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So I’ll say what other media haven’t the guts to point out as they speculate on whether CBS will investigate David Letterman’s single man sex with staffers at his independent production company Worldwide Pants (which neither CBS nor Viacom own): This fish stinks from the head. As I’ve reported previously, and more than once, CBS boss Les Moonves professionally and personally crossed the line of propriety when, of all the women in the world from which to choose, he began a series of adulterous affairs with network underlings, but it was his relationship with The Early Show’s co-anchor Julie Chen that broke up his 24-year marriage. Not only did Viacom bigwig Sumner Redstone overlook that, but the old coot himself over the years, whether he was married or not, openly shtupped one of his producer girlfriends while she had Paramount and/or CBS deals. Which are all violations of so many corporate codes of conduct that I don’t think I can count that high.
Editor-in-Chief Nikki Finke - tip her here.
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Have there been any complaints on Letterman? Talk about justice and you all have already convicted Letterman guilty of something. Was Stephanie Berkitt under Letterman’s gun too. It didn’t stop her from telling her extortionist former boyfriend. Plus the police have seen the “creepy” material given to Letterman as proof of his crimes you all see. Apparently the police didn’t see anything criminal on Letterman’s part from the exortionist’s own material. And if corporate code of conduct in the workplace is the issue, why is that only a charge of men. I know plenty of men that are victims of stalker women in the work place. Nothing was ever done to them. Maybe because no sex was involved? Well then stop complaining when you get cat-calls in the work place from men then.
All of you have the big city perspective of affairs. Most of the audience doesn’t. Not the worst thing in the world but Dave will forever be seen different like that laughingstock Clinton.
1. Pardon me, but that “laughingstock” Clinton balanced the budget and left his successor a huge surplus.
2. Funny that the Drudgebots are still whining about Clinton a decade later while giving Vitter, Ensign, and Sanford a free ride for doing MUCH worse.
Now what was Letterman ridiculing Sarah Palin for again…?
For being an idiot.
Letterman has a number of problems. First, the tabloids are NOT going to let go of this, and ugly, icky stuff will come out, including likely salacious details, various forms of coercion, and the sheer hypocrisy of David Letterman skewering others for fooling around while he himself was screwing staffers. Leno and Conan will not be kind, neither likely will Jimmy Kimmel. Letterman has few friends and even fewer reasons for people to go easy on him. SNL will have a field day. Not the least of which is that Letterman is about as sexy as the late Calvin de Forrest.
Next, there will