Malkin Nails Letterman. Hillbuzz Nails CBS Advertisers. Hanson Defends the Maidens.

Malkin nails the old perv.

Over the past year, Letterman has displayed his sexist, elitist stripes in jibe after jibe aimed at Palin. Taken cumulatively, Letterman’s mockery is about much more than expressing contempt for the popular GOP governor. It’s a handy device to deride a broad class of working-class and middle-class women he holds in contempt:

“You know, she reminds me, she looks like the flight attendant who won’t give you a second can of Pepsi. No, you’ve had enough. We’re landing. Looks like the waitress at the coffee shop who draws a little smiley face on your check. Have a nice day.”

“She looks like the dip sample lady at Safeway. She looks like the nurse who weighs you and then makes you sit alone in your underwear for 20 minutes. She looks like the Olive Garden hostess who says, ‘I’m sorry, your table isn’t ready yet.” She looks like infomercial lady who says she made $64,000 a month flipping condos.”

“[S]he looks like the lady at the bakery who yells out ‘44! 45!’ She looks like a real estate agent whose picture you see on the bus stop bench. That’s who she looks like. She looks like the lady who has a chain of cupcake stores…”

In November 2008, Letterman told tanking CBS News anchor Katie Couric that he was “aroused” by Gov. Palin.

In March 2009, Letterman attacked Bristol Palin and snickered about her being “knocked up” again.

You know, David Letterman reminds me of the lecher at the school bus stop.

Or the aging creep lurking in the dirty magazine section at the 7-11.

Attention, CBS: Get him help now.

HillBuzz, which is a blog that I believe was started by Hillary supporters during the fateful effing campaign, has compiled a great list of CBS advertisers. I boycotted Us magazine, which I used to buy religiously and sheepishly every week, after they slammed Palin. I fell off the wagon for two issues during the Jon and Kate Plus Eight debacle (I thought they were such a solid couple! Ohmigosh, I felt so much better about myself when I realized they weren’t!). I don’t think I can boycott Mars candy and Kellogg’s. I just can’t. (How come if you’re a Palin supporter you have to get ready to boycott the world? I’m going to end up wearing sackcloth and eating locusts for my Sarah.) But if I’m in a supermarket and I have a choice between M&Ms and Smarties, I will buy Smarties for Sarah. Actually, I don’t like Smarties. But I will buy another chocolate item, even if it’s more expensive. That doesn’t sound that threatening, does it, not like “boycott,” but you know what, it kind of works, I will draft letter based on this. Hillbuzz has a lot of information, they are not kidding around, and they are funny:

“M&Ms: the candy for people who think rape is super fun!”

“Eat at Olive Garden so you can laugh about rape while eating unlimited salad and breadsticks!”

“Kelloggs: the breakfast cereal for misogynists and perverts who exploit minor children!”

“Johnson + Johnson: household products for when a 62-year old pig’s own johnson needs statutory rape to get going!”

Also, Victor Davis Hanson manfully comes to the beautiful Sarah and her beautiful daughters’ defense:

First, Letterman makes a gutter joke about Palin and her unnamed 14-year-old daughter attending a NY Yankees game. Then when a bit of outrage follows, he apparently claims he really meant to slur the other 18-year-old daughter who, back in Alaska, of course did not attend the game but was not named by Letterman. That would be okay, you see.

Second, then he evokes the now common straw man “they” who are apparently “upset” with him, hoping to play the victim card. Then he dribbles out something about his “last show” as if we are to weep that some mob is out to silence him. (But the reason he picked the Palins, and not the Obamas, Gores, Bidens, or Kerrys, was precisely because he knew it would not equate to his “last show”).

Third, he strangely amplifies his joke by confessing it really was about “raping” and “having sex of any description,” but just not with a “14-year-old girl,” suggesting it would have been okay had he just been more explicit and named Bristol, the 18-year-old. In Letterman’s world, because Bristol is 18, she is a year past most statuary rape clauses and thus the joke would have only been about “raping or having sex of any description with a [18-year-old] girl.”

Nothing offered about his slurs against airline attendants and Governor Palin herself, when he sneered that she had a “slutty flight-attendant look,” or his remark that Palin “was keeping Eliot Spitzer away from her daughter.” Indeed, he seemed to boast that he was proud of his ’slutty’ joke, as if hard-working flight attendants really do look slutty (they don’t to me), or that Palin looks slutty (she doesn’t to me).

The self-serving, creepy apology was as bad as the initial slur. Letterman is emblematic of an aging, baby-boomer culture, that dresses up street vulgarity with a tie and coat. The only thing that saves him is his care to do this with the Palins from Alaska who don’t figure into the usual no-go race/class/gender paradigm.