Sarah Palin is like Jon and Kate plus Eight

Sarah Palin needs to go away. Apparently more than a few people took issue with a joke on David Letterman's Late Show on CBS earlier this week. Letterman apologized in both a serious and backhanded way implying that to take issue with one of his jokes is ludicrous because, as he said, he has thousands of jokes he is ashamed of ever telling. But that's not my real beef.

My real beef is with Sarah Palin and how she has officially wore out her fifteen minutes of "fame". She is only famous (and I use that term loosely) because an old white guy chose her as his running mate to counter an actual progressive action in modern politics - the nomination of Barack Obama for the Democratic ticket.

It seems that it was John McCain's very basic goal to simply pick a woman. He took one from the last place anyone would care about - Alaska - but failed to investigate her qualifications. First off, she has a daughter, Bristol (named after the city in Tennessee? Kudos.) who is obviously the poster for abstinence-only sex education. How'd that work out for you? Oh, you say she has a baby already and was knocked up at the age of 17? That's very mavericky of her.

Sure, kids make decisions, wise or not, that truly should have no bearing on their parents but Sarah Palin was hand-picked to be the candidate for the second most powerful position in the country. For better or worse, that puts your entire family under the scrutiny of the rather bizarre media landscape today. That means that you'll be the butt of plenty of jokes and so will your family. Learn to deal with it. You'll be scrutinized. Your supporters will be outraged by those jokes because that's what they do.

But for her supporters in elected office to call for the firing of David Letterman, that's insane. He apologized. Nothing he said was racially offensive. Sure, he pulled out the slutty remark about Sarah Palin's appearance but it was in the context of a joke and directed a pregnancy joke at the wrong daughter but it's done. It isn't like he called her a cunt. There, I said it.