Sarah Palin on the Today Show…If We Must.
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Where to begin with the Sarah Palin interview on the Today Show with Matt Lauer…
After a brief discussion of the gas line, the topic changed.
Lauer: Can we talk about some of the other ways you’ve been in the news lately, and you know about this. There’s been this feud this week with Late Show
Palin: (interrupting) If we must…
Lauer: I know…. But there’s been a feud this week with David Letterman about some comment he made…
They go on to discuss the issue. Then at 3:37 in the interview, something interesting happened. Palin looks down at her Blackberry that she is holding in her hand.
Palin: Let me read to you something that I received in the middle of the night, and email I received from somebody who’s not a (dismissive hand wave) known feminist, not someone who is an activist, but this I think speaks to the issue.
A couple things struck me about these two bits of the interview. If we are led to believe by Palin that she really doesn’t want to talk about Letterman….that she’d much rather be talking about the gas line, and only talks about Letterman “if we must,” then why does she have a Blackberry in her lap all set up with an email on the screen ready to be read aloud talking about….Letterman?
The other thing I noticed was the “hand waving” that happened when she said the word “feminist.” Odd to wave away the word “feminist” and suggest that if the comment had come from a “feminist” or an “activist” it would somehow not have been credible, especially when the topic of your outrage is the treatment of women.
And in another lesson on how you can be right in principle (yes, the joke was extremely tasteless and inappropriate) and still totally blow it (yes, the Palins now look even worse than Letterman), here’s how she reacted when asked about the statement issued by spokeswoman Meg Stapleton:
Lauer: (reading) “The Palin’s have no intention of providing a ratings boost for David Letterman by appearing on his show. Plus, it would be wise to keep Willow away from David Letterman.” I’d like you to explain what that meant. Are you suggesting that David Letterman can’t be trusted around a 14-year old girl?
Palin: Hey, take it however you want to take it…
So if we want to take it that she thinks David Letterman is a pedophile, that’s OK? Lauer gets this.
Lauer: But is that not, in fact, in bad taste also governor if you’re…if you’re suggesting that a 62-year old man can’t be trusted…
Palin: It’s not in bad taste. It’s not in bad taste.
(pause)
Palin: Hey, maybe he couldn’t be trusted because Willow’s has had enough of this type of comments. Maybe Willow would want to…uh….uh…uh..react to him in a way that..uh…would catch him off guard. That’s one way to interpret such a comment.
So wouldn’t that actually mean that Willow couldn’t be trusted? (head starting to hurt)
The problem is… Here’s the problem, Matt. It’s the double standard that’s been applied here. One, let’s talk politically the double standard here. First, remember in the campaign, Barack Obama said “Family’s off limits. You don’t talk about my family….and….”the candidate who must be obeyed”….everybody adhered to that, and they did leave his family alone, and they haven’t done that on the other side of the ticket, and it has continued to this day. So that’s a political double standard.
Just for clarity, I looked up Obama’s quote during the campaign about families being off-limits so we can examine this double standard. Here it is:
I have heard some of the news on this and so let me be as clear as possible. I have said before and I will repeat again, I think people’s families are off limits, and people’s children are especially off limits. This shouldn’t be part of our politics, it has no relevance to governor Palin’s performance as a governor or her potential performance as a vice president. And so I would strongly urge people to back off these kinds of stories. You know my mother had me when she was 18. And how family deals with issues and teenage children that shouldn’t be the topic of our politics and I hope that anybody who is supporting me understands that is off limits.
Now that we’ve cleared that up, what if someone had asked David Letterman if in that joke he meant to insinuate that Willow Palin has promiscuous sex, and he had said, “Hey, take it however you want to take it.”
You know…since we’re talking about double standards.
[A version of this article is posted at The Huffington Post - Buzz it Up!]
