David Letterman/Tex Antoine: What's the Difference?

In a just world, David Letterman would now be in the unemployment line, with lots of time to think about his comments. But as an icon of the liberal media, Mr. Letterman doesn't have to worry about being held to same standard as other public figures. In that universe, it's perfectly appropriate to make rape jokes--as long as the targets are the daughters of prominent Republicans. After all, didn't Playboy recently publish a writer's "rape list" of conservative women? That list made it through the magazine's editorial process, and was only pulled after a public outcry...Way back when, WABC made the right decision when they fired Tex Antoine for his disgusting remarks [suggesting a child rape victim should lie back and enjoy it]. But four decades later, a major publication and a television network find it impossibly difficult to apologize for the same type of feckless comments, and punish the offenders. By today's gutter standards of the MSM, Mr. Antoine wasn't a crude misogynist--just a "performer" who was ahead of his time....Somewhere, Tex Antoine is Rolling In His Grave, FormerSpook, 6/17/2009,

The anonymous, former intelligence officer who writes Former Spook recalls a story now more than thirty years back, when a local weatherman in New York suggested that, if a rape victim couldn't fight back, she should lie back and enjoy it. He was responding to a terrible story about a 5-year-old victim of sexual assault. He was fired a few days later and did not work again in television. Probably, any mother or father in New York stood up and cheered ABC for throwing the man off the air. It was the kind of joke you'd hear in a bar, and not from a light drinker – callous, brutal, and unthinkable from a broadcaster. The writer saw this event. Antoine was, it must be said, extremely drunk. It was New Year's Eve. The director of that late news should have dragged Antoine off the set as soon as the weatherman appeared in that condition.

David Letterman was not drunk. The joke was written for him, and approved before the broadcast. It was a deliberate, crude piece of vitriol, an absolutely cheap joke playing on an almost assuredly liberal audience's prejudices about Governor Palin and her children. As such, it was as good a reflection of ABC's prejudices regarding political life, not only on a comedy late night show, but in its news broadcasts, one of which, next Wednesday, will be a one-hour infomercial, staged in the White House, a “debate” about medical care “reform” where ABC has barred anyone with viewpoints opposing those of the White House. It's all of a piece for a network that has decided, from the top down, that craven surrender to government policymakers is a good way to survive the decline in profitability of the ABC television network. One dirty joke deserves another.

Luther