Humor & Life Quote by David Letterman

Letterman’s punch lands because it’s doing two jobs at once: prosecuting John Kerry’s reputation as a political weather vane while smuggling in a pop-culture jab that the audience can decode instantly. The “changed his mind” setup is pure campaign-season shorthand, a nod to the early-2000s media narrative that Kerry “flip-flopped” on big issues. Then Letterman detonates the comparison: “more positions than Paris Hilton.” It’s a deliberately crass double entendre, with “positions” meaning policy stances and sexual poses, collapsing Washington hypocrisy and tabloid sexuality into the same punchline-sized moral theater.

The specific intent is ridicule, not policy analysis. Kerry’s shift toward supporting a ban on gay marriage (a live wire in that era, especially around the 2004 election and the wave of state ballot measures) is framed as cowardice-by-calculation: a politician triangulating to appease swing voters rather than defending principle. The subtext is harsher: on LGBTQ rights, mainstream politicians treated equality as a negotiable bargaining chip, something you could “evolve” backward on if the polls demanded it.

Hilton is the perfect cultural accelerant because she embodied early-aughts celebrity-as-scandal, famous for being famous and routinely sexualized by the media. Letterman weaponizes that image to brand Kerry as unserious and opportunistic. The joke also exposes its own moment: a liberal-leaning host can mock a gay-marriage ban while still leaning on slut-shaming as the comedic currency that makes the critique feel “safe” for a broad audience.