The Trials And Adulterations Of David Letterman

By now, I’m sure you’ve gotten wind of the recent David Letterman, um, situation. Basically, what happened was this. Some guy was blackmailing him for two million dollars, saying that he would release evidence that Letterman had been having sex with women who worked for him. So, good old Dave cut this guy off at the pass by going to the police with the entire situation and getting him arrested. He then went on his show and told the world about it. The video for this confession is here:



Now on the surface, what Dave did was pretty noble – he called out an extortionist, and then made a very tough admission that would surely tarnish his public image. But when viewed in terms of its aesthetics, the entire admission is pretty weak.

For one, he delivered this confession in the form of his opening comedy monologue, in which he cracks jokes about finding incriminating evidence in his car at six in the morning and how the fact that he’s had sex at all is pretty shocking, let alone had sex with his employees. The fact that he’s willing to make light of such a terrible situation for all involved parties makes him kind of a crapdude, to use the parlance of our times. The tone of voice in which he tells this story is also notable. He speaks in a jokey, conversational style, indicating that he doesn’t take the situation very seriously.

It’s interesting that up until about 7:33 in the video, Dave is clearly the hero of this story. With a hint of triumph in his voice, he announces that his blackmailer had been arrested that afternoon. After this little moment, he finally cops to having slept with his employees and for about forty seconds, is serious. His gravity is cut short when he says something to the effect of, “Would this be embarrassing if this got out? Yes, yes it would. Especially for the women.” He then ends the segment with a crack about how nobody would expect him to be having sex at all, let alone with women who work for him.

And finally, notice that he never actually apologized for having sex with all of those women, which I’m more than certain he understands to be wrong. It should be noted that a few days later he apologized to his wife, staff, and viewers for putting them all through this and made it explicit that these transgressions are in the past, but that apology carries a lot less weight – like Cat Stevens said, the first cut is the deepest.