Not only did the "Fire David Letterman" crowd completely fail at their attempt to oust the late night host from his desk chair, but they actually helped him.

That makes them the least successful protest effort since 1977's memorable campaign to "Keep Pies Away from Anita Bryant." I believe it had something to do with preventing the spread of diabetes.

Variety reports that Letterman surpassed The Tonight Show in the ratings for the first time in nearly three-and-a-half years while the whole Palin family "Jokegate" debacle was still slowly being scraped off the fan.

A lot of dissecting and exploratory surgery has been done on the jokes that David Letterman made about the Palin family. Even after Dave apologized and Palin accepted, people still want to perform a comedy autopsy to figure out what Dave's intent was and why Palin was so vocal in her reaction to it.

The problem is it's an unnecessary surgery and it fails to attack the root of the problem while the real cancer spreads like a California wildfire. E.B. White once said about such procedures that, "Analyzing humor is like dissecting a frog. Few people are interested and the frog dies of it." The only reason this frog hasn't died is because someone wants to keep it alive and no one has dared to touch the heart.

This is the side I will debate in the never-ending Letterman vs. Palin "Joke-gate" controversy while our very own John Scott Lewinski will offer a rebuttal later in the day that a public figure's children should always be off-limits.

It looks like Sarah Palin got her chance to respond to Dave's inappropriate joke about her daughter. You know, the one he already apologized for. Palin chided that Dave should apologize to all young women around the country rather than just she and her family.

Was it a legitimate mistake on Dave's part and the part of his writers? I believe it was. Is Sarah Palin using this as a political opportunity to get her name even more out there than it is? Yeah, I believe that's the case too.

A more appropriate response from the Alaskan governor would have been to accept the apology and, if she wants to hold a grudge, simply never appear on Dave's show or give it him any further publicity. She's a public figure, and sadly so are her children even if they didn't choose to be. No doubt they will be the targets of inappropriate jokes time to time.

Video of her response is after the jump.