Catching up with a couple of recent radio reports. This Thursday’s TV Talk with CHML’s Scott Thompson was all about Stanley Cup final hockey ratings on both sides of the border. The other hot topic is the late night wars including that whole David Letterman/Sarah Palin thing. Letterman crossed the line, in my opinion, not just out of his barely-disguised contempt for the Alaska governor, but in part due to the new, expanded monologue at the Late Show. Over the past several months and especially now that human joke machine Jay Leno is off the scene, Letterman has gone from tellling seven or eight to 14, 15 jokes a night. He seems energized after re-discovering his stand up comedy mojo and was bound to push through the envelope sooner or later. The unfortunate Palin daughter crack was one of those harsh jokes that would kill in the clubs but really was out of bounds for the CBS room. Letterman, typically, has made hay with the controversy, joking that his son is starting to tell the other kids at school that he is Conan O’Brien’s kid. You can listen in here.
The Letterman gaffe also came up on last week’s chat with Mike Miller over at News-Talk Radio WIMA out of Lima, Ohio. Mike also wants to know if the second season of the chilling HBO drama True Blood–just back on HBO Canada–is any scarier than that creepy ’60s soap, Dark Shadows. As Count Floyd would say, “Awoooooo!” You can listen in here.
UPDATE: A TVFMF reader has forwarded links to two great articles deconstructing the whole Letterman/Palin dustup. Several fellow comics, including Bill Maher and Jon Stewart, have rushed to Dave’s defence, pointing out how all the late night comedians have savaged Palin in their monologues for months (specifically goofing on her baby-making teenage daughter) and that Letterman, the perceived great Liberal voice, was being targeted by the Right. Read the two stories in the Washington Post and the Huffington Post and consider whether this joke by Conan O’Brien went further than Letterman’s jab: “Saturday night, Sarah Palin is going to drop the first puck at the Philadelphia Flyers’ hockey game. Then Palin will spend the rest of the game trying to keep the hockey players out of her daughter’s penalty box.”
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