June 13th, 2009 at 12:14 PM
@ 127 Visitor Says:
June 12th, 2009 at 7:54 PM
BIRTHS
Anchorage Daily News (AK)
July 7, 1994 – Todd & Sarah Palin, girl, Willow Bianca Faye, 7 lbs., 12 oz
==============
Official sources have her birthdate as 1/21/94. Which makes her 15-1/2, not 14 as her parents continue to state.
June 13th, 2009 at 12:44 PM
Meghan McCain has written her piece in the Daily Beast supporting Palin and claiming such remarks would never have happened to a Democrat or specifically she uses Obama’s family. In fact, she gets her digs in by typing Letterman’s remarks word for word and using Malia name and referring to Michelle as slutty looking, which I think is her way to get to say it without owning it if you get my drift.
Anyway, she conveniently forgets how her dad lampooned the Clinton’s daughter publicly and a few others. The point is I never thought I’d see a McCain get solidly behind a Palin after the last campaign.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-06-12/david-lettermans-double-standard/?cid=hp:blogunit1
June 13th, 2009 at 12:55 PM
201 aha Says:
June 13th, 2009 at 12:44 PM
“Meghan McCain has written her piece in the Daily Beast supporting Palin and claiming such remarks would never have happened to a Democrat or specifically she uses Obama’s family. In fact, she gets her digs in by typing Letterman’s remarks word for word and using Malia name and referring to Michelle as slutty looking, which I think is her way to get to say it without owning it if you get my drift.”
Now this surprises me. Meghan has seemed to be the sane one in the McCain family. And you are right; she has forgotten what her dad said, and also what Rush said, about Chelsea.
As for the comparison to Michelle and the girls, there is none. Michelle has been criticized for her bare arms, etc, but I have heard no one say she looked slutty. As for Sasha and Malia, now which one of THEM has been knocked up?
June 13th, 2009 at 1:06 PM
Okay, now I have read the article. Here is one sentence that stood out to me: “However, there seems to be such an aggressive double standard for Republican women as opposed to Democrat women.”
*Democrat* women. How about Republic women, Meghan? Talk about double standards. Her not-so-subtle sneer against Democratic women has not gone unnoticed by me. I have just completely revised my opinion of this horse apple who did not fall far from the tree.
June 13th, 2009 at 1:19 PM
Republicans are always trying to play the victim. They are such hypocrites. The childeren of democrats have been the butt of many jokes. When Chelsea Clinton was a still a child, Rush Limbaugh called her the “family dog.” And John McCain’s stupid daughter purposely leaves out her father’s joke about Janet Reno and Chelsea Clinton: “Why is Chelsea Clinton so ugly? Because Janet Reno’s her father.” There’s an old video on YouTube showing one of John McCain’s temper tantrums when he went postal on this woman years ago, and was cussing at her, and he called her a “wh*re” or something, and he stormed out. And Barack Obama defended Palin during the campaign, but she and the republicans have no class, and refuse to aknowledge it.
I knew they were going to drag President Obama into this. This is not really about what David Letterman said, about Bristol Palin, whom is 18 years old. It’s about Barack Obama. Palin has been whining about the so-called “double-standard” for months. She’s a jealous, sore loser. The republicans are trying to distract people from the issues. They think they are going to sink Barack Obama by complaining about the media? I think it’s a race issue. I think they are implying that The Obamas are getting some kind of “media affirmative action.” (Then why are they so hard on Michael Steele?) They pulled the affirmative action thing against Barack Obama during the campaign (about his education, I think), and NOW they are going after Sonya Sotomayor for a comment she made about affirmative action years, ago. There’s a double-standard that Palin has never been taken to task for her nasty behavior during the campaign. According to republicans it is not O.K. to attack young girls (young caucasean girls) but it’s O.K. for Sarah Palin and the rest of the republican party to attack everyone else with their hate speech?
