PrintSarah Palin vs. Hitler's' children
Protester outside the David Letterman Show: "If it would have been any other family (than Sarah Palin's), Letterman would have been taken off the air."
Young sound man/reporter for Maxim Radio on Sirius Satellite: "What about if it was Hitler's children?"
Me: "Hitler didn't have any children."
So much for our educational system.
The protest across the street from the Ed Sullivan Theater, home of the David Letterman Show, on Broadway and 53rd Street, had barricades, a police presence, two press 
conferences - and what may have been Letterman shills along with honest counter-protesters supporting the talk show host. It was a lively airing of thoughts and feelings. It started as a small crowd gathering more than a half hour before the official beginning of the protest at 4:30 p.m., a protest written about in the New York Daily News, mentioned on all-news radio 1010 WINS, and blogged at http://www.firedavidletterman.com/.
The supporters of David Letterman in the crowd, whether they were fair debaters or those that shouted down "Fire Dave" chants with counter-chants of their own, were almost all young males ranging from 18 to the their late twenties. That is, they were almost all young, but all were (not surprisingly) male.
Four young tall men with David Letterman tee-shirts, who apparently couldn't get tickets to the show, walked over to the protest to say that Letterman's remarks about Sarah Palin were just a joke. Tourists from Wisconsin, I engaged one of them in a discussion.
"How old are you? Twenty? Twenty-four?"
"Thank you. No, I'm eighteen."
"When you're a father, you'll think differently."
"I realize that, but..."
"But you're still a kid."
The Boys from Wisconsin drifted away and were replaced by a sea of media. Fox News, Inside Edition, 1010 WINS News Radio. Air America. MTV News. And along with the media, came the pro-Palin protesters with their signs -- not all of them conservatives.
A protester yelled out to the reporters, "My daughter is 36. That's why I take this personally." Another yelled out, "A-Rod should have had a spokesman here," meaning (for 
you non-baseball fans) Alex Rodriguez, the NY Yankee who Letterman also managed to insult by joking that he had committed statutory rape with the 14 year-old daughter of Sarah Palin. This was a liberal protester, a supporter, even now, of the ERA, who would later have the second news conference on the street. She also said when comedians referred to Chelsea Clinton by an insulting name, the media criticized them, demanding that Chelsea be left alone.
A family of five protesters - parents, boys and girls - came from New Jersey. The daughter who appeared to be in her early twenties held up a sign that said, "We are ALL The Palins" and below that was written "We're not taking it anymore."
John Ziegler, a Los Angeles radio host, the producer of the documentary film "Media Malpractice" - and the spokesman for www.firedavidletterman.com , held a press conference in the street, complete with permitted sound equipment. He started by stating what David Letterman had done had gone far beyond anyone else, that he had clear liberal bias - and that he had a "peculiar interest" in Sarah Palin. One could take that to mean that he considered Letterman sexually obsessed with the Alaska Governor.
"It is part of a liberal attempt to destroy Governor Palin for the past eleven months," Ziegler added. Ziegler further said, "I got a call from CBS. Why are you holding a protest? Why don't you just go away?" He went on to say that despite the weak second apology, there is no justice and no accountability, that Letterman should be suspended from his show as a minimum punishment.
"Why doesn't he donate last week's income to a charity chosen by Sarah Palin?" - or words very close to that - were Ziegler's next remark. Ziegler had tried to contact Letterman and got no direct response. He was also had been scheduled to be on the CBS television morning show and was "bumped" (canceled) from that.
Some interesting verbal dueling then happened between Ziegler and the Air America 
reporter. When asked why the protest took a week to happen, Ziegler asked, "Why did David Letterman take a week to apologize?" When Air America, in more of an accusation that a question, remarked that Sarah Palin went on Saturday Night Live in 2008 a week after they had aired a skit which said that Tod Palin had slept with his daughter, Ziegler pointed out that skit was set in a New York Times staff meeting where the paper's staff was considering topics to write, so it was essentially a satire on what the Times might publish to discredit her, not Saturday Night Live saying this directly of Gov. Palin.
The second press conference, a short one after most of the big name media had left to meet their deadlines, was a spur-of-the-moment event with no permit for a microphone. It was held by woman named Betty from "The Majority United." It made up in amateur sincerity what it lacked in professional organization. Betty said that she had been fighting for equal rights for all women for many years, both on the right and the left. She had been called a "Republican man hater" but was not that, that she wanted to live in a world where women were not attacked and exploited.
John Ziegler had said that he knew David Letterman would not lose his job, and he is probably right on that count. But this protest, getting significant media coverage, was the beginning of a true revolt against what has become the media's acceptable bashing of women, using a Republican icon and her girls as their target. Even the Huffington Post had recently published an article called "Letterman Quietly Ushers in the Next Wave of Feminism."And PUMA-PAC, the die hard Hillary supporters with a low opinion of "party unity" are still very much alive and now taking a strong stance against not only David Letterman but also attacking Bill Maher's defense of Letterman, urging canceling of HBO service, Maher's employer.
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised. It Will Be Blogged and Twittered.
