A little more on Dave

. . . and then we'll try to let it go.

Victor Davis Hanson calls Letterman "a boor and a coward": [yes!]

The self-serving, creepy apology was as bad as the initial slur. Letterman is emblematic of an aging, baby-boomer culture, that dresses up street vulgarity with a tie and coat. The only thing that saves him is his care to do this with the Palins from Alaska who don't figure into the usual no-go race/class/gender paradigm.

Read the rest. (And Victor, have I told you lately that I love you? In an impersonal virtual blog-love kind of way, of course.) *Update: Mr. Hanson responds to a critic and grinds Dave into even finer powder.

Speaking of blog-love, here's Mark Steyn's response:

If you're going to do jokes about statutory rape and the trash families of leading politicians, Jim Treacher points out that the president's brother, Samson Obama, has been banned from the United Kingdom because of attempted assault of a 13-year-old girl.

So now that the Tiffany network has opened up this promising new seam of comedy gold, wouldn't it be way cooler if Letterman had joked about Sarah Palin's daughter getting raped by Obama's brother? That'd be hilarious, right? Not just 'cause it's a bipartisan rape gag but because it would be — what's the word? — "edgy." You know, like they used to say about Dave three or four decades back . . .

Michelle Malkin is nothing if not thorough. When she's done with Dave there's very little left to clean up. And he deserves it. I'll excerpt a bit but please read the rest.

David Letterman: Perv

Face it: David Letterman, late-night entertainer-turned-partisan hack/hitman has a deranged obsession with Sarah Palin and her family that has crossed into rank bigotry and hatred. If the CBS network cares about basic standards of decency on public airwaves and if it cares at all about bolstering its shrinking audience, the network honchos will get Letterman a therapist pronto.

Over the past year, Letterman has displayed his sexist, elitist stripes in jibe after jibe aimed at Palin. Taken cumulatively, Letterman’s mockery is about much more than expressing contempt for the popular GOP governor. It’s a handy device to deride a broad class of working-class and middle-class women he holds in contempt:

“You know, she reminds me, she looks like the flight attendant who won’t give you a second can of Pepsi. No, you’ve had enough. We’re landing. Looks like the waitress at the coffee shop who draws a little smiley face on your check. Have a nice day.”

“She looks like the dip sample lady at Safeway. She looks like the nurse who weighs you and then makes you sit alone in your underwear for 20 minutes. She looks like the Olive Garden hostess who says, ‘I’m sorry, your table isn’t ready yet.” She looks like infomercial lady who says she made $64,000 a month flipping condos.”

“[S]he looks like the lady at the bakery who yells out ‘44! 45!’ She looks like a real estate agent whose picture you see on the bus stop bench. That’s who she looks like. She looks like the lady who has a chain of cupcake stores…”

Or maybe like his own mom, one of those absurd non-elite women who work at the church, at the florist, or stay home raising kids, keeping house, and baking pies. Dave's apparent devotion to his mom was something that appealed to Pundit and me when we were real Letterman fans in the 80's and into the 90's. I wonder what she thinks of his weird animus against Palin and the working-class middle-American woman? Michelle is right: those jokes above aren't funny unless you look down on a very broad class of women.

Not only conservatives find Dave to be clearly in the wrong. Case in point: Steve Chapman of the Chicago Tribune.

And NOW responds by giving Dave a home in their Media Hall of Shame. Pick their statement apart at your leisure (for the record I'm with K-Lo), but the larger message this sends is a good one: shame on you, Dave.

Also see The Anchoress and much more at memeorandum.

*See video of Palin interview with Lauer here.

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