They can keep on dragging this on, if they want to. If they are not careful, it may appear that they are “tasteless” for esculating it, and now bringing yet more children into it, (the Obama girls) whom are still minors. It may appear that the Obama children are now under attack. The republicans could have simply said “if it were the child of a democrat,” but instead they actually singled-out the Obama children, which is quite telling. If the Obama children do come under attack, the Obamas will keep their cool, and they will handle the situation with dignity. Unlike the Palins. This is not Barack Obama’s fault. He had nothing to do with it. They are trying to tie this to Barack Obama, and it won’t work.
June 13th, 2009 at 1:25 PM
Oh, yeah. And what’s worse, the republicans may have declared “hunting season” on the Obama girls, whom the Obamas have been very protective of. Sarah Palin dragged her kids everywhere, and she intentionally put them in the media spotlight, and made Bristol Palin’s pregnancy a campaign issue, which of course, leaves them open to public scrutiny. The righties attacking the children of a popular president? This could get interesting, maybe.
June 13th, 2009 at 4:00 PM
aha – thanks for bringing Meghan’s comment to our attention. I about half-ass liked her some of the time. After reading her “weigh-in” , Meghan McCain can kiss my ass , and it ain’t fat either. BTW – WTF does she have to say about the pig ass comments her father made about her own mother ??
June 13th, 2009 at 4:05 PM
201 et al:
“”"…As for the comparison to Michelle and the girls, there is none. Michelle has been criticized for her bare arms, etc, but I have heard no one say she looked slutty. As for Sasha and Malia, now which one of THEM has been knocked up?”"”
And why exactly,
June 13th, 2009 at 4:10 PM
201 et al:
“””…As for the comparison to Michelle and the girls, there is none. Michelle has been criticized for her bare arms, etc, but I have heard no one say she looked slutty. As for Sasha and Malia, now which one of THEM has been knocked up?”””
And why exactly, would someone please explain, should Sarah Palin’s life and children be compared at all to President Obama’s??????!!!!!????
Sarah Palin epitomizes white trash ignorance. And worse. She can’t hold a candle to Obama.
June 13th, 2009 at 4:59 PM
It’s a PSYCH game.
Well, IMO, Palin continues to reference Obama so that psychologically we’ll come to associate her her on the same level, even though she is not even close to having the qualifications, ability, intellect, or quality of game. (”…habitual line crosser…-Charlie Murphy)
The same as when she was running for VP she never compared herself to Joe Biden who was on her same lateral job level. It seemed to me McCain should have been the only one compared to Obama, since they were running for the same position. But no, habitual line crosser, really wanted the position as her actions showed.
See the definition here: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=habitual+line+stepper
June 13th, 2009 at 5:01 PM
No, offense to Biden. I didn’t mean to apply she could realistically compare herself qualitatively to him. either…my bad.
June 13th, 2009 at 6:23 PM
#189, June 13th, 2009 at 10:10 AM, Professor Geezer Says: “”With what happened at the Holocaust Museum this week, I suspect some in the MSM are afraid of Palin now, and don’t want to cross her on the air … the way you are fearful of a crazy nut with domestic terrorists in her fan base.”"”
You have made a very important point.
June 13th, 2009 at 7:36 PM
Something that has kind of bothered me about this clip (mostly in a marginal kind of way considering that the source of the quote had come from the Palins) begins at 3:05 in the clip. Matt reads a quote from her statement: “A joke like this a contributes to the atrociously high rate of sexual exploitation of minors by older men who use and abuse others” … and then Matt asks her, “but can you really connect the dots to criminal activity the way you did in that statement”?
While she claims to “connect the dots to a degrading statement made about young women and that does contribute to some acceptance of abuse of young women” and then segued off to the email that she’d received in the middle of the night.
I don’t know, but this sounds like her opinion to me. And I’m fine with people having opinions, even GINO (although I’d rather not hear her opinion either). I guess that I kind of expected her to back up her opinion with some cold hard facts. Especially when she is inferring that an edgy joke ‘contributes’ to crime.
Hope that she shuts her yap soon.
June 13th, 2009 at 7:50 PM
G – I don’t have the story in front of me, but I believe the whole, “I discussed it with my family before accepting” was NOT true & debunked!
