Okay, the title of this post is a little hyperbolic, but some of these people are incredibly influential; they were, after all, on the red carpet for the 2010 Time 100.

Ashton Kutcher is one of my favorite celebrities.  I’m not one of his Twitter followers, and I don’t rush to see what new thing he does (I just can’t keep up); but every time I hear about him or see his work, I like it.  How can you not like someone who Sean “Diddy” Combs said this about on his Time 100 profile:

Most of us want to make as much money as we can, but Ashton, 32, is out to make the world a better place. He is smart — smart enough to leave Punk’d when he could still be making money at it. He has to have a heart in what he does. What he and Demi do with Twitter is a good example. Most people use it to promote themselves, but he uses Twitter to connect, to strike up conversations, to send positive messages to the millions of people who read his words. This guy will show us the future. And it’s gonna be a blast.

Here are some other couples portraits of those who were on the red carpet.  All of these images are licensed Creative Commons 3.0:

No, Seth Meyers and Andy Samberg aren’t a “couple”, but they are both comedic powerhouses and I wanted to put this photo in some post.  Samberg was a 2010 Time 100 contender.

The famous Palins, Todd and Sarah.

Karls Paul-Noel and “guest” (wife?) – I couldn’t find any other photograph of the two where she was identified.  Paul-Noel was a Time 100.  Rudy Guiliani wrote this about him: “Karls Paul-Noel, 53, is that kind of firefighter, and his compassion outranks even his bravery….  Less than 24 hours after the quake, Paul-Noel’s team was searching pancaked schools and houses, digging among smashed desks, cinder blocks and the bodies of the dead to find signs of life. His team found 11 survivors in Port-au-Prince, including four children.”

Leslie Mann and Judd Apatow.  Mann is an actress who has appeared in many of her her husband Apatow’s films.  Apatow was a 2008 Time 100 and a contender for the 2010 list.

Lisa Oz and Dr. Mehmet Oz.  Dr. Oz, called “America’s Doctor”, was a contender for the 2010 Time 100.

Artist Jeff Koons and his wife Justine.  Koons wrote Steve Jobs’s 2010 Time 100 profile.

David Lauren (Ralph Lauren’s son) and Lauren Bush (Neil Bush’s daughter, and the niece of GWB).  They have been together for about five years.

Click here to see my Time 100 Creative Commons portraits at Flickr.

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No matter where she goes, Sarah Palin overshadows an event.  She certainly did last night on the red carpet at the Time 100 Gala, and she was amongst some pretty amazing people.  I may not think much of her politics, but she sure as hell makes a good celebrity.  The press couldn’t get enough of her!

I have so many photos from last night I am going to split them up in several posts.  The people were pretty incredible; they deserve some individual words and multiple shot posts (including the one above with the First Dude).  Until I get those up, here are some of the Big Names everyone knows.

All portraits are licensed Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 or 3.0 Generic.

Betty White

Taylor Swift

Glenn Beck

Martha Stewart

Demi Moore

Elie Wiesel

Ashton Kutcher

Suze Orman

Neil Patrick Harris

Donatella Versace

Andy Samberg

Seth Meyers

Richard Branson

Click here to see my Time 100 Creative Commons portraits at Flickr.

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Not just Obama – this woman was also selling John McCain and Sarah Palin condoms in Union Square today.  Yes it was her: the Obamacondoms.com lady.  All images licensed Creative Commons 3.0 attribution.

Americans have a hard time admitting to themselves that they are more moved by emotion than common sense; they are so pulled by emotion that too often their beliefs and votes make little sense.

We’re a country where politicians make what type of car they bought central themes of their campaigns, and it resonates with us.  What you drive has absolutely no bearing on how good of a leader you will be.  It’s little more than a conscious consumer choice, something everyone does.  But such marketing theatrics work.

Frank Rich, one of this blog’s favorite columnists, fell victim in his latest column to the almost irresistble urge not to tell Americans that they are hurting their own country with their foolishness.  After going through the disingenuous and empty rhetoric that is coming from all corners of the Republican Party, he ends with this paragraph [emphasis added]:

So it went with Palin last weekend. Her only concrete program for dealing with America’s pressing problems came in the question-and-answer session. “It would be wise of us to start seeking some divine intervention again in this country,” she said, “so that we can be safe and secure and prosperous again.” That pretty much sums up her party’s economic program, at least: divine intervention will achieve what government intervention cannot. That the G.O.P. may actually be winning this argument is less an indictment of Palin than of Washington Democrats too busy reading the writing on her hand to see or respond to the ominous political writing on the wall.

