NYT Covers Up Letterman Joke About Palin's Daughter

June 10th, 2009 2:52 PM

After David Letterman made sexist attacks on the Palin family, the New York Times made sure to cover for him.

On “The Late Show” Monday, Letterman joked about Palin’s 14-year-old daughter Willow getting “knocked-up” by Alex Rodriguez, and the Times has scrubbed that joke from their transcript of the opening monologue.

The transcript, available here contains all the hilarious quips about Palin spending $150,000 on merchandise but not the joke about Willow. As Massbackwards states:

I have to think that if Barack Obama had taken his daughters to a Washington Wizards game, and a conservative television personality made a joke about one of them getting raped and impregnated at halftime by Antawn Jamison, that person might be in the middle of a major shitstorm right about now.


The Times editorial board was quick to point out alleged attacks on Michelle Obama early in the campaign, as they did here, in a post titled, “Defaming Michelle Obama.”

After receiving numerous comments asking why they omitted the joke, the Times responded in the comment section:

From the editors: The transcript we received omitted the joke referred to in the comments below, presumably for reasons of taste. Had the transcript included the joke, we would not have run it. Monologue jokes are routinely edited for taste and brevity.