June 13th, 2009 at 7:51 PM
Also too, wasn’t there speculation that the email read on the blackberry – FROM GRETA????
June 13th, 2009 at 8:15 PM
If one is born in 1994, one will be 15 in 2009. If she was born in January, Willow is 15 and 6 months. If she was born in July, she’s two weeks away from being 15; thus, still 14 and Sarah knows how old her kid is.
Cathy Baldwin-Johnson’s medical report says: “1989, 1990, 1994, and 2000…”
So, today, Track is 20, Bristol will be 19 in October, Willow is almost 15, Piper is 9 or will be in the next 6 months.
June 13th, 2009 at 8:52 PM
I love it:
“That’s one way to interpret such a comment.”
June 14th, 2009 at 12:39 AM
I’m fairly certain that Bristol was not at this hockey game since she was pregnant and being kept in seclusion. Willow and Piper, however, were both in attendence and paraded out onto the ice.
“Sarah Palin is going to drop the first puck at the Philadelphia Flyers’ hockey game. Then Palin will spend the rest of the game trying to keep the hockey players out of her daughter’s penalty box.” –Conan O’Brien
June 14th, 2009 at 2:43 AM
Um, and I wonder just how much Matt Lauer liked being called ‘naive’ by a sitting governor? In fact, she also insulted me or anyone else who happenes to believe that DL was referring to Bristol when he made the joke and that that part of his apology was sincere.
And she not only intimated that Letterman a pedophile, she flat out called him a liar when he said he was referring to Bristol and not Willow.
Yep, I really wanna vote for that for a public official – someone who deals with conflict by denegrating and mischaracterizing the people and issues involved. Yep, really exhibiting those presidential diplomatic skills there.
Yeah, that’s what we need in the White House – someone who’ll make glaciers out of ice cubes. I dread to think how she’d handle really large, complicated problems like relations with Israelis and Palestinians, Afghans and Pakistanis, N. Koreans and Chinese.
I don’t think anyone’s buying the “I won’t boost your show’s ratings by being a guest on it” tack though. And even if she did take that stand, one has to wonder: is she going to manufacture excuses to avoid having to sit down and be interviewed by Brian Williams, George Stephanopolous, Bob Scheiffer, David Gregory, Conan O’Brian (Jay Leno? His program may not be the same kind of platform), Oprah, Barbara Walters … or a dozen other names I’m forgetting. The current sitting president went on ALL these shows, and John McCain has been on them for years including during his previously unsuccessful bids to become the Republican nominee for Pres. It’s a part of campaigning that cannot be ignored by a serious candidate for a high public office.
In a nutshell, if Sarah Palin can’t face David Letterman, or any of the people on this list, why on earth would anyone want her for President?
June 14th, 2009 at 2:57 AM
Terpsichore~
I happen to agree with everything you have said, but would also like to add the point that she deliberately attempts to justify her actions by using language that incites people to what I call “rage for a cause”. The “Rape” joke, “statutory rape”, connecting this to the low self esteem of young girls, etc.., is all done deliberately to sway people into accepting her version of things over the actual facts. She did the same thing in the campaign. I believe this comes from her very different religious beliefs/background.
June 14th, 2009 at 3:14 AM
Zack Says:
June 13th, 2009 at 1:19 PM
Republicans are always trying to play the victim. They are such hypocrites. The childeren of democrats have been the butt of many jokes. When Chelsea Clinton was a still a child, Rush Limbaugh called her the “family dog.” And John McCain’s stupid daughter purposely leaves out her father’s joke about Janet Reno and Chelsea Clinton: “Why is Chelsea Clinton so ugly? Because Janet Reno’s her father.” There’s an old video on YouTube showing one of John McCain’s temper tantrums when he went postal on this woman years ago, and was cussing at her, and he called her a “wh*re” or something, and he stormed out. And Barack Obama defended Palin during the campaign, but she and the republicans have no class, and refuse to aknowledge it.
