Oh, Dave, what have you done? Or more to the point: How creepy is this whole story going to get in the days ahead?
Long-time viewers of Letterman were likely taken aback by the host's admission last night that he was recently the object of an extortion attempt. The on-air segment, which aired after his standard monologue, ran 10 minutes, during which Letterman told viewers about “the little package in the back of my car,” which allegedly contained a threat from a man – a fellow CBS employee, mind you – who threatened to expose some “terrible, terrible things” about the late-night host and the demand for $2-million (U.S.) in hush money. There was laughter from the audience, albeit of the nervous variety.
Then, Dave, patiently and with his famous comic timing, got to the heart of the matter. When he took the “package” to authorities, he had to come clean. “I had to tell them all the creepy things I had done,” said Dave, eliciting more nervous laughter.
And next came the most unpleasant part: “The creepy stuff was I have had sex with women who work on the show,” said Dave. Not many laughs there, but a smattering of applause. And then, Dave saw fit to lighten the tone by saying, “Would [this news] prove embarrassing? Yes, it would –especially for the women.” Big laughs.
Letterman rambled on toward some conclusion, and made a few more jokes, but the cat was out of the bag, so to speak. Whether advised by his lawyers or pushed toward the admission by his own conscience (he referred to himself as a “towering, Midwestern mass of guilt”), he wasn't the usual cranky, defiant Dave.
For those who have watched Letterman for decades, he seemed more like a man in the midst of damage control, preparing for the inevitable media storm that will surface later today on Entertainment Tonight , Access Hollywood and – far more damning – on the Internet as last night's clip goes viral.
Recently married to Late Night co-worker Regina Lasko, also the mother of six-year-old Harry, Letterman tried to offset the incoming media storm with his jokey confession. But was it enough?
The verdict on Letterman hinges on the “creepy” things that he supposedly did–and the smoking gun. Once his prepared statement finished, Letterman went back to the business of entertaining America, as he so often puts it, while viewers were left to wonder: What was in that “package”?
The alleged blackmailer, Joe Halderman, is a producer on the CBS program 48 Hours , so the unspoken element was that the evidence is of the video variety, or at least a photograph. By his own admission, he did something wrong, and he admitted it to the world, but should any visual evidence to his indiscretions get out on the Internet, it could mean the end of the Letterman era.
No one wants it to happen, of course. Letterman is by far the best talk-show host in the game these days, and his ratings have edged even higher since the arrival of Conan O'Brien on The Tonight Show , but there may be no way for him to survive a scandal royale.
There's a reason why CBS has been called “The Tiffany Network” since the fifties; next to ABC, which is owned by Disney, CBS is likely the most moralistic network in broadcast today, and it's inevitable that Letterman's contract includes a morals clause. Having sex with an intern would certainly violate that clause, one would think.
Moreover, CBS entertainment chief Les Moonves rules over the TV division with an iron hand, and his mission statement has always leaned towards family entertainment. If a racy picture hits the ŒNet, Dave will be gone, and not just because nobody wants to see a 62-year-old man with his pants down, so to speak.
Of course everything in this Letterman scandal is still in the conjecture stage, but what if the women Dave had sex with start to surface with their stories? I've watched Letterman faithfully for more than 25 years, and there was a slight air of desperation in last night's confession of guilt; it all seemed that much more distasteful coming from good old Dave.
Creepy, in fact.
