I’ve received emails from readers who are alternately incensed, amazed or bemused at the arrogance of, or who say they’ll never watch that liberalvision station ever again because of, the ugly, dismissive attitude of CTV News Channel’s anchor Marcia MacMillan yesterday.
It was in the CTV’s reporting on David Letterman’s apology to Sarah Palin and her family for his über boorish “jokes” about a professional baseball hero statutorily raping her teenage daughter by “knocking her up” at a baseball game while with her mother in New York for a charity event (but notably, not apologizing for insulting Palin—and possibly all women—by saying she was herself going for a “slutty flight attendant look”).
Letterman apologized once, not twice (or “again”), as CTV falsely reports. The first time, Letterman made an opportunistic joke out of a pathetic, pretend apology, and as any responsible, intellectually honest critic — or news reporter — would agree, it made things ten times worse for himself, as even Letterman ultimately admitted. No, he only apologized once, after finding out that his first “apology” didn’t go over very well with 60% of America, and perhaps after looking in the mirror over the weekend. And contrary to CTV’s reporting, Letterman was not talking about Palin’s 18-year-old daughter: In fact, he made no reference to which daughter he was talking about, purposely leaving it to the audience to guess that it could well have been the 14-year-old — the one who was actually with Palin at the baseball game in New York, or the 18-year-old who wasn’t even there. (As if it would make any difference, morally. Like it would be OK with the older teen, but not the younger one).
After reviewing the CTV’s Marcia MacMillan’s reporting and her “Golly I don’t see WHAT the big deal is!”, naive-liberal-deer-in-conservative-headlights style (see screen capture), I wholly agree. Her “news reporting” came off as the arrogant, slanted, attitude-ridden, and quintessentially CTV (or any other liberal-left media’s). Hey she’s a conservative woman who’s pro-life and a traditional marriage kook and who digs the capitalism, and she’s a damn Republican fer God’s sake, so who give a flying, um, ‘knock-up!’
Since even Letterman finally agreed his jokes were totally, completely off-base, and insulting, and disgraceful, and more, and finally earnestly apologized for them, it seems a moot point to engage some weird People magazine “expert” —presumably an expert on morals and ethics— to inquire as to whether or not the jokes were “actually that bad”. Certainly Marcia MacMillan seems to think not. But that’s exactly what the CTV and MacMillan did. The People magazine “expert” agreed with MacMillan’s prodding, and thought it wasn’t that bad at all.
From my viewpoint, it looked like the hard news reporter or news anchor Marcia MacMillan, and her People magazine “expert”, both see absolutely nothing wrong with a culture in which a comedian can toss off jokes potentially about the statutory rape of 14-year-old girls, or casually (at best) joking about professional sports heroes “knocking up” an 18-year-old (assuming he was talking about the 18-year-old, and not the 14-year-old, which is hard to swallow). at a baseball game with her mother sitting right beside her. And joke about professional, serious women looking like “sluts”.
Which leads me to wonder how she’d view jokes on national network television (or online, I suppose) about the “knocking up” of her daughters if she had any, or, say, the knocking-up” of her mother or grandmother at a baseball game they were innocently attending as a family.
From: “Jean B.”
To: “ProudToBeCanadian.ca”
Subject: MSM garbage re Gov Palin
Date: Tue, 16 Jun 2009 18:20:11 -0700Hi Joel,
I hope you can see if you missed it, the clip on CTV news of that airhead Marcia MacMillan doing a ‘phony puzzled’ piece in effect saying ‘what’s the problem?’ with Gov. Palin.
Apparently, according to CTV’s MacMillan, that troublemaker, Sarah Palin, is ‘politicizing’ another unpleasant attack on her. Why is she so upset? What is the matter with her? ponders CTV. After all, it’s just a joke. Fighting back is ‘politicizing’ the issue.
She is a conservative woman so she is of no value, and has no right to defend herself. David Letterman can of course defend himself from the terrible accusation that he made a joke, in bad taste to say the least.
David Letterman has apologized, we are told. That should be the end of it, right? thinks the CTV talking head, and now he has had to apologize again. Mean old Sarah Palin.
And he was ‘apologizing’ a second time without any pressure by anyone. Right, of course he was.
Of course he wasn’t pressured to do that second so-called ‘apology’. He just did it because he did not understand what all the fuss is about. He is a bewildered, smirking, misunderstood guy.
After all, he said, if he has to explain ‘the joke’ (we are all too dumb to get the deeper layers of significance of the hilarious remark about a 14 year old girl getting ‘knocked up’) then it is not a good joke. So he is apologizing for telling a joke that needs to be explained. This is not an apology. This is not a classy guy.
Does he just read these jokes off a teleprompter like the vacuous Obama? Does he get paid a lot of money to grin mindlessly and read vulgar jokes about children?
But he is famous and of great value to society, and is entitled to be treated with kid gloves, so his joke-telling feelings do not get hurt.
Whereas Palin is just a bad conservative person. (Right now another self- important narcissist, Bill Maher, is on a CBC clip saying; it was just a funny joke about rape, and there was nothing to apologize for, and that should be an end to it ..right? he says.)
God help Letterman if it had been a joke about a Muslim, or aimed at a daughter of Obama.
Poor Letterman. He says he did not know the young girl was able to hear his joke. Well now there’s a good excuse.
Gov Palin has accepted his apology, yet she is still being sneered at by the MSM. Is it not politically correct to protect your daughter against tasteless jokes? Isn’t that what any parent would do?
Any mother or father would be hurt if their child were to be used as the butt of jokes just to get at that parent, and to get him or her to back away from speaking out about their principles, and committing the greatest sin of all, holding a view not popular with the MSM.
Shut up and go away, is the message to Gov Palin.
The hypocrisy is amazing. If a Republican or any conservative had made a joke which was seen by some as being demeaning to women (especially a rape joke about a 14 year old victim) then there would be a great outcry of rage from the MSM. They would scream; it is sexist, it is exploitive, it is cruel to sneer at the pregnancy of a 14 year old girl. But it’s ok this time as it’s the child of a conservative.
The CTV, just to emphasize how ridiculous is the idea of Gov Palin taking offense for the attack on her daughter, trots out some dim wit from People magazine to tell all us all that it was just a joke and was not so bad.
So MacMillan of CTV is puzzled, bewildered, bemused, along with the equally barely sentiment being from ‘People’ magazine, that great grocery store-checkout trash, why is there such a fuss is being made by some against poor victimized David Letterman. And why is that awful Sarah Palin ‘politicizing’ the situation.
Jean
FURTHER READING:
Rasmussen poll today:
“64% Say Comedians Shouldn’t Joke about Children of Public Figures”
—and of course that poll includes liberals and liberal journalists, some of whom apparently think it’s OK to joke about the rape of or “knocking-up” of children of CONSERVATIVE or REPUBLICAN public figures, and calling conservative or Republican women “sluts”.
.
—READER EMAIL—From: Greer, Todd
Sent: Wednesday, June 17, 2009 1:03 PM
To: proudtobecanadian.ca
Subject: palinThis will backfire on Palin – just like that other fake controversy – lipstick on a pig
Everyone knew letterman was talking about Palin’s daughter who unintentionally got herself pregnant (you knocked up) – and all you loons start talking about rape ???
You’re just making yrselves look stupid
Hi Todd!
Having sex with a 14-year-old is statutory rape.
Thanks for your insights on rape and loons.
Joel
PTBC was founded by Mr. Johannesen in 2000.
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