Sarah Palin lashed out at David Letterman on Friday's Today show, claiming that he owes an apology to "young women across the country" for making a lewd joke about her daughter.
"I would like to see him apologize to young women across the country for contributing to kind of that thread that is throughout our culture that makes it sound like it is OK to talk about young girls in that way, where it's kind of OK, accepted and funny to talk about statutory rape," she said. "It's not cool. It's not funny."
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On his show earlier this week, Letterman joked that Palin's daughter got "knocked up" by Alex Rodriguez during their recent trip to New York's Yankee Stadium. He later clarified that the crack was aimed at Palin's 18-year-old daughter Bristol, even though it was her 14-year-old daughter, Willow, who had been at the ball game.
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Despite Letterman's clarification, Palin wasn't happy, calling it "a degrading comment about a young woman." "No wonder young girls especially have such low self-esteem in America when we think it's funny for a so-called comedian to get away with such a remark as he did," she said. "I don't think that's acceptable."
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Palin also said there was a double standard where the media treats President Barack Obama's family as generally off-limits while her family has been publicly ridiculed. She also denied that it was also in bad taste for her spokeswoman, Meghan Stapleton, to say that Palin would not appear on Letterman's show because "it would be wise to keep Willow away from David Letterman."
"Maybe he couldn't be trusted because Willow has had enough of this type of comments and maybe Willow would want to react to him in a way that maybe would catch him off-guard," Palin said. "That's one way to interpret such a comment."
On his show Thursday, Letterman kept the Palin jokes alive. He told the audience that "everything's fine now" between him and Palin, then adding that the Alaska Gov. called and invited him to go hunting. "I'm Dave Letterman," he said, "making friends wherever I go."
