On Hostile Assumptions

Not to callously take advantage of current events, but the current kerfuffle over Letterman's Palin joke precisely proves my point about hostile audiences. Letterman made a joke about Palin's daughter being knocked-up by A-Rod, without specifying which daughter. Palin's response refers to "sexually-perverted comments made by a 62-year-old male celebrity aimed at a 14-year-old girl."

This is only a reasonable response if one begins from the assumption "Dave Letterman is a pedophile," or at the very least "Dave Letterman is an enemy seeking to cause me harm." This sort of cultural paranoia is, I repeat and repeat, poisonous to real communication.

In short, hostility is not an appropriate response to ambiguity.

Letterman's apology is actually quite well-done, since he apologizes for poor execution of the joke rather than any real hostility (presumably there is none). When one is in entertainment, and speaking publicly, one takes on a responsibility to be understood, so this is fair. Of course, with a truly hostile audience, it's impossible to fulfill this responsibility. As such, Letterman's apology makes the charitable assumption that Palin's response was derived from confusion rather than malice.

So yeah, in these terms, Letterman has the moral high ground here.