Frank, if Americans are choosing to follow people whose solution to our economic problems is “pray to God” instead of for a government comprised of the people, by the people to fix them, that’s hardly an indictment of the Democrats.   Say what it really is: an indictment of us.

However flawed are the Democrats proposals, on their face they are better than “proposals” based upon the intervention of a supernatural power.

That Palin gets any meaningful support or taken seriously shows how problematic is the state of our union.  The quality of the leaders we have in this country is nothing more than the quality of thought that goes into choosing them.  The problem is us: we have high standards for our politicians only for all the things that don’t matter at all.

Sarah Palin June 2009:

She opens the introduction praising Reagan’s son, a talk radio guy, for his willingness “to screw the political correctness that some would expect him to try to adhere to.”

She blasts “self-proclaimed intellectuals, and the smug lobbyists who dominate Washington, and the liberal media.”

Sarah Palin February 2010:

Sarah Palin took out after White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel today for referring to a group of liberal activists as “retarded.”

“Just as we’d be appalled if any public figure of Rahm’s stature ever used the ‘N-word’ or other such inappropriate language, Rahm’s slur on all God’s children with cognitive and developmental disabilities — and the people who love them — is unacceptable, and it’s heartbreaking,” Palin wrote on her Facebook page.

I find this kind of shameless, in the way values-crusaders like David Vitter and Mark Sanford are shameless.

It’s very difficult to converse in a country when there is no consistency in the arguments that our leaders make.  Which is it: are we going to be politically correct, or not?  If you decide to take a stand against political correctness as Palin did–to Republican cheers–then to back-track for cheap political points is…shameless.

It’s also confusing to those of us who care to try to figure out what our leaders believe and how they think.

Regardless, the N-word has a long history of use for oppression of blacks; whereas the word “Retarded” has simply fallen into disfavor and is akin to calling someone “Insane” instead of “Pathological”.

Additionally, there are many uses of the word “Retarded” that could apply to, in the words of Rahm Emmanuel, “fucking retarded” liberal activists:

• retard – cause to move more slowly or operate at a slower rate; “This drug will retard your heart rate”
• retard – be delayed
• retard – check: slow the growth or development of; “The brain damage will retard the child’s language development”
• retard – decelerate: lose velocity; move more slowly; “The car decelerated”
• retard – idiot: a person of subnormal intelligence

Source: Princeton Wordnet

Of course, he probably meant the last, but I’m just sayin’.  Don’t forget all the hot water people have found themselves in over the word “niggardly“.

“[M]y baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s ‘death panel’“- Sarah Palin, 8/7/09

Republican Death Panels: How many falsehoods can a party spread before it is no longer viable to the electorate?

As if the Republicans’ Teabaggers, Birthers and Screamers weren’t problem enough for its image, now they have the Deathers.  The Republican Party is now the embodiment of American fringe politics.

Ever since August 7th when Sarah Palin twittered that her disabled baby would die before the eyes of Obama’s death panels, the Republicans credibility with voters has taken a nose dive (again).  At what point does a political party obscure the reality of issues to voters so often, that it can no longer run in elections because it has destroyed all faith and trust in itself?

The Republicans used to rely upon Frank Luntz and Newt Gingrich to help them obfuscate in crafty, disingenuous ways.  Now, they flat out lie.

The party’s stars in politics and in their information machine Fox News have hearkened the pending Death Panels who will kill the elderly and Sarah Palin’s baby.  Problem:  there is no such thing.

In fact, pro-life Republican Johnny Isakson of Georgia is the one who wrote the provision into the healthcare bill.  Facing South’s Sue Sturgis unearthed that fact:

Many in the media quickly pointed out that Palin’s claims weren’t true. But Sturgis was the first to report that one of the biggest advocates of counseling for end-of-life care — the provision that actually was in the Congressional legislation — was none other than a pro-life Republican: Sen. Johnny Isakson of Georgia.

Although one of their own was the architect of the “Death Panels”, Republicans have been going into over drive to tell people that they exist, when they don’t.  Isakson is exasperated by his own party:

“I just had a phone call where someone said Sarah Palin’s web site had talked about the House bill having death panels on it where people would be euthanized. How someone could take an end of life directive or a living will as that is nuts. You’re putting the authority in the individual rather than the government. I don’t know how that got so mixed up.”

