Also Not Amused by Letterman: Flight Attendants

The following is a post from new Woman Up contributor Mary Winter.

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and TV Late Show host David Letterman had a big dust-up this week. It went something like this:

You look like a slut.
Do not.
You're a pervert.
Am not.
I never said your daughter got knocked up.
Did too.

The three-day spat was cheap and tawdry, with similarities to a big, juicy, name-calling fight on the playground. Naturally, we ate it up. TV talkers, reporters, bloggers and websites weighed in. Thousands of Americans emoted on the Internet, defending the Palins and hurling invective at Letterman, and vice versa. Seems everyone joined the fray, except the people Letterman insulted in the first place – flight attendants.

Letterman started the brouhaha on Monday night when he said that the Alaska governor had the look of a "slutty flight attendant." Things went even further downhill when he joked about a Palin daughter being "knocked up" by Yankees third-baseman Alex Rodriguez.

Sarah and Todd Palin definitely weren't laughing as they lasered in like black bear on Coho salmon. "Any 'jokes' about raping my 14-year-old are despicable," Todd Palin said in a statement on Facebook the next day.

But also not amused are flight attendents. Were they offended by Letterman's slur? "Yes – and I'm speaking as a MALE flight attendant here," said Ken Kyle, president of the 1,200-member Denver chapter of the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA United Airlines. "We've fought the TV stereotype for so many years, and quite honestly, it's objectionable when you put it in light of (flight attendants' heroic actions during) 9/11 and more recently, the professionalism of the US Airways attendants during the emergency landing on the Hudson River."

Jokes and sexual innuendos take a long-term toll, said Kyle."They desensitize the public to the very important safety role we fill. Sure, we are sensitive to any comment we believe demeans a job we feel is important, especially the safety aspect of it." They also hit attendants in the pocket book, he said. "We face a lot of pressures – from the public and from the corporate level -- and to minimize and devalue (our) job classification makes it much more difficult for us to fight for a pay raise." People don't think about that, in part because attendants do their jobs so well. "But I bet if you asked the passengers on the Hudson River flight, they would have voted to give attendants a raise."