Sarah Palin is playing verbal Twister these days. It all started when Letterman made Palin and her daughter the subject of his “Top Ten” list one night this week. Two of the items in particular drew the Palins’ ire: the line that referenced Palin’s “slutty flight attendant” look, and another, that referred to her daughter being “knocked up” at a baseball game.
I came to the controversy rather late. I missed David’s jokes, and only realized something was amiss when I read the Palins’ press release, which excoriated Letterman as a sexist, and even went so far as to suggest he might be a pedophile. You can get a pretty fair overview of the dust-up here, on HuffingtonPost, as well as watch a video of Letterman’s response, and view Palin’s Today Show response on The Mudflats.
Basically, his response was, “Yes, the jokes were in poor taste. I make many jokes that are in poor taste. If I had it to do over I probably wouldn’t make those jokes again.” He then goes on to say, in his own defense, that the Palin daughter he was referring to being “knocked up” at the baseball game was not fourteen-year-old Willow, as the Palin’s claimed, but eighteen-year-old Bristol, who had indeed been “knocked up” not so very long ago.
Poor taste? Yes. No doubt about that. Funny? No, not particularly. But the Palins’ response made the whole thing immeasurably worse. First, they did what they frequently do in circumstances like this: They made Sarah Palin and the Palin daughter–who is unnamed in Letterman’s joke, but who I assumed to be Bristol, and who Letterman, in fact, maintained he meant–equal victims. They’re not.
Governor Palin has chosen politics as her profession. She pursues that profession with vigor. The level of success she enjoys varies from day to day, and commentator to commentator. We have heard a great deal about political narratives over the past year. Sarah Palin’s narrative is constructed along lines that would appeal to her fundamentalist and evangelical “base.” A central feature of such conservative groups is the concept of persecution at the hands of the ungodly. They identify with the Hebrews in the Old Testament, oppressed by Pharoah, and then a succession of pagan rulers. In the New Testament the Romans are the oppressors, and then the Catholic Church, New Agers, Satanists, or (insert the Bad Guy of Your Choice here). The persecutors change; the constant element is that those being persecuted are always God’s Chosen People–the very fact of their persecution proves it.
Sarah Palin’s narrative is a familiar one to her base. She is a Good Christian Woman, being persecuted by the Left Wing Liberal Elitist Media and Washington. To make the story work, she has to do two things: prove that she’s a Good Christian Woman, and provide a steady stream of instances in which she is “persecuted.” And she does, and the stories are convincing, at least to the base, who started out believing the story, and have little trouble slotting the new names into the familiar saga–it’s easy to disregard the fact that Palin seemed woefully unprepared for the national stage if you start out with the assumption that Katie Couric and Keith Olbermann were out to “get” her. The questions raised about her fitness for the second-highest office in the land become not cause for consideration, but evidence of persecution.
Letterman’s joke about her “slutty flight attendant look” was biting–particularly since Palin does sometimes make make-up and wardrobe missteps. The joke was also a caricature, like the jokes about Bush’s incoherence, Clinton’s promiscuity, Reagan’s movie star resume, and Carter’s peanut farming. Think Nixon’s nose, Lincoln’s hat, Washington’s teeth. Public figures draw caricaturists, and caricatures are rarely kind. Yes, the case can be made that it was sexist, but perhaps a truer assessment is that it was Palinist–a caricature. To conflate the joke about Sarah Palin and the joke about her unnamed daughter together and present them as co-victims is mixing apples and oranges–playing verbal Twister in the interest of spin.
For many, the second joke crossed the line into bad taste. But the Palins’ response to it seems overblown, contrived, and seamy. If, as seems logical, and as he himself maintains, Letterman meant to refer to Bristol, the joke was tacky, but no tackier than the situations the Palins have themselves dished up for public consumption since they seized the limelight.
