I’ve been thinking about this situation with Governor Palin and her family now for about a week. It was a week ago tonight and maybe you know about it maybe you don’t...
More »I’ve been thinking about this situation with Governor Palin and her family now for about a week. It was a week ago tonight and maybe you know about it maybe you don’t know about it but there was a joke that I told and I thought I was telling it about the older daughter at being at Yankee Stadium and it was kind of a coarse joke, there’s no getting around it. But I never thought it was anybody other than the older daughter and before the show I checked to make sure the fact that she is of legal age, 18. But the joke really in it of itself can’t be defended. The next day people are outraged, they’re angry at me because they said how could you make a lousy joke like that about the 14 year old girl who was at the ball game. And I had, honestly, no idea that the 14 year old girl; I had no idea that anybody was at the ball game except the Governor and I was told at the time she was there with Rudy Giuliani. That’s right. And I really should have made the joke about Rudy because…but I didn’t and now people are getting angry and they’re saying how can you say something like that about a 14 year old girl and does that make you feel good to make these horrible jokes about a kid whose completely innocent, minding her own business and turns out she was at the ball game. I had no idea she was there. So she’s now at the ball game and people think that I made the joke about her. But still I’m wondering what can I do to help people understand that I would never make a joke like this. I never made jokes like this as long as we’ve been on the air, 30 long years. And you can’t really be doing jokes like that and I understand of course why people are upset. I would be upset myself. And then I was watching the Jim…News hour, this commentator the columnist Mark Shields is talking about how I made this indefensible joke about this 14 year old girl. And I thought oh boy, now I’m beginning to understand what the problem is here. It’s the perception, rather than the intent. It doesn’t make a difference what my intent was, it’s the perception. And as they say about jokes that if you have to explain the joke it’s not a very good joke. Thank you. Well, my responsibility, I take full blame for that. I told a bad joke. I told a joke that was beyond flawed and my intent is completely meaningless compared to the perception. And since it was a joke I told I feel that I need to do the right thing here and apologize for having told that joke. It’s not your fault that it was misunderstood; it’s my fault that it was misunderstood. Thank you. So I would like to apologize especially to the two daughters involved, Bristol and Willow and also to the Governor and her family and everybody else who was outraged about the joke. I’m sorry about it and I’ll try to do better in the future. Thank you very much.
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