That Pogo cartoon about Earth Day was co-opted as a key feminist symbol in the 1970's. A reminder to women everywhere that we can be our own worst enemies.

Our version said, We have met the enemy and she is us.

It helped us remember that fear of owning our own destinies must not hold us back from achieving them. That we must unite among ourselves to get results.

And most of all, that we must not get bogged down in dissent over empty oppositional rhetoric or distracted by fatuous misogamy clearly designed to bait us.

It's 40 years later and Pogo is still right. The enemy is still us. She has a name. Sarah Palin. And a cause. Self-promotion.

Just when I believed --having been told self-confidently (and even self-righteously) by women under 50--that today's women have feminism under control, along came Sarah Palin.

Undermining women's rights by ignoring the real issues in order to advance her own agenda, Ms.(ha!) Palin is not a feminist. She's a craven opportunist.

We must stop playing into her --and the Right Wingnut's-- hands. We have just simply got to shut the fuck up about David Letterman.

Was his joke inappropriate? Of course! Was it crafted to support or encourage the rape of teenage girls? Oh PLEASE!

It was one line in a Top Ten list -- a 'bit' well known to be deliberately ridiculous and often barbed. Many public figures have been briefly skewered, including the children of prominent politicians.

All but Palin took it in the spirit --no matter how immature-- it was intended. In this case the joke was also a reflection of the political reality that Sarah Palin and her family have spewed their personal lives all over the media whenever it suited their purposes.

Now it suits Governor Palin to use the Letterman joke to deflect interest or investigation into a long list of alleged improprieties which could derail any change for her potential advancement on the national political stage.

David Letterman apologized. Sincerely. And invited Governor Palin to meet him on the public airways whether to accept his apology or debate her view of his behavior.

Joan Walsh wasn't afraid of hitting the airways to take on Bill O'Reilly. She emerged victorious by her reasoned, accurate responses. And her refusal to stoop to the level of the lowest common denominator.

Is the former Republican Nominee for Vice President of the United States incapable of doing the same? Yes. She only knows how to snipe from the sidelines, strings pulled by political puppeteers angling for a right wing moment in the sun.

"It's Politics, Stupid!" Palin's not protecting her daughters or the cause of women's rights. She's promoting this continuing furor to turn an ill-advised remark to her own, and her foundering party's, advantage.

Has it occurred to no one that by continuing her charade of outrage in keeping this supposedly painful episode alive, Mrs. Palin is allowing --encouraging-- it to publicly humiliate her precious children??

Was Letterman's one-liner even all that misogynistic? I say no. It was a JOKE. Bitch and moan all you want but, like The Onion, Gawker, thousands of other web sites, publications and comedians, Letterman has a right to make jokes about anything and everything. You don't like it, turn off his show.

Please, do not turn a comedian into the anti-feminist anti-Christ. If you do, you become one of Them. The censors. The angry, self-righteous do-gooders who love nothing more than to tell the rest of us how to live.

Please, do not elevate a one-liner to a Right Wing cause celeb on the say-so of a woman who doesn't know the meaning of the word feminism.

By the way, I've read Salon's articles positing Letterman's culpability in keeping misogyny alive. I suggest we look in our own back yard before throwing too many stones.

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