Dirty Old Man?

Last updated on: October 5, 2016 at 5:40 am by Pia de Solenni

Dirty Old Man? 2016-10-05T05:40:42-07:00 Pia de Solenni

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It’s no secret that comedian David Letterman has a political bias towards the left. Yet, his recent comments about Governor Palin and 14-year-old daughter leave one thinking that if he himself is not a lech, he’s certainly contributing to the abusive notions of women that are widely held in our society.

For a quick news article on the situation, click here. Basically, Letterman commented on his show that the governor looked like a “slutty flight attendant.” He went on to bash women in other working-class professions. (I think this particular attack illustrates just how uncomfortable some people/elites are with Governor Palin’s working class appeal.) And he capped it off with a comment about Palin’s 14-year-old daughter getting knocked up at the baseball game they attended. Michelle Malkin has a good response here. The govenor was on the Today Show and you can see her interview here.

I agree with the governor and Malkin that these comments are degrading to women and girls. He tried to backtrack and say that the comment referred to the governor’s 18-year-old daughter (who, btw, wasn’t at the baseball game in question). That isn’t much of a save. The reality is that we do have a problem with dirty old men, or at least older men, going after young girls. Professor Teresa Collett from the University of St. Thomas Law School has written about and testified on the startling trend that men age 25 or older father more births among school aged girls than do boys under 18. So either, boys under 18 are remarkably better at using contraception (highly doubtful) or men over age 18 are having more sex with girls under 18. That’s disturbing no matter how you look at it. You can read a sample of Professor Collett’s testimony here. Here’s the quote to which I am referring:

National studies reveal “[a]lmost two thirds of adolescent mothers have partners older than 20 years of age.” In a study of over 46,000 pregnancies by school-age girls in California, researchers found that “71%, or over 33,000, were fathered by adult post-high-school men whose mean age was 22.6 years, an average of 5 years older than the mothers. . . . Even among junior high school mothers aged 15 or younger, most births are fathered by adult men 6-7 years their senior. Men aged 25 or older father more births among California school-age girls than do boys under age 18.” Other studies have found that most teenage pregnancies are the result of predatory practices by men who are substantially older.

In the recent coverage of abortionist Dr. Tiller’s murder, I was amazed that the media continued to talk about the hard stories where he aborted the unborn children of girls as young as 10 or 13. He was celebrated for his role in “helping” them, but no one asked how a girl that young managed to become pregnant. There wasn’t even the slightest cry of outrage. This is precisely what was at issue in Kansas when then AG Phil Klein prosecuted Dr. Tiller for failing to report sexual crimes to the relevant authorities. Regardless of what one thinks of Dr. Tiller’s role as an abortionist, the fact remains that when he was presented with these young pregnant patients, he was face to face with a crime scene, so to speak. And there is no record that he reported them or that any prosecutions followed. Was he helping the young girls or was he helping a sex offender go free?

Admittedly, these discussions deserve more time and space than I have here. But my larger point is that there should be outrage about Letterman’s statements. It doesn’t matter whose daughter he was talking about, even if he thinks that the children of conservative politicians are not off limits. We do have a statutory rape problem in this country. Girls are being sexualized and exploited at younger and younger ages. (Pole dance kits for little girls, thong underwear for 8-year-olds, “bras” for 5 and 6-year-olds, and so on ad nauseam. Literally, ad nauseam.) A look at MTV or VH1 or almost any music video will quickly demonstrate that we have a media/entertainment culture that considers women and girls “empowered” only in so far as they are able to gratify men. If that’s advancement for women and girls, I think most of us would rather opt out.

UPDATE: Letterman apologized and Palin accepted. You can read more about it here.

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