Bristol’s pregnancy became public fodder when her mother made it public fodder to quiet rumors that young Trigg was actually Bristol’s child. We all watched Bristol’s belly swell. We were informed in due course that she had brought forth her firstborn son and called his name Tripp, after the bizarre Palin custom. We heard the Governor rail against the media perception that Bristol and Levi were “dropouts,” though neither was attending school, and Levi had, in fact, had a short-lived job in the oil fields. Where I come from, when kids quit school and get jobs we say they “dropped out.” We were treated to the unedifying media sniping and snarking between the Governor’s family and her erstwile prospective in-laws. We heard Bristol offer a confusing–and confused–eighteen-year-old’s reflections on parenting, and how abstinence works, except when it doesn’t, and Levi’s confession that he and Bristol practiced safe sex, except when they didn’t. We watched Bristol become the Abstinence “IT” Girl. Letterman’s joke was tacky–but certainly no more than the public spectacles the Palins themselves created. Still, though, it was in poor taste, not only because it cut too close to the bone, but because no matter how hard Bristol has tried to put a good face on things, I seriously doubt that splashing her pregnancy across the national newspapers was her choice in the beginning. There’s an old saying about not making war on children, and though she is legally an adult, there are light years of difference in the levels of sophistication and experience between Bristol and Letterman. I listened to Letterman reread his joke and I winced. I, too, am a single mother. I felt for Bristol.
Since I read the Palins’ response before I actually heard the joke, I knew that they had chosen to say that Letterman’s joke referred to Willow. They crafted their remarks to reflect a scenario in which Letterman had salaciously referred to Willow, who is underage, having sex at the ball game with an adult ball player. When I heard Letterman reread the joke, my immediate response was, “Bristol,”–who, as Letterman points out, was indeed “knocked up” in recent history, and not Willow. Letterman’s explanation makes sense; the Palins’ attack reads suspiciously like an attempt to “spin” a tasteless joke into something sinister.
The sexual abuse of children is no laughing matter, nor is it a suitable subject for political spin. I come from a family with a widespread history of that very thing. I can attest to the damage it does. But there’s something else to consider, as well. Mud sticks. While it is important to deal honestly, openly, and definitively with child abusers, it is just as important to be very, very careful in insinuating what the Palins insinuate in saying they “…think it would be wise to keep Willow away from Letterman.” Accusations of child molestation just don’t go away.
For someone who grew up in a family in which parents considered the useless and ineffectual “keeping children away from” pedophiles the acme in child protection, the statement was both irresponsible and appalling. The Palins responded to a tasteless joke by implying that Letterman is a pedophile, and by asserting that the way to deal with pedophiles is to simply keep them at a distance.
Starting chatter like that is dangerous business. If they truly have concerns about Letterman’s relations with children, there are ways of addressing those concerns other than smearing him in the media. There are the Child Services divisions. There is the legal system. There are the police. As flawed as they are, they are our best systems for dealing with those who endanger children. I was a teacher. As a teacher, I was a mandated reporter. For those unfamiliar with the lingo, that means that I was required by law to report every instance in which I suspected child abuse might be occurring. Making a report does not require or constitute proof–that only results after an investigation. If the Palins truly are concerned about Letterman and Willow, their best course of action is filing of a report with the appropriate authorities. Simply “keeping Willow away from him” ignores the fact that pedophilia is often a crime of opportunity–every child to which the pedophile has access is at risk.
But I don’t think they really believe that. I think they took the opportunity that the tasteless joke created and ran with it. And they ran too far. I say it again. Mud sticks. Those words won’t go away. There will be many who harbor a sneaking suspicion that Letterman likes little girls. And even if there were an investigation and Letterman was acquitted–as he should be, if the only evidence was a tasteless joke that more logically applies to the Palins’ adult daughter–he would never escape the shadow.
Like Governor Palin, I am a staunch advocate of addressing the sexual exploitation of children. But if we are going to do that we have to deal with the central truth of child abuse. The vast preponderance of cases involve not the shadowy stranger in a trench coat–or talk show hosts–but a familiar face: a father, uncle, mother, aunt, brother, sister, cousin. Or minister, elder, church group leader. Pedophiles survive because they are very, very good at looking very, very good. Frequently they talk loudly about how much they love children, and how heinous child abuse is. I wonder if the Palins have considered that the risk to their children is far more likely to come from someone they know and trust than it is to come from a talk show host a continent away? I hope they have. And I hope, if they are ever faced with such a situation, that they do the responsible thing, and not settle for empty bluster and media spin.
Notes from Main Street 