There Goes The Neighborhood

Picture the really annoying family that lives on the block that ruins what would otherwise be a fun neighborhood to live in. You know the ones. Everyone has those types of neighbors driving down property values. They are the reason, "There goes the neighborhood" became a catchphrase. They have regular shouting matches in the driveway. They leave garbage in their backyard after a barbecue that attracts rodents which soon infest your own yard. They have the police pulling up to their house once every couple of weeks in the middle of the night to settle a domestic dispute. You don't want your children playing with their children for fear of them being a bad influence on your kids, be it disrespect... or drugs... or lice. Or scabies.

Meet the Palins. The Wasilla Hillbillies. There goes the neighborhood.

This past week, Late Night host David Letterman made a couple of crude jokes at the expense of the Palins. Specifically the joke in question was, "Sarah Palin went to a Yankees game yesterday. There was one awkward moment. During the 7th inning stretch, her daughter was knocked up by Alex Rodgriguez."

In response, Todd Palin released a statement: “Any 'jokes' about raping my 14-year-old are despicable. Alaskans know it and I believe the rest of the world knows it, too.”

Raping my 14-year-old daughter? A bit over the top, eh Todd?

Letterman discussed the whole situation at length in what I view as a half-hearted apology. I say half-hearted because the Palins made the joke something which it wasn't, and although he called the jokes "ugly," Letterman wasn't so much apologizing as explaining the truth of the matter. 14-year-old Willow Palin was not the subject of the joke. Something the Palins seem to skirt around.



They could have taken the high road, accepted the apology and left it alone. But no, they decided to make this an issue that it wasn't about, while insinuating that Letterman can't be trusted with underage girls. It's pathetic. The Palins' continuation of this fiasco with their idiotic press releases and Sarah Palin's appearance on the Today Show further exemplifies the opportunists that they are.

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Enough of the feigned outrage. Anyone who has any sense of humor at all knows that this joke, although in poor taste, was not meant for Willow. Did everyone forget about Bristol Palin? Apparently her own mother, Sarah Palin did.

"I would say that you and anybody else are extremely naive to believe that very convenient excuse of David Letterman's the other day - it took a couple of days for him to think of that excuse that - uh, no he wasn't talking about my daughter who was there with me at the game, the 14-year-old, he was talking about some other daughter. Well I think it's a weak excuse."

Yes, Sarah, the "other daughter." Remember the one named Bristol that you exploited during your campaign? Bristol, your "other daughter" that actually did get "knocked up" and is now laughably pushed out into the spotlight as an advocate for ABSTINENCE?! Your "other daughter," Bristol, that you were forcing to marry off to Levi Johnston and trotted them out as Margaret Carlson said, "like the Charles and Diana of the Klondike" until you lost the election. Where's Levi now? Discarded. Conveniently out of the family portrait.

And not that it matters but guess what? Not everyone knows exactly who attended the Yankees game despite the fact that Sarah Palin thinks we await her every move with bated breath. When I heard the joke, it was obvious that the daughter inferred was Bristol, the knocked up abstinence advocate, and that the real butt of the joke was Alex Rodriguez.

Sarah and Todd Palin are the ones who interjected 14-year-old Willow into this faux controversy, not Letterman. Why? Because they can't stand being ignored. During the campaign they felt the national spotlight, and it was good, and now they need the national spotlight, even though under that bright light, every ugly deed and deceitful lie uttered is more easily revealed for all to see than when sitting in seclusion in Alaska.

Is this the future of the Republican Party? Sarah Palin in 2012, with her run-on sentence rants and her penchant for playing Hatfield/McCoy on the national stage? I'm guessing the Democratic National Committee is dreaming of it. I actually think that her act will get old and tired pretty fast and that she'll burn herself out by then. At least I hope so, because if I have to listen to her jibberish for three more years, I'm going to contemplate putting a bullet in my brain.