Are voters wisening-up to Republican tricks to harm the veracity of the national debate over issues, and if so, how long can a party function with no credibility once people realize this is their game plan?

Death Panels and Republican Credibility – a timeline

“By poisoning the political well, they’ve given up any pretense of being the loyal opposition. They’ve become political terrorists, willing to say or do anything to prevent the country from reaching a consensus on one of its most serious domestic problems.” – Steven Pearlstein, Washington Post, 8/7/09

The ‘Death Panel’ provision of Section 1233 of America’s Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009, as written by pro-life Republican of Georgia Johnny Isakson:

According to an analysis of the bill produced by the three relevant House committees, the section “[p]rovides coverage for consultation between enrollees and practitioners to discuss orders for life-sustaining treatment. Instructs CMS to modify ‘Medicare & You’ handbook to incorporate information on end-of-life planning resources and to incorporate measures on advance care planning into the physician’s quality reporting initiative.”

June 25, 2009 - Peter Johnson Jr. claimed on Fox & Friends that health care reform is “the government deciding who will live, who will die.” He later went on to ask: “Is that what this plan is about? To save money by killing old people? That’s frightening. That’s absolutely frightening.”

June 26, 2009 -  NewsBusters article titled “Obama Says We Shouldn’t Treat Old Folks to Save Money And the Media Goes Deaf,” Warner Todd Huston wrote, “[I]t sure seemed to me as if the most caring, most civil, most intelligent president evah just said that healthcare could be cheaper if we don’t give old folks and the infirm the full measure of care they now get. It appeared that Obama said we should just let them die or suffer because they aren’t worth the effort.”

June 25, 2009 -  American Spectator article titled “Obama Wants to Let Those Pesky Geezers Die,” Capital Research Center senior editor Matthew Vadum paraphrased an excerpt from a Los Angeles Times article as stating: “So, old people: screw you”

June 27, 2009 – Forbes on Fox, Forbes publisher Rich Karlgaard misrepresented Obama’s remarks at the health care forum, stating: “[W]hat he’s indicating is that government health care involves rationing. It’s kind of funny that he let it slip out. It was kind of funny he signaled it by wearing a black tie, the color of funerals. There’s going to be more funerals for old people going ahead.”

July 16, 2009 - former New York Lt. Gov. Betsy McCaughey falsely claimed on Fred Thompson’s show that the House health care reform bill would “absolutely require” end-of-life counseling for seniors “that will tell them how to end their life sooner.”

July 17, 2009 – Betsy McCaughey writes an op-ed for the New York Post repeating false claims, writing “[o]ne troubling provision” of the bill “compels seniors to submit to a counseling session every five years … about alternatives for end-of-life care,” adding that the “mandate invites abuse, and seniors could easily be pushed to refuse care.”

Fox News stars begin spreading the rumor

Sean Hannity:  “[I]t sounds to me like they’re actually encouraging seniors in the end, ‘Well, you may just want to consider packing it all in here, this is — ‘ what other way is there to describe this?” He continued, “So that they don’t become a financial burden on the Obamacare system? I mean that’s how they intend to cut cost, by cutting down on the health care we can give and get at the end of our lives and dramatically cutting it down for senior citizens? You know, welcome to the brave new world of Obamacare. We’re going to encourage, you know, inconvenient people to consider ‘alternatives to living.’ ”

Laura Ingraham:  “[S]ome will call them death camps, but this is the way Obamacare is gonna go for America.”

August 9, 2009 – Newt Gingrich on This Week -“You’re asking us to decide that the government is to be trusted … You are asking us to trust turning power over to the government, when there are clearly people in American who believe in establishing euthanasia, including selective standards.”

August 9, 2009 – Michelle Malkin – “Death panels? What death panels? Oh, yeah, those death panels.”

August 10, 2009 – Fox & Friends, co-host Brian Kilmeade said, “[E]veryone’s talking about seniors, and they’re talking about the middle class and affordable health care. If the upper class is paying for the next two classes, and are seniors going to be in front of the death panel? And then just as you think, OK, that’s ridiculous, then you realize there’s provisions in there that seniors in the last lap of their life will be sitting there going to a panel possibly discussing what the best thing for them is.”

August 10, 2009 -Glenn Beck on death panels: “I believe it to be true.”

Clinton in 1992, the year the right-wing attack machine made the President's wife a focus. "Murderer", "Lesbian" and "Communist" were standard fare for the right's labels.

