusting racist comments”, it proves he’s never listened to the show.”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/cenk-uygur/rush-limbaugh-proves-he-i_b_61805.html
http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=2549
http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/200703200012
Fish in a barrel…
NEXT!
Argh! I understand your desire to avoid having to wade through garbage comments that always show up re: political matter. I really, really do. I appreciate the community going on here and enjoy the intelligent discussion. But it pisses me off that you can’t write whatever you want on your own blog because you have to worry about the trolls. I think your political wit is second only to Steyn and I miss reading it. But of course defer to your preferences; just with regret.
The obvious point to make – and I’m sure it’s been made – is that if #insert conservative’s name here# had made a joke about one of President Obama’s daughters getting publicly impregnated by a celebrity ballplayer during the 7th inning stretch at Yankee Stadium, he’d have to have been burned at the stake and his ashes shot into space.
But … having said that … a point cries out to be made about the families of Presidents – at least the adult ones. The ascent of Hillary Clinton to national prominence and contention for the presidency somewhat legitimizes criticism of the president’s family. I mean, if people start blathering about Michelle Obama running for senate, I don’t want to hear anyone stammering that she’s beyond criticism as merely the president’s wife. If we’re going to get into anointing leaders by familial relationship, then maybe we *should* start hammering on Sasha and Malia and Bristol and Willow.
The only reason that I can think of that still makes Palin a target of the left is that she scares them. It means they consider her formidable. It’s actually a back-handed compliment.
And I don’t think Letterman was really trying to be funny, just using his position to deride someone he disagrees with. He snapped up his writer’s joke because he liked the target. Probably complimented the writer up to the moment it all hit the fan.
On the “put it on the screedblog” issue, look–there’s only so much time in the day most of us have to surf around. I check out the Bleat each day, but other elements of the site are usually ignored. So put it all here, and if not your brand of vodka, just skim. (Like I usually skip the noir stuff. No offense, James.)
May I say, “from canada”, that was rude and uncalled for. If you don’t like what James Lileks has to say on his own blog, no one is making you read it.
It’s not the “offensiveness” of Letterman’s remarks this that bothers me. Offense, after all, is my subjective reaction to your actions. No, it is the “indecency” of it. Decency, or the lack thereof, is a more objective standard that focuses on how a person plays against established rules of behavior. This is an important distinction. You will generally note that upset lefties are almost always “offended”. Because it is all about them.
But in this situation it is not about Sarah Palin or her daughters and how they feel. And it certainly isn’t about me or how I feel. It is about the objectively execrable behavior – on its own terms – of a low class cheap-shot artist. Such behavior must be called out. Not because it is un-PC. But because we need to have a base common standards, a floor below which we do not permit each other to descend. And we must hold each other accountable when we fail to uphold those basic standards.
And Letterman didn’t. Shame on him.
One last distinction strikes me: liberals react to offeniveness by becoming outraged. Conservatives react to indecency by invoking shame. An older and wiser model for social intercourse.
So, “crossdotcurve”, you’re admitting you’ve never listened to Limbaugh? That you get everything you know about him from lefties?
Fair enough. We know what weight to give your opinions on the matter.
Oh my…
James, the charm of the Bleat is your ability to jump from Target to film to politics and make it ALL interesting.
Put everything on the Bleat. Screed your guts out, describe what Target ran out of this week, tell us how the gazebo is doing and offer up descriptions of Peter Lorre that make me spit out my morning coffee…
THIS IS WHY I READ THE BLEAT! Your words, your opinions, your site.
As that deep philosopher Ricky Nelson said:
“You can’t please everyone so you got to please yourself.”
And much like those who utilize their remotes, those who don’t like what they read don’t have to read it.
Write what you want and put it where you want it.
Isn’t that what a blog is all about?
I second what Ann said.
I find it appalling that anyone who shows up to read someone else’s blog has the 1st Amendment FAIL to try to shame you into shutting up.
I long, long ago gave up on Letterman. The beginning of the end was the first small dot of bitter bile at the corner of his lips. He kept brushing it off as just some Sarah Palin.
No Czar Nasty, turns out it’s just you.
Well, it’s up to James but the way to get less readership is to move pages that interest readers and post a pointer.
“Bale” out, eh? ESL, dude.