Putting aside any political prisms, it's hard to see the David Letterman- Sarah Palin dust-up in any other way than this: Letterman was wrong for joking on his show about grown men having sex with a teenage Palin daughter, either teenage Palin daughter, and he ought to flat-out apologize.

Until he does, the Alaska governor and her husband, Todd, have parental rights, even a duty, to press Letterman on the main point: that his jokes Tuesday night about the Palins' visit to New York and Yankee Stadium -- "There was one awkward moment during the seventh-inning stretch; her daughter was knocked up by [Yankee player] Alex Rodriguez" and "The hardest part of her trip was keeping [former New York Gov.] Eliot Spitzer away from her daughter" -- were in terrible taste.

Letterman, on Wednesday's show, stepped up to the edge of an apology but did not get there. He defended himself by saying that he was joking about 18-year-old Bristol Palin, mother of a child out of wedlock, not 14-year-old Willow, the daughter who accompanied Sarah and Todd Palin to New York.

But he acknowledged that "I can't really defend the joke. I agree: unpleasant, ugly." And: "Do I regret having told them? Well, I think I probably do."

But instead of apologizing -- and he didn't Thursday, either -- he labeled them two of many bad jokes told over the years for "cheap laughs."

David Letterman should apologize for sex joke about Sarah Palin's daughter

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Gus: Bad jokes are out... We know that... Blonde jokes are kaput...

No longer can we vilify in bad taste the noose of the hangman.

Everything is awfully serious out-there and there are tight-arsed limits on the level of psychological hurt our jokes can bring. Or are there?

Here in Aussieland, a comic team did a really sick joke about sick kids. Dying kids. A joke about a charity that organizes trips to Disneyland for dying kids - or similar wishes: the last wish - like the last meal or the last cigarette of the condemned. The Chaser's War on Everything really ripped apart the illusion of hope. Ripped apart the illusion of doing something worthwhile. In a very bad joke, they brought us the harsh truth of our complex existence with a twist of nitric acid...

Was is necessary?

Is life necessary?

Nitric acid does not have much entertaining value.

A joke is never necessary, like the necessity of the unnecessary as I illustrate in words the illusions of what we do and are.

A fiercely existentialist friend asked me the other day "what can stop us - existentialist, humanists, god demonizers, atheists - from committing suicide?"...

Before I could answer the question, the conversation around the table had moved onto the price of fish and the moment was far too quickly lost - suspecting well that suicide could be quite rare for existentialists... Some extremely religious kids and believing adults have committed suicide, mostly because they had "felt" different or evolved in a situation in which they could not fulfill society's (or the church's) expectations, financially or otherwise.... This is a complex subject to which I have a simple answer but I have no real magic.

Magic is an uplifting deception. A deception that needs to be maintained till our last breath to appear so "real", yet so deceptive...

Thus, my complex and difficult answer was lost... in a sea of cream-puff and chocolate torte with straubs and home-made passion-fruit ice cream. Passion-fruit... Passion. The answer was there, as part of a dessert. Pandora's last monster, hope, is on the loose with passion...

And hope is lurking with this strange bedfellow - entertainment. For some societies, the illusion is coated in allah, god or vishnu. And our humanity is awash with symbols of restricted minimal values that we wish hard to be universal. The illusion of the universal is the greatest deception.

As a "penance" some people suggested the Chaser boys should pay some money into the charity they derided but a more astute person said the Chaser boys would not do that - especially not publicly. They would be, and I suspect have been, far more generous in other secret means. A bit like Alan Jones. A shock-jock who seems to be rabid right, yet supports much of the troubled people, secretly. The Chaser Team seemed to be heartless. Sure it was, yet what the boys have exposed in this heart crunching skit is the illusion of the last wish - the size of which is often implanted in the brains of the dear sick kids by good-willing distraught parents or redemption-seeking god-botherer outsiders. In fact in this awful sketch, the send-up was not so much about the kids, but about the paraphernalia of the "entertainment" value in which a "Disneyland" trip may be the optimum value-wish...

And on top of that, it could be that only one in ten - or one in hundred - kids might get this trip of a short lifetime, giving us the glow of charitable care, in our own heart. The others get zip but not much more than a lollipop... As if Disneyland was the only way to deal with dying children... For our own sake. But for those who did not make the trip, we offer our best "hope". And we do, really.

Thus, to allay the cruelty of life we coat its limits with extended values beyond it: that trick is the real bad joke. And everyday, we are the butt of our own dismissing of reality by pumping eternity, and as if love and Disneyland were always inclusive.

So, please lets have a laugh, even if it's in really bad taste - as long as we show love to those we care and show targeted disdain to those who do not value the relativity of our planet's offerings - and shoot bears for sport. I try to be fair and like Letterman I may fail miserably... But the laughs are there, to show the bare bones of the cruel life that gives us one day and "taketh" away too soon after...

In the end, nothing matters. We should, though, value our own amazement of being... how short our being-ness is. This is the true gift without the Mickey factor thrown in.

But if you want to throw Mickey on top, why not...