A) Many can't tell the difference between Bristol and Willow
B) Many didn't remember she had a middle daughter
C) All articles prior to the controversy said SP and Todd were at the game with the Giulini's and no were kids mentioned as being with her EVEN though SP's sister, daughter and nephew were listed as being at the other weekend events
D) No pictures have been found that show any of her children at the game
E) The joke wouldn't have made any sense to be about Willow AT ALL

Try to give things a little more thought before you accuse me of anything insidious when the person doing the spinning is Sarah Palin.

Finally, your comment about CBS and tacitly, blah, blah, makes absolutely no sense.

It wasn't a joke & the comment was about 14 year old Willow. CBS tacitly admitted Dave's statement was about statutory rape when they deleted that statement, & only that statement, from their official transcript that's published in the New York Times.

You did a great job of spinning the story & engaging in victim blaming/sarc

How many jokes have been about Bill Clinton being alone since Hillary has been Sec of State, implying he's having sex? The man was President and people were joking about his sex life. I am sorry, but I just think that it's as sexist to fight for a cleaning up of comedy when it comes to women as we laugh at jokes about men.

As for the Hillary jokes while she was running, there were jokes about Obama being sexy. Geez, the pictures of him shirtless were everywhere. So we can objectify him but not her? What about Levi Johnston? He was called "Sex on skates". As the mom of a boy, shouldn't that bother me as much as objectification of daughters?

I think humor is often the purest reflection of reality. Good comedians say things that ring so true sometimes. The "slutty flight attendant look" joke worked because everyone who heard that joke got the visual. If there weren't some truth to the visual, it would have fallen flat. Letterman gives a top ten every night and every night only about three of the ten get a strong response — every night. That was one that night because the image resonated.

We need to be careful when it comes to sexism and humor. Heck, if I were to be upset about all kinds of jokes made at women's expense, I would have to stop watching Kathy Griffin and I LOVE Kathy Griffin.

What I am trying to say is, we need to get at the reasons for objectification that make the humor ring true. It's not the joke that is the problem, it's what the joke spotlights that is the problem. I think that our society is so confused about sexuality that we send mixed messages and until we stop trying to define what is and isn't appropriate based on the media and humor and prudishness, then maybe the jokes will stop ringing true.

Why do women wear high heels and short skirts? Why do women buy Victoria's Secret bras? We want to look and feel sexy but we don't want any to notice or comment on it? That's confusing.

Also, we're all sort of neglecting the "slut" comment. None of us liked it when Hillary's cleavage was made an issue during the campaign — so why ignore this one?

This is in NO WAY a defense of Palin, but I just have to wonder why it's OK to toss this stuff out there.

I totally agree that Palin handled in a horrible way and, Jen, think you raise exactly the right thing that she should have done.

It still doesn't excuse what Letterman did. Yes he apologized, but how long will it be until he and so many others do it again? And again?

Having a sense of humor is one thing, but have to tolerate sexism in the name of purported humor is wrong. Anyone cane say, "Hey, it was just a joke — lighten up."

Palin completely turned this around in a horrible way. But, if we allow the comments to go without objecting to them, we leave the door open for all the comments in the future.

As for the the "guys" an their sex lives — I think it's totally irrelevant and we shouldn't cover this stuff UNLESS it is somehow interfering with their public duties or the acts themselves show that the participants are hypocrites and act against the positions they take publicly.

Sex is always good for humor. Sexism — not so much.

I didn't like the joke and think it SHOULD have been apologized for, which it was. But I think the big mistake was the Palin camp's purposeful distraction from the reality of the joke — making it something it wasn't. It was not ever about Willow.

I think a joke about Bristol is right ON the line. She is 18, not a minor, who has stepped out on the public stage and out from under her mom's umbrella to talk, not about animal rights or the environment, but sex. Therefore, she is fair game. It doesn't mean the joke was good or right, but it was fair game.

The Palin camp COULD have said, "Whether or not Bristol is a public figure, how do we want to talk about young women and sex in this society?" INSTEAD she made the joke appear to be about a girl, a minor. The disengenuous manipulation forced the conversation to something that did cross the line. Had Letterman actually made the joke about Willow, I would have expected no less than a suspension. But it wasn't.

In manufacturing a false intention, she completely confused the issue of a legitimate intention. She could have set a clear message for women and men to get behind as to what is and isn't acceptable but because she muddied the water, she created an atmosphere where some (like me) were made to look like pedophile protectors or political hypocrates simply because we were trying to just clarify the real issue.

When she then implied Letterman is a pedophile who couldn't be trusted around her daughter, she took her argument to another, even more "indefensible" level.

You see, she did to Letterman what she did to Obama and Obama supporters: she forced us to defend, explain or justify an evil idea (terrorist pals or pedophilia) in order to get to the real topic which makes us look like terrorist and pedophilia apologists.

So in the end, the real issue was lost in Palin's masterful framing of a debate. THAT is my problem with the whole episode. The fact that SHE sacrificed a genuine debate for grandstanding and politicking. The joke wasn't about Williow, and no one watching Letterman that night thought it was. The result in the end: Sarah Palin, not David Letterman, deliverd the image of her 14 year old daughter being raped by A Rod on a baseball field to the American people all for a few days of media coverage.

Like the joke or not, like the original focus of the joke or not, you can't deny that Sarah Palin deliberately created a false premise thus putting her own ambitions over an issue that SHOULD have been a valuable topic of discussion. I think her motivation did more harm to the women on how women are treated than the joke could ever do.

Jennifer

On the other hand, targetting a daughter who made no choice to enter the public arena is WRONG. Politians are out there-but their children need to be off limits-Girls or boys. Not fair to degrade anyone because of the family they were born into.

We are not as close to an even/steven reality as we like to pretend we are and it's things like this that remind us of that.