LOS ANGELES — So a late-night talk show host, married and a dad, walks on stage and admits to workplace hanky-panky. The punchline? He has long reveled in mocking politicians for their sexual trespasses.
David Letterman, he of the mischievous grin and wicked wit, is now in the same boat as the elected officials whose misadventures gave him such rich comic fodder for his “Late Show” on CBS.
The Clinton White House years were especially rewarding. A 1998 Top 10 list of nicknames from Monica Lewinsky included, at No. 8, “The Chief Sexecutive” and, at No. 6, “My Sweet Impeachable You.”
For Letterman, Bill Clinton was the gift that kept on giving even after he left office.
“Today, Monica Lewinsky is 28,” he joked in 2001. “It seemed like just yesterday she was crawling around on the floor in the Oval Office.”
Ouch. Eliot Spitzer, John Edwards and Larry Craig came in for their share of abuse, as did the governor of South Carolina. “Gov. Mark Sanford didn’t really enjoy this year’s Fourth of July. He left his favorite firecracker in Argentina,” Letterman said.
Now, a few of those pols might be gleefully replaying Letterman’s “Late Show” account Thursday of becoming an alleged extortion target because of his affairs with women working on the show.
On Friday, CBS News employee Robert J. Halderman, a producer for the true-crime show “48 Hours,” pleaded not guilty to trying to blackmail Letterman for $2 million over the affairs.
Karmic payback, the politicians may be musing, can be tough.
Not that Letterman falls into quite the same category of unfaithful officials who hypocritically spouted family values. After all, comedy is Letterman’s aim. And he is not facing re-election, though he did briefly fret on air about keeping his job.
That Letterman is caught in troubled waters isn’t entirely a surprise: He has long been seen as the quintessentially self-doubting funnyman who turns his demons into laughter.
Although Letterman’s staffers admire his high standards, his “post-mortems for each show could be witheringly negative. Letterman wouldn’t beat up the staff; he would beat up himself, pointing out spots where he could have filled in a slow moment if he had only been quicker with a line,” according to William J. Carter’s 1994 book “The Late Shift.”
Letterman once scribbled the message “I hate myself” to guest Teri Garr during a commercial break while the band played loudly, Carter reported in his chronicle of the Letterman-Jay Leno battle for NBC’s “Tonight Show.”
Letterman’s offstage life has been marked by disturbing events.
A house painter who once worked for Letterman was arrested in 2005 for allegedly plotting to kidnap the host’s then 16-month-old son, Harry, and a nanny and hold them for a $5 million ransom. The man was sentenced to prison on a lesser offense as part of a plea bargain.
Over several years, a woman was arrested repeatedly on trespassing and other charges for stalking Letterman and spent time in prison and a state mental hospital. She died in 1998.
In his on-air confession Thursday night, the famously private celebrity, who married longtime girlfriend Regina Lasko in March, did not say when the affairs occurred. But, his comic reflexes intact, he couldn’t help but mock himself.
“I know what you’re saying,” he told viewers. “ ‘I’ll be darned. Dave had sex.’ ”
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
