If Letterman needs to apologize, then Bill Hicks and George Carlin needed to flagellate themselves

[jmondine]

Comedy is often shocking and offensive. Some offend just for the sake of a cheap laugh, while others do so to awaken the general populace out of their complacency. Hicks and Carlin were masters at this, as was Lenny Bruce before them.

No matter how vacuous and pathetic she is, Sarah Palin is a frontrunner for the GOP presidential ticket. She presents herself as representing "traditional" American values (translation: 1950's suburban values), while her own personal life is rife with contradictions.

If she believed in equal rights and protections and privacy for all, then I would say back off of jokes about her family. But she isn't. I can't begin to list all of the ways she believes the government should dictate who we marry, how we express love and affection, how we worship, and what we teach our children. In making his joke, Letterman shone a bright light on the Palin family's utter hypocrisy, a hypocrisy which could, in the future, lead to a further restriction of all of our liberties.

I respect David's decision to apologize as a personal one. I just hope it doesn't discourage others from continuing to use humor to open people's eyes.

[taterguy]

1. Wasn't Carlin an atheist? Might be difficult for him to flagellate himself

[MADem]

7. You don't have to do it for religious purposes, you know.

The people who own sex shops make a bundle selling that gear for other purposes than worshipping a deity, so I understand.

[tridim]

2. Yep, and apparently Sarah Palin is the new top comedy cop.

All jokes must be submitted to Sarah Palin in advance, and unless approved the joke may never be delivered in public.

[JVS]

3. They're both dead, Jim.

[Warren DeMontague]

4. Bill Hicks would make the comedy nannies & hand-wringing schoolmarms' heads EXPLODE.

He is missed.

[Echo In Light]

12. He blew minds for a living

[Ignis]

26. Bill won't rise from the grave until...

Sara Palin does a Doritos commercial.

"Suckin' Satan's Pecker! Suck it!" :rofl:

[Clear Blue Sky]

5. Letterman is a weenie. He should have held firm.

[Warpy]

9. I can only imagine there's a huge Astroturf mail campaign

from people who never watch his show, anyway, to get him off the air.

Otherwise, he'd have given Bible Barbie the finger from the beginning.

Maybe we need a letter writing campaign of our own to peel her down off that cross.

[MADem]

6. Carlin didn't have a network show. Plus, he's dead.

Carlin's audience bought tickets for the specific purpose of being shocked and challenged. People tune in to Dave to hear a bit of acerbic humor that falls within the Standards and Practices guidelines.

Palin is an asshole, but the joke was over the line.

She's gotten TWO "I'm sorrys" so if she keeps it up, she shows herself to be the craven opportunist we know she is.

[Name removed]

8. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Starbucks Anarchist]

10. I think someone fucked your brain right out of your skull.

[SeattleGirl]

25. ......

:thumbsup:

[Rebubula]

11. OK...

...interesting stretch.

I doubt we will see you here for long.

[Nye Bevan]

13. Attention Admins!

When someone's post count is 1, please add a simple test so that "1 post" is displayed instead of "1 posts"! This should only take a couple of minutes to implement. :)

[Forkboy]

14. LOL

[foxfeet]

15. Wow. You typed all of that with Sarah Palin sitting on your face?

You should go on "America's Got Talent." You'd beat the support stockings off of Susan Boyle.

[subcomhd]

16. well

I guess we now know what freepers fantasize about.

[johnnie]

17. .

:spray:

Ok rush, don't you have some oxy to gobble up?

[NoSheep]

19. A public hypocrite who uses her children's personal lives for attention should expect to be

ridiculed.

[Rob Gregory Browne]

21. I'm sorry, but this is ridiculous

Letterman's joke did not even come close to your example in tone OR substance.

I have kids. Two of them. Both great kids. And while I haven't asked them, I'm pretty sure they'd both say that the uproar over Letterman's joke is ridiculous.

The man apologized.

Now maybe you can send some of your outrage Palin's way, for exploiting young children for political gain.

[snake in the grass]

22. I wish I had your...

...mind-reading abilities.

[subcomhd]

18. Bill H

"Doesn't Rush Limbaugh remind you of one of those gay guys that like to lie in a tub while other guys pee on him?"
Bill Hicks

[NoSheep]

20. nice blog

[subcomhd]

24. blog?

you mean my post? or did you find my blog on my profile? either way thanks?

[NoSheep]

31. yes, I found your blog

[subcomhd]

32. cool

[NoSheep]

33. My SO has been to Lufkin. Also...who could beat. .."behind the pine curtain" ?

I like things that are real. Good luck with it.

[subcomhd]

34. East Texas

has been an economic and cultural backwater forever. Even in the pr-Columbian days it was the far-ass end of the Mississipean civilization. I'm not dissing the Caddoes, it's just a fact. For whites in the 1800's it was just far eneough west to get away from creditors, lawmen with warrants and families in Alabama or Tennessee or wherever.

[hiphopnation]

27. ...

:spray:

god i miss bill and george. terribly. every day. and i didn't even know them personally.

[jobycom]

23. Letterman has employers.

The others didn't.

Plus, he's on unfiltered network tv, so there's a conduct code he's supposed to stick to, and he's not strictly a comedian, he's a talk show host who does a comedy monologue, so he's got different expectations. An independent live show has a different standard, so it takes more to cross a line. It can still happen--ask Michael Richards or Jackie Mason.

But a club or theater that books a show like Carlin knows what it is booking, and aside from a few probably unenforcable legal codes on profanity, there aren't many restrictions. Even if Carlin did cross a line, he couldn't be fired, because he wasn't hired. He could be sued or arrested, as they did with Lenny Bruce, or blacklisted and protested, as happened with Andrew Dice Clay. Otherwise, there's no one to protest to.

And the issue isn't really whether Letterman has the right to tell such jokes. Of course he does, even Sarah Palin said that. The question is whether his audiences and his employers will continue to pay him if he tells such jokes. If I tell jokes that aren't funny, unless I'm Dane Cook, no one will pay me to tell them. If I tell jokes that in other ways displease the audience, employers, or sponsors, they may not pay me to tell them.

He's not going to get fired. Conservatives are just rallying to make noise because they are mad no one is listening to them. Palin expressed outrage, the whole issue served as one of those cultural checkpoints where we look at what's acceptable to the general public, Letterman apologized, and now we move back to Palin being a force of evil and Letterman being a boorish source of something resembling comedy.

And I wonder how the joke writer is doing. I haven't heard anything on that angle.

[jmondine]

29. That is true

And that is how they are different.

I thought of putting a qualifier in my OP, but in my opinion, one way in which the Left's discourse gets watered down is by trying to qualify everything we say by stating, "I'm not saying x or y", with x and y being things we're afraid others will read into or misinterpret about our statements.

[jobycom]

30. Ha! You are right on that, and I'm a horrible offender there.

The left is more intellectual, so we try to get everything precise and anticipate objections. The right just screams "RAPE!!!" and ignores the details. People come running when they hear the word rape, but not when they hear a careful analysis of the exact nuances of the differences between rape and consentuality.

[deaniac21]

28. Carlin is room temperature.