Lileks On Letterman On Palin – UPDATED

If you have missed it, the old rule that you don’t go after a politicians kids (which has been strongly, and correctly, in place under all Democrat presidents, and was even sometimes practiced about the Bush-twins) does not apply to Sarah Palin, and has never applied to Sarah Palin. You may get nagged at for observing that Michelle Obama looks like she is angry, but it’s “funny pop-culture-coolness” to suggest that Sarah Palin (who is a stoopit hick, afterall) looks “like a slutty flight attendant” and her daughters are (interchangably) sluts as well.

Our tolerant, open-minded and compassionate, women-friendly betters.

I stopped watching David Letterman years ago because the guy seemed sour, bitter, humorless – stuck playing to the cynical instincts of 14 year-olds and too cowardly to stop.

But Lileks says it much better than I:

[Pathetic.] People have used other words – disgusting, repellent, abominable, danker than the fetid breath of the nine-bladder’d Arazon, Privy-Cleaner of Hell, et cetera – but pathetic is all I can muster.

But no, it must be funny, because David is funny and hip. Right? Or maybe not; maybe he’s actually a brackish, hermetically-souled guy who’s spend the last twenty years going from table to table with a giant wooden grinder, asking anyone if they want some fresh-ground scorn with that. Say when. Or maybe he’s about as edgy as a soccer ball, and exists only to remind people they were Edgy once, and hence must be ever-blessed with the gift of Wryness and Irony. With those shields we can never grow old, you know. We’ll always be as sharp and perceptive as we were when we were sitting on a cast-off sofa in college, working through a midweek buzz, happily fellated by the preconceptions the TV so charitably provided.

Or so I remember; haven’t watched the show in years. I thought it was brilliant at first, but at some point early on Bill Wendell’s introduction stopped being Bill Wendell as Don Pardo and became Bill Wendell Intentionally and Ironically Being Don Pardo for Your Ironic Enjoyment. The introductory graphics got slick. Paul Shaffer morphed into this eyeless homunculus yes-man, like Ed McMahon on painkillers converted into handy portable Idol form (really, sometimes I see a picture of this tiny fellow wearing shades, grinning at nothing, and he reminds me of something Indiana Jones would replace with a weighted bag of sand before he stole it.)

Of course you’ll want to read it all; it’s Lileks!

Lileks on Letterman on Palin – UPDATED