Letterman Was Wrong

From Maria E. Andreu at the Newark Star-Ledger:
David Letterman's joke about Sarah Palin's daughter, Willow Palin, getting "knocked up" was over the line.
I'll admit to not having been a fan of Sarah Palin during the campaign. And although I believe that children of politicians should be off-limits, I was even okay with the scrutiny that Bristol Palin's teen pregnancy received, as it highlighted the gap between her mother's abstinence position and the realities of teen sexual activity.
But as I watched Palin today talking about David Letterman's joke about her daughter Willow, aged 14, being "knocked up by Alex Rodriguez" during the seventh inning of a Yankee game, I couldn't help but agree with her, mom to mom. It's tough enough to raise girls in a culture that too often views them as objects. Every time we let a comment like that slip by, we demean what it means to be a woman. Sure, it was a joke. And, no, my nine-year-old was not up at that time watching Letterman. But making a remark like that trivialized and sexualized a little girl who has no responsibility for what her older sister did and should have a right to not be lampooned as an object of amusement. Every time it's mentioned on the news, little girls watching think, "I guess it's okay to make lewd jokes about women being used."
As a long-time Letterman fan, I still find it hard to give him a pass on this. "I was just kidding," doesn't cut it. And his lame excuse that he was talking about Bristol, who is of age (barely) but wasn't at the game, doesn't pass muster either. It wasn't that he was making a snide remark about the sexual promiscuity of one or the other of the Palin children. He was exhibiting the attitude that, because of Bristol's pregnancy at a young age, the Palin girls are fair game sexually, easy girls, the kind of girls kids snickered about behind the bleachers at school. Except he's too old for behind-the-bleachers mocking. More importantly, that attitude demeans all girls and women in the struggle to own and respect our sexuality and personal integrity.
David Letterman, apologize to the Palin family. When you're done with that, come over and explain to my daughter that you've learned it's not okay to talk about girls that way.