I find it kind of ironic that CBS News did a segment Friday about kids and bullying, reminding viewers that most of the school shootings were done by kids who were bullied with no mercy.

At the same time, on the same network, David Letterman was frantically trying to cover his ass with excuses about a tasteless joke that mocked Sarah Palin’s daughter. Today, he’s kind of apologized, said he’s sorry people didn’t get the joke.

It’s hard to get a joke that involves bullying a child. I haven’t called Gallup, but I would guess that only the most rabid Letterman fans and Palin haters believed his very poor attempts to weasel out of responsibility. I doubt he even gave a moment’s thought to which of Sarah Palin’s kids went to a ball game, nor did he care. Until he was slammed. Then all of a sudden he says of course he would never make fun of a girl being molested by an adult. Sure.

Whether it’s David Letterman, Saturday Night Live or Perez Hilton, people love to bully kids whose parents they dislike.

It’s not really any different from playground bullying. Well it is, in some ways it’s worse. At least at school, the kids can go home, or fight back. If it gets too bad, a sympathetic parent might even send them to a school with higher-quality students.

There’s no escaping the nasty remarks Perez Hilton makes about the children of celebrities, from Rumer Willis (before she set out on her own acting career, and before she turned 18), to the toddler of Adam Sandler, whom Perez continually calls ugly.

David Letterman is more famous than “Hilton” (though Hilton lives for his pseudo fame and might disagree) and a number of people thought the joke was funny, until they were smacked in the face with how nasty and crass it was.

The Chelsea Clintons, Jenna and Barbara Bushes, and Palin kids of the political world didn’t ask to be born to parents in the public eye. But they have to live with the bullying in the press and on the alleged comedy circuit.

If you’ve ever had a child who was called a name at school, made fun of because she had crooked teeth, was chubby, or had frizzy hair, you know the pain of school bullying.

Every parent and every person who has ever been bullied in school ought to know better. David Letterman ought to know better.

And CBS? The irony of a segment on bullying while David Letterman scampered around was indicative of how out of touch CBS News has become.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 16th, 2009 at 12:44 am and is filed under A Nutter's Prattle. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.