The Republican victim machine has been in full-swing defending Sarah Palin, with Ross Douthat writing a misguided, tear-jerking obituary after Palin quit the Alaska governorship two-and-a-half years into her first term.  The conservative playbook on this is that the negative treatment Palin and her family received was “unprecedented” and unfair.

Have these people forgotten the treatment Hillary Clinton received in the 1990′s?  Frank Rich has not:

The Palinists’ bogus beefs about double standards reached farcical proportions at Fox News on the sleepy pre-Fourth Friday afternoon when word of her abdication hit the East. The fill-in anchor demanded that his token Democratic stooge name another female politician who had suffered such “disgraceful attacks” as Palin. When the obvious answer arrived — Hillary Clinton — the Fox host angrily protested that Clinton had never been attacked in “a sexual way” or “about her children.”

Americans have short memories, but it’s hardly ancient history that conservative magazines portrayed Hillary Clinton as both a dominatrix cracking a whip and a broomstick-riding witch. Or that Rush Limbaugh held up a picture of Chelsea Clinton on television to identify the “White House dog.” Or that Palin’s running mate, John McCain, told a sexual joke linking Hillary and Chelsea and Janet Reno. Yet the same conservative commentariat that vilified both Clintons 24/7 now whines that Palin is receiving “the kind of mauling” that the media “always reserve for conservative Republicans.” So said The Wall Street Journal editorial page last week. You’d never guess that The Journal had published six innuendo-laden books on real and imagined Clinton scandals, or that the Clintons had been a leading target of both Letterman and Leno monologues, not to mention many liberal editorial pages (including that of The Times), for much of a decade.

Let’s also not forget that Rush Limbaugh suggested that Clinton is a murderer and the National Review, one of the right’s mouthpieces, helped propagate the rumors that Hillary is a lesbian.

Palin doesn’t help matters when, in her first attempt to be a serious conservative voice by penning an Op-Ed in the elite media that is the Washington Post, she got a lot of things wrong.  Not only did she try to pin the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill on Barack Obama (he had little to do with it); she appeared to not understand what the bill is about.  What little analysis she undertakes is little more than “applause lines“.  Ostensibly, this is again the media’s fault.

David Brooks has a column today that is worth reading about how undignified American culture has become.  He brings up some of the summer’s biggest news stories to illustrate his point:

First, there was Mark Sanford’s press conference. Here was a guy utterly lacking in any sense of reticence, who was given to rambling self-exposure even in his moment of disgrace. Then there was the death of Michael Jackson and the discussion of his life. Here was a guy who was apparently untouched by any pressure to live according to the rules and restraints of adulthood. Then there was Sarah Palin’s press conference. Here was a woman who aspires to a high public role but is unfamiliar with the traits of equipoise and constancy, which are the sources of authority and trust.

Brooks faults four different reasons for the decline of dignity:

First, there is capitalism. We are all encouraged to become managers of our own brand, to do self-promoting end zone dances to broadcast our own talents. Second, there is the cult of naturalism. We are all encouraged to discard artifice and repression and to instead liberate our own feelings. Third, there is charismatic evangelism with its penchant for public confession. Fourth, there is radical egalitarianism and its hostility to aristocratic manners.

Brooks left out the fifith element, which is the Internet.  The Internet encourages anonymity, freeing people to do or say anything they please with little fear that their words or actions will reflect back upon them.

In April 2009, Ross Douthat replaced the bumbling, lackluster Bill Kristol as the “conservative voice” on the New York Times editorial page, but after reading his Sarah Palin resignation column, I wonder if this is really the best the Times could do.

Douthat is making the shakey case that Palin should never have accepted the “Vice Prezzie nominee from the GOP” (to quote Amy Poehler’s still hilarious SNL rap).  According to Douthat:

Had she refused John McCain, Palin would still be a popular female governor in a Republican Party starved for future stars. Her scandals would be the stuff of local politics, her daughter’s pregnancy a minor story in the Lower 48, her son Trig’s parentage a nonissue even for conspiracy theorists. There would still be plenty of time to ease into the national spotlight, to bone up on the issues, and to craft a persona more appealing than the Mrs. Spiro Agnew role the McCain campaign assigned to her.

Most important, nobody would have realized yet how much she looks like Tina Fey.

In other words, had she never run we would never have learned how utterly unprepared this woman was to govern.  Douthat overlooks the mountains of evidence that she had no idea what she was doing, and did not belong in the line for the Presidency.

