FOLLOW THE MONEY RATINGS

So...David Letterman has officially apologized to Sarah Palin for his joke about her daughter being "knocked up" during the 7th inning of a baseball game.

Here is the text of his apology.

"All right, here - I've been thinking about this situation with Governor Palin and her family now for about a week - it was a week ago tonight, and maybe you know about it, maybe you don't know about it. But there was a joke that I told, and I thought I was telling it about the older daughter being at Yankee Stadium. And it was kind of a coarse joke. There's no getting around it, but I never thought it was anybody other than the older daughter, and before the show, I checked to make sure in fact that she is of legal age, 18. Yeah. But the joke really, in and of itself, can't be defended. The next day, people are outraged. They're angry at me because they said, 'How could you make a lousy joke like that about the 14-year-old girl who was at the ball game?' And I had, honestly, no idea that the 14-year-old girl, I had no idea that anybody was at the ball game except the Governor and I was told at the time she was there with Rudy Giuliani...And I really should have made the joke about Rudy..." (audience applauds) "But I didn't, and now people are getting angry and they're saying, 'Well, how can you say something like that about a 14-year-old girl, and does that make you feel good to make those horrible jokes about a kid who's completely innocent, minding her own business,' and, turns out, she was at the ball game. I had no idea she was there. So she's now at the ball game and people think that I made the joke about her. And, but still, I'm wondering, 'Well, what can I do to help people understand that I would never make a joke like this?' I've never made jokes like this as long as we've been on the air, 30 long years, and you can't really be doing jokes like that. And I understand, of course, why people are upset. I would be upset myself.

"And then I was watching the Jim Lehrer 'News Hour' - this commentator, the columnist Mark Shields, was talking about how I had made this indefensible joke about the 14-year-old girl, and I thought, 'Oh, boy, now I'm beginning to understand what the problem is here. It's the perception rather than the intent.' It doesn't make any difference what my intent was, it's the perception. And, as they say about jokes, if you have to explain the joke, it's not a very good joke. And I'm certainly - " (audience applause) "- thank you. Well, my responsibility - I take full blame for that. I told a bad joke. I told a joke that was beyond flawed, and my intent is completely meaningless compared to the perception. And since it was a joke I told, I feel that I need to do the right thing here and apologize for having told that joke. It's not your fault that it was misunderstood, it's my fault. That it was misunderstood." (audience applauds) "Thank you. So I would like to apologize, especially to the two daughters involved, Bristol and Willow, and also to the Governor and her family and everybody else who was outraged by the joke. I'm sorry about it and I'll try to do better in the future. Thank you very much." (audience applause).

When I originally wrote about this "joke," I said, "Jokes about raping a 14-year-old are despicable, not funny.If you are a liberal, and you can't understand that, you are the poster-child for the rank sociological ignorance of liberalism in today's society."

As if to prove my point, several liberals wrote in my "comments" section about how they did not understand the hoopla.

A couple of the comments were so offensively written that I deleted them. (There is no freedom of speech on my blog...the First Amendment is about the government, not about blogging.)

I left a couple on, though, to show that there are people who really and truly don't get it.

Now why do you suppose Letterman issued the "apology?"

After all, didn't the statement he made last week take care of it?

That's the way liberals think.

All one has to do is make some sort of reference to the perceived offense, and everything will be OK.

Dumb.

Look at his apology.

Truth is, although he used the word "apologize" in his statement, there is no way what he said is an apology for his "joke."

What he is sorry for, according to his own words, is that his "joke" was mis-perceived. What people should have paid attention to was his intent.

That's straight out of the liberal text book.

What matters is not whether the action (whether by the government or by some half-baked, self-described comedian) does good or harm...what matters is intent.

We MEAN for the government to take over GM and/or Chrysler to be a good thing, therefore we should not be responsible for unintended consequences, like: instead of "saving" tens-of-thousands of jobs, actually causing thousands more to be lost. Who could have seen THAT coming?

Letterman also tried to deflect anger at his comment by making us think he was referring to Palin's older daughter.

Well, if that's the case, he is stupider than I thought.

There was no context to indicate that the "joke" was about her, not the fourteen year old.

So, what if the "joke" had been directed at the older daughter?

In your mind, would that have made it OK?

So it's OK to joke about someone being "knocked up" clandestinely during the seventh inning if that person is an adult?

I guess we'll have to wait until Letterman's daughter is all grown up to find out whether he ever gets it.

If he lives that long.

He's pretty long of tooth to raise a child now, having been born in 1947.

I did not see his "real" apology on TV, I read it today, for I no longer check in on the Letterman show.

Do you suppose that the ratings slip to just a half point above The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brian had anything to do with Dave's "more earnest" apology?

Could it be that there was a fear at CBS that his "joke" might start to affect advertising revenue?