Messrs. Stewart and Colbert are on vacation all week - nice timing! - but Letterman is back, and, last night, he didn't shy away from the sticky issue that is media martyr Sarah Palin. Strangely, he didn't slam her either.

I dunno: Maybe, after milking a series of stupid, ill-advised, sexist jokes into a five-alarm, national fucking freakout complete with accusations of Letterman's perversion and acceptance of "rape", and then following that up with a resignation/public statement portraying her as a victim of the media, I expected Sarah Palin to be the recipient of something more... damning.

Is it too soon? I get that Palin's family should be left alone. Jokes that are sexist - or can be claimed as such by the suddenly-woman friendly GOP - are also a no-no. But are all of Palin's outrageous peccadilloes, inconsistencies and complaints off-limits when it comes to jokes from this country's best comedic social critics? (She's not a private citizen...yet.) Due to Stewart and Colbert's absences - SNL is on hiatus all summer - Letterman and his writers were in the unique position to not only go for the comedic jugular... but set a tone outside of the Beltway pundits and bloggers currently circling Palin's wagon. (Note: Keith Olbermann's show doesn't count as a "comedic," because it simply isn't funny.) As it is, the talk show host's series of swipes - a compilation, above left - was comprised of obvious digs like "Obama is currently in Russia, which means Sarah can see him from her house" (a joke also made by Letterman's milquetoast late-night rival, Conan O'Brien, which tells you something) and snipes at her pageant-contestant past and support for the hunting of Alaskan wolves/blowhard CNN anchors.

Oh well. If I want Palin-inspired comedy, I guess I can just go back to the aforementioned pundits and bloggers, namely, this, this, this, this, all of this, and the responses to this.

Send an email to Anna Holmes, the author of this post, at anna@jezebel.com.