I knew they were going to drag President Obama into this. This is not really about what David Letterman said, about Bristol Palin, whom is 18 years old. It’s about Barack Obama. Palin has been whining about the so-called “double-standard” for months. She’s a jealous, sore loser. The republicans are trying to distract people from the issues. They think they are going to sink Barack Obama by complaining about the media? I think it’s a race issue. I think they are implying that The Obamas are getting some kind of “media affirmative action.” (Then why are they so hard on Michael Steele?) They pulled the affirmative action thing against Barack Obama during the campaign (about his education, I think), and NOW they are going after Sonya Sotomayor for a comment she made about affirmative action years, ago. There’s a double-standard that Palin has never been taken to task for her nasty behavior during the campaign. According to republicans it is not O.K. to attack young girls (young caucasean girls) but it’s O.K. for Sarah Palin and the rest of the republican party to attack everyone else with their hate speech?
They can keep on dragging this on, if they want to. If they are not careful, it may appear that they are “tasteless” for esculating it, and now bringing yet more children into it, (the Obama girls) whom are still minors. It may appear that the Obama children are now under attack. The republicans could have simply said “if it were the child of a democrat,” but instead they actually singled-out the Obama children, which is quite telling. If the Obama children do come under attack, the Obamas will keep their cool, and they will handle the situation with dignity. Unlike the Palins. This is not Barack Obama’s fault. He had nothing to do with it. They are trying to tie this to Barack Obama, and it won’t work.
———————————————-
All of this crap is only because half of the President is Black. And every day his African name is in their faces.
No other reason.
Then Republicans whining and criticizing the most are the biggest racists. It’s a mathematical certainty.
June 14th, 2009 at 3:17 AM
@ EyeOnYou Says:
June 14th, 2009 at 2:57 AM
You reminded me of ‘Tasergate’ – which never got off the ground in spite of the best efforts of Karl Rove and Meghan Stapleton.
June 14th, 2009 at 10:03 AM
For those who want to follow what is happening in Iran right now – http://www.h3x.no/2009/06/14/iranians-on-twitter-during-the-june-clashes/
This is a list that is updated showing twitter sites of those who are presently in Iran and sending messages.
You need to click on each one as these are different twitter sites. Also, I don’t know that it updates automatically, so, you would need to reload.
Also, there is live blogging by somebody at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/06/13/iran-demonstrations-viole_n_215189.html
June 14th, 2009 at 8:19 PM
[...] fair overview of the dust-up here, on HuffingtonPost, and view Palin’s Today Show response on The Mudflats, as well as watch a video of Letterman’s [...]
June 15th, 2009 at 2:17 PM
One thing I find funny about SP’s response is where she claims David Letterman took several days to apologize…making it seem like he needed 72 hours to come up with a retort. Remember back to the awful Katie Couric interview, when Palin could not name a book or newspaper she reads regulary or when she could not think of another Supreme Court decision…then lo and behold weeks or months later she comews up with the answers! Hypocrite much?
June 15th, 2009 at 6:41 PM
Where is John McCain’s apology???????????????
e-mail michaelpatrickleahy@gmail.com
Tell him Chelsea Clinton should have an apology from him.
“Why is Chelsea Clinton so ugly? Because her father is Janet Reno.” John McCain, Palin’s running mate. Should McCain apologize to every young woman in America?
June 15th, 2009 at 7:09 PM
I’ve read many times comments from people who do not think Willow was present at the ballgame, afterall.
While this may seem like a small point, imo, it is actually important because it would mean Palin LIED on t.v. when she said Willow was with her at the game.
Has anyone seen photos of Palin at the game? Do any of those photos include Willow. I remember seeing Willow in some photos/video from a rally that Sarah spoke at, but how about the game?
I’m inclined to believe she was there because Palin attended with Giuliani and his wife. And, if Willow was absent, and Rudy and wife are keeping quiet, that would make them Accessories To this Fraud.
Marinate on that for a few minutes.