David Letterman has admitted that his apology to former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin for a crude joke he told about her daughter was less than contrite.
In June 2009, Letterman made a supposed humorous remark about Palin's daughter having been “knocked up” by baseball player Alex Rodriguez. He used accompanying photographs that depicted the Palins attending a New York Yankees baseball game.
The late-night comic assumed that Bristol, Palin’s oldest daughter, was present at the Yankees game. However, it turned out that it was Willow, Bristol’s younger sister, who had actually attended.
Evidently, the apology Letterman subsequently issued was a feigned and self-serving one.
“I felt like Sarah Palin was somebody I wanted to continue to be able to make fun of and I felt like if I don’t apologize -- if I don’t sincerely express my regret -- I will not be able to go forward making fun of her,” Letterman told Oprah Winfrey in an OWN interview.
Letterman does regret mistaking the younger Willow for her older sibling.
“I felt bad for the 14-year-old,” he said. “You know, that was just like, ‘Nice going. You got the wrong daughter.’ That was just a stupid joke that was dumb luck and got worse.”
Letterman interviewed Winfrey in November 2012, and the former daytime TV talk show host talked openly about difficulties that she had encountered in her own upbringing.
Winfrey similarly delved into Letterman’s personal life in the above-referenced interview, which occurred during a discussion in which she brought up Letterman’s 2009 sex scandal that came to light after a producer for CBS’s “48 Hours” threatened to write a screenplay about the infidelities unless a payment of $2 million was forthcoming.
“I have no one to blame but myself,” Letterman said.
The late-night comedian, who has now apparently turned his life around, did admit that he “hurt a lot of people,” and also said, “I feel better about myself, my relationship with my wife is never better, and it’s just because I want to be the person I always thought I was and probably was pretending I was.”
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