Slate: Palin-Letterman: Who won? […] Anyone who’s been scoring Letterman v. Palin knows that it has been a ratings boon to both sides: Last week, David Letterman told a tasteless joke. Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin flipped out. Letterman apologized. Palin went berserk. Letterman apologized again. Palin accepted his apology on behalf of “young women” everywhere. Letterman’s ratings skyrocketed. And Palin is back in the headlines. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

This was top news the last few days. Top news. Top. Ya know, given that the state of the economy, along side of several multi-decade companies running for Bankruptcy court, plus the growing chaos on Iran, the ongoing civil rights battle in China, the battle action still going on in Iraq, and the required surge of action in Afghanistan, not to mention the whole stand off with the recently-self-declared-nuclear-weapons-holding North Korean, I wonder how we can spend any time at all worried about the off colored humor of Letterman, the misunderstood or tasteless joke that he made concerning either of Palin’s daughters, or the fact that one of Palin’s underage [at the time] daughters did get knocked up and became a [single] teenage mother. Top news. Leading story for some channels/web sites over the last 48 hours.

While I’m not too certain who won the argument of Letterman vs Palin, there is at least one thing that I’m pretty certain of: in this case, we’ve all lost.

Media self-awareness and topic selection: FAIL