Janell Snowden

[Update, 7:40 pm EDT: Audio and video from segment added.]

Another discussion panel on CNN’s Campbell Brown program on Thursday leaned to the left, this time on the Letterman/Palin controversy. Air America’s Sam Seder defended the raunchy “joke” about one of the Palin daughters. VH-1’s Janell Snowden supported the host’s “job to make fun of people.” CNN analyst Jeff Toobin thought Bristol Palin was “fair game.” Only Republican Susan Molinari sided with the governor [audio clips from the segment available here].

Brown first turned to Molinari, the moderate former congresswoman from New York, for her take on the issue. She condemned Letterman’s “mean joke,” though she did buy the CBS host’s explanation that it was about 18-year-old Bristol Palin, and not 14-year-old Willow Palin. Molinari continued that she didn’t “understand how anybody thinks this was funny....he’s a late-night host. He crosses the line. But when you cross the line with an 18-year-old, I just think we have gotten to the point where the jokes now are just really mean and have no impact.”

The CNN anchor then asked Seder and Snowden, “Where do you draw the line between being provocative and being offensive when you’re- when you’re commentating, as these guys do, on the late- night talk shows?” Seder, a talk show host for the left-wing Air America, made light of Letterman’s joke: “He’s making a joke. But, you know, that said, I am a father, and if someone made a joke about Alex Rodriguez knocking up my daughter, I would take offense. But that’s because I’m a Red Sox fan.” He also defended it as a “funny joke” and justified it: “He’s simply making a joke, and he’s done it for- he’s done it for years and years, and he’s done it about all sorts of people- all different ages.”