Comically crippling his argument, Douthat chalks up Palin’s “most important” failure in the campaign to the hapless circumstance that she resembled a popular comedian.  It wasn’t just Fey’s resemblance to Palin that caught on; it was her dead-on impression of a governor who had no idea about the extraordinary problems facing this country.  Palin’s “most important” failure was her Katie Couric interview; Tina Fey’s mockery actually quoted Palin word-for-word in all of its mangled, befuddled glory.

Douthat does cast a few sentences to the idea that Palin tarnished her own image, but he really lays the blame at the feet of the ‘media elites’ that Palin goes around decrying.  According to Douthat, some of the American dream has been lost because of this:

Palin’s popularity has as much to do with class as it does with ideology. In this sense, she really is the perfect foil for Barack Obama. Our president represents the meritocratic ideal — that anyone, from any background, can grow up to attend Columbia and Harvard Law School and become a great American success story. But Sarah Palin represents the democratic ideal — that anyone can grow up to be a great success story without graduating from Columbia and Harvard.

That Douthat gets this wrong is fundamental to the problems facing conservatives.  The democratic ideal is not that “anyone” can become a big success without graduating from ivy league schools; it’s that “anyone who is qualified” can.  Douthat completely runs off the rails when he states that a “democratic ideal” is in any way different from a “meritocratic ideal”.  A better example would have been a Barack Obama who graduated from Mississippi State instead of Harvard.  Not someone who fumbles every question into an incoherent series of rambling platitudes. If Sarah Palin represents the American dream, we should really give up any hope that our country will remain the leader of the free world.  That’s unfathomable based upon Douthat’s definition of what is our “democratic ideal”.

There is little idealism in thinking any fool or idiot in the United States can eventually lead the country, or that any of us would find that inspiring or idealistic.

Taking all of this, Douthat wraps up his doe-eyed mourning of the Palin story this way:

Here are lessons of the Sarah Palin experience, for any aspiring politician who shares her background and her sex. Your children will go through the tabloid wringer. Your religion will be mocked and misrepresented. Your political record will be distorted, to better parody your family and your faith. (And no, gentle reader, Palin did not insist on abstinence-only sex education, slash funds for special-needs children or inject creationism into public schools.)

This may just be journalistic artistry with semantics (I don’t know what Douthat means by “insist” on abstinence only), but Palin definitely “supported” abstinence-only sex education when she was asked by the Eagle Forum:

Eagle Forum: Will you support funding for abstinence-until-marriage education instead of for explicit sex-education programs, school-based clinics, and the distribution of contraceptives in schools?

Palin: Yes, the explicit sex-ed programs will not find my support.

Palin opened herself up to mocking about her religion when she continually injected it into the campaign herself:

Whether before an audience of ministry students or on a national stage at the Republican National Convention on Wednesday, the 44-year-old Palin speaks fluently about her faith, striking chords with phrases that evoke Christian virtue. Palin has called on people to pray for the cooperation necessary to build a natural gas pipeline across Alaska, labeled the U.S. mission in Iraq a “task that is from God” and argued that students should be taught the creation account from Genesis in public schools.

Of course, it didn’t help that Palin crowed about how a witch-hunting African pastor, Thomas Muthee, blessed her:

In June, Palin told how a visiting pastor from Kenya had foretold she was destined for greater things.

She told other members of the Assembly of God church in her home town of Wasilla, Alaska, that Thomas Muthee had laid his hands on her head and prayed over her when they met in 2005.

After what the 44-year-old described as his “awesome” prayer she went on to become  Alaska’s first governor.

Recalling the event, Palin said “As I was mayor and Pastor Muthee was here and he was praying over me, and you know how he speaks and he’s so bold.

“And he was praying “Lord make a way, Lord make a way.

“And I’m thinking, this guy’s really bold, he doesn’t even know what I’m going to do, he doesn’t know what my plans are.

“And he’s praying not “oh Lord if it be your will may she become governor,”  no, he just prayed for it.

“He said “Lord make a way and let her do this next step. And that’s exactly  what happened.”

Regarding the teaching of Creationism in school, Charles Johnson of the conservative (but not pro-Creationist) blog Little Green Footballs stated that she appeared to backtrack.  Palin originally had stated in her 2006 gubernatorial run that she advocated the standard Intelligent Design playbook method of “teach the controversy” to legitimize Creationism.  Later, she backpedaled.  Johnson observed, “Looks like Palin made an off-the-cuff statement during a debate on a hot topic, didn’t really expect the criticism she’d get, and then softened her position considerably in a follow-up interview.”

