It has been, as I just told KNX Radio (click to listen), a late night Rorschach test. Viewers are responding in very different ways to the revelations of David Letterman last night on CBS.
Fittingly, it was also a late night of conversing with TV Barn readers on Twitter and Facebook. This morning I've been reading your comments -- which have been piling up ever since I got Drudged -- and digesting, along with you, the latest revelation that it was Stephanie Burkitt, the woman who appeared frequently as Dave's assistant on the show and had, I think we can all agree, a special way with the host of the show, who was one of the women sleeping with Dave.
Here's my reaction to what appeared on the show, and now, your reactions and my responses.
@ourbuddydave: With Letterman, one is never sure if the story is true. I wasn't sure until the end, so I tittered along with the audience.
E O'Neal: Letterman's audience thinks they're supposed to laugh every time he pauses. It's a conditioned reflex that shows they're in on the joke. The audience laughs at his attitude and manner rather than his wit, which has atrophied almost to the vanishing point. Last night was especially creepy.
I don't blame the audience at all. And while I think the producers should have stepped in before the second act and warned the studio that something dramatic was going to be announced, you wonder how much chaos was going on behind the scenes. Remember, the dude wasn't arrested until around noon and the show tapes at, I believe, 5:30.
Annette: The audiences he has would laugh if he got up and told he raped a girl and murdered her. They laugh at anything he says and hes not funny anymore.
I wouldn't quite go that far, but it's absolutely true that this audience was in a good mood and ready to laugh. They laughed at the Roman Polanski jokes. They laughed at the Mark Sanford joke. Of course, they had no idea that David Letterman was about to enshrine himself in their rarified company. But they were a good crowd, and it's possible that Dave made a last-minute decision just to play to the crowd. It's also possible that Dave knew all along that he was going to tell this as just another funny personal story, like the time a bear got into his cabin or he and Regina decided to go get hitched. Either way, the result was surreal.
@scott_tobias: Do you think he was too flippant about it, then? That may be the case, but he certainly flipped the script in TV confessions. My first reaction was "Huh. He did not do what you're supposed to do in situations like this." And that's kinda remarkable.
Well, I'm not sure there has ever been a situation quite like the one Letterman finds himself in — even Johnny's three divorces were fairly antiseptic and easy to poke fun at, besides it was a different era — but what's interesting to me is that he did not do the one thing that he could have done at that point, and that is apologize to those he took advantage of.
@TeresaKopec: It was fine. He didn't molest a child nor has anyone accussed him of sexual harassment. People sleep around at the office. Human.
@SusanDennis: unless he had no power over their jobs - financially or otherwise - he's on the hook.
As the owner of his production company Worldwide Pants, and moreover as the one indispensable person in that company, the sole reason for its existence, Letterman has a special power over people. That is why people get sued for sexual harassment, no? It's not about the sex, it's about the power.
Now that we know Stephanie's involved, there are issues to consider that weren't so obvious last night. Stephanie had great chemistry with Dave. Is that why they had sex? Probably. Is that why she was used so often on the show? Ehhhh.....that's dicier. The sex certainly was an audition that no other staffer at "Late Show" (well, maybe no other staffer) got to have with the host. But in this case, the casting couch worked. She was a good foil for Dave on the air. But there was an innocence to their interactions that has evaporated this morning. I mean, Jack Benny and Mary Livingstone obviously had sex, too, and there was always a sweet virgin quality to her -- but at least Mr. Benny had made an honest woman out of her before she ever was on his show.
pitter43: Typical obama voters. letterman is up there telling jokes ( he's funny?)and his brain dead democrat/liberals are laughing. If he's said the sun had exploded there wouldn't have been enough brains in the audience to realize what had happened.
Getting quite a few of these thanks to Drudge. I can't eliminate any motivation right now because we just don't have the information. But clearly how you view the world socially and politically is going to influence your perception of Letterman's confession. On the other hand, I doubt pitter43 is watching much CBS late night, don't you?
MH: Is this the same Dave who thought making Sarah Palin's daughter a slut was funny? The so-called "ladies" who slept with him are something much worse. Willy Clinton and Dave, what a pair.
This is, I think, where conservatives and liberals can find common ground. No matter what your political stripe, I think many of us have grown tired of the constant late-night joking about "another politician caught with their pants down and money sticking in their hole," to quote Lou Reed. Besides coarsening the overall level of political humor in this country, it's of a piece with Dave's tradition of ridiculing women who don't conform to feminine stereotypes — how many people remember Janet Reno? the Peach Lady? — which, I'm happy to say, his 12:35 colleague doesn't seem to share.
@tuffyr: I love Craig Ferguson, but female-friendly? Why? I don't find him terribly misogynistic, but femme-friendly?
Heavens, yes. That brogue, that hair, and the way he eyes you ... I've been hearing it from women, especially older women, that they find the "Late Late Show" host sexy as all get-out. And indeed, much of his audience growth — he now beats Jimmy Fallon handily in overall viewership — came from female viewers. As I say, it will be interesting to hear Craig's reaction to all this.
tmole: After Les Moonves and Julie Chen, i'd have to say the odds Dave is bagged for banging the help are pretty much zero.
A female assistant at the bottom of the totem pole in Letterman's company is considerably different from an accomplished on-air host who happens to get involved with a powerful figure. Moonves really belongs more in the company of fellow media moguls Sumner Redstone and Rupert Murdoch, who've had their own tabloid episodes with women.
d/l
