MRC’s Motley Assesses Media Coverage of Palin/Letterman Row on FNC

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Media Research Center Director of Communications Seton Motley appeared Sunday morning on Fox News Channel's "America's News Headquarters" to discuss comedian David Letterman's inappropriate joke about Gov. Sarah Palin's 14-year-old daughter Willow.

Motley noted a marked difference with the now infamous Don Imus joke about the Rutgers women's basketball team.

While both Letterman and Imus made crude and inappropriate jokes, conservatives like Gov. Palin do not have the benefit of the mainstream media's outrage as did the Rutgers basketball players [audio available here, see embedded video at right]:

 JAMIE COLBY, host: What's different, or not different about this situation from the Don Imus circumstances?

SETON MOTLEY: You don't have an Al Sharpton haranguing David Letterman and CBS, saying he needs to go. It's just a matter of if you get into a grievance group situation where you are offensive, and I'm not, none of this is defending Don Imus, from me, the MRC, none of it. He was obnoxious, he was offensive. But, it was a different situation where there is no grievance group for conservatives, for conservative women. The National Organization for Women has placed David Letterman in its hall of shame but, they have often been dyslexic and dichotomic on how they handle sexism. If it's coming from a liberal at a conservative, as it is in this instance, they are not nearly as quick to raise the roof as they are going in the opposite direction with a Bob Packwood or someone like that.

Motley concluded that there is a double standard in media: liberals are more "off-limits" than conservatives:

 There is a double standard. There is a media double standard as far as who can get attacked and who can't and who's off limits and who's not. And there are a lot more, they give a lot more latitude to liberals attacking conservatives than they do in the other direction.