If that’s the best defense that she doesn’t advocate Creationism taught in school, it does little to brandish Douthat’s casual “no she didn’t” response.

Don’t forget that Palin was not talking to the press (because when she did, she looked ridiculous), so it was left up to the media to try to figure out what, exactly, does she believe.  Douthat thought that perfectly fine when it came to Barack Obama and Reverend Jeremiah Wright:

Nobody in the national media was parsing the Reverend Wright’s sermons before the 2008 campaign, and nobody would be parsing them today if he was just one minister among many supporting Barack Obama for President. [...]The distinction here, for the umpteenth time, is that Wright isn’t just Obama’s supporter; he’s his pastor, his friend, and his spiritual mentor, which makes him exactly the kind of person whose views ought to be of interest to a public that’s considering electing Barack Obama President of the United States.

Like the Sarah Palins who thought that Barack Obama was culpable for everything Reverend Wright said, the media looked at what people at Sarah Palin’s church believed:

You can learn something about a person by the company she keeps. In the churches where Palin has worshiped for decades, parishioners enjoy “baptism in the Holy Spirit,” “miraculous healings” and “the gift of tongues.” Invariably, they offer astonishingly irrational accounts of this behavior and of its significance for the entire cosmos. Palin’s spiritual colleagues describe themselves as part of “the final generation,” engaged in “spiritual warfare” to purge the earth of “demonic strongholds.” Palin has spent her entire adult life immersed in this apocalyptic hysteria.

Whereas Obama distanced and repudiated the Reverend Wright, Palin never distanced herself from these fanatical beliefs; instead, she just stopped talking about them.  Because of that, there were legitimate questions raised about the suitability of a person who felt she was enacting God’s will to hold our nuclear codes.

Douthat’s column is an exercise in 2008 Presidential campaign revisionism, as if these charges were simply pulled out of the air and distorted.  He dismisses them, ignores evidence and even does a hypocritical dance (why, oh why, are so many conservatives hypocrites?) about the media focus on her.

I believe that there is a need for a strong conservative movement in this country, and that our democratic institutions can’t be strong until both our yin and our yang get their acts together.  Conservatism is going to continue to fail as long as the cream of their crop continue to defend the foolish Palin VP pick, or the George W. Bush administration (which resembled little that the conservative movement professes to believe).  If Douthat is the best the Times could find to argue the conservative viewpoint, they might have been better off with Bill Kristol.  Er, maybe not.

Last night David Letterman issued an apology to Sarah Palin about his “knocked up” joke that referenced her 18-year-old daughter, Bristol.  Here’s the video:

Palin accepted Letterman’s apology:

Of course it’s accepted on behalf of young women, like my daughters, who hope men who “joke” about public displays of sexual exploitation of girls will soon evolve. Letterman certainly has the right to “joke” about whatever he wants to, and thankfully we have the right to express our reaction. And this is all thanks to our U.S. military women and men putting their lives on the line for us to secure America’s right to free speech–in this case, may that right be used to promote equality and respect.

One of the best reflections about this ridiculous issue came from James Poniewozik at Time magazine’s website, where he notes how Palin-Letterman issues last forever in Culture War America.  Poniewozik hit the mark that what should be a minor dust-up between two people takes on an entire life of its own in the 24-hour news cycle and blogosphere:

But really this controversy doesn’t belong to Palin and Letterman anymore, and both of them only have so much power to end it. That distinction belongs to the army of cable-news and online commenters using it as a proxy for every dispute under the sun, and they are too well invested in keeping it going. Yea, verily, it has been written down in The Holy Book of Partisan Grievance, and it shall be cited henceforth in culture wars to come.

You know how that works. A controversy like this comes up, and suddenly there’s a mad dash to the history books to cherrypick decontextualized examples and catch the other side in an act of hypocritical defense of / outrage against humor. Well, what about when Jay Leno made essentially the same joke last year!, Letterman’s defenders cried. But what about Imus!, Palin’s partisans countered. CBS fired Imus for his remarks! Well, what about all the jokes people made about Chelsea Clinton? Yes, but what about the ones about the Bush daughters? You’re a hypocrite! No, you are!

On and on it goes, the grievance and counter-grievance, the gotcha and counter-gotcha. And thus the discussion over a freaking tacky late-night joke becomes like adjudicating an ethnic conflict in the Balkans, where yesterday’s atrocity is rationalized by a massacre during World War I, which in turn was righteous payback for some atrocity in 1484, which in turn… Good Lord.