The irony is that fellow late-night comics Jay Leno and Conan O'Brien have all made more jokes about Bristol's pregnancy without incurring the wrath of Palin and others.
According to the Washington Post, through mid-March Leno had made 15 jokes and O'Brien made 20 jokes at Bristol's expense, compared to 8 for Letterman. The Post adds that Palin even appeared on "Saturday Night Live" after the show performed a skit joking about incest in her family, with comic Bobby Moynihan quipping, "Uhhh -- what about the husband? You KNOW he's doing those daughters! I mean, come on! It's Alaska!"
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/06/15/letterman-apologizes-to-p_n_215927.html Palin Gag? Comedy's All in the Mis-Timing Did Sarah Palin not notice when late-night comedians were making fun of her daughter's pregnancy last fall, or did she simply get fed up with one-too-many cracks when a now-contrite David Letterman weighed in last week?
Bristol Palin, the Alaska governor's then-pregnant 17-year-old, was a punch line for almost all of the late-night TV crew -- Jay Leno, Conan O'Brien, Jon Stewart, as well as Letterman -- almost as soon as her mother was chosen as Sen. John McCain's Republican running mate.
On Sept. 2, during the presidential campaign, Leno, for example, told this joke on "The Tonight Show":
"Governor Palin announced over the weekend that her 17-year-old unmarried daughter is five months pregnant. And you thought John Edwards was in trouble before! Now he has really done it." On Oct. 10, O'Brien, then host of "Late Night," quipped:
"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." While the pregnant-daughter theme was most common on late-night shows during the fall campaign, it has never fully disappeared. And Letterman told far fewer of these jokes than some of his late-night brethren.
Through mid-March, Leno had made 15 jokes about the Palin daughter's pregnancy, Stewart had told four on "The Daily Show," and Letterman checked in with eight, according to an analysis of late-night humor by the Center for Media and Public Affairs, a nonpartisan research organization affiliated with George Mason University.
The comedian most likely to bash Bristol Palin? O'Brien, with 20 jokes at her expense.
"Saturday Night Live" has also parodied the Palin family in questionable ways. In a skit last September, a mock reporter joked about incest in the vice presidential candidate's family, saying, "I mean, come on. It's Alaska!"
Palin not only didn't protest, she appeared as a guest on the program a few weeks later.
A more cynical view may be that Palin had more than enough media attention last fall, and that her Letterman broadside was designed to renew attention when the spotlight is dimming. Palin may even have been aware of a Gallup poll released last week showing that she attracted less than 1 percent of Republicans who were asked to name the "main person who speaks for the Republican Party today."
A spokeswoman for Palin did not reply to an e-mail seeking comment.
As a rhetorical strategy, Palin's timing actually makes a great deal of sense, said Richard Vatz, a professor of political communication at Towson University and a self-described conservative. Noting that the pregnant-daughter jokes had been dying down, Letterman's crack stood out, making him easier to isolate for criticism, he said.
So why did Palin ask Letterman -- and only Letterman -- for an apology? And why did she wait until last week? http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/15/AR2009061503131.html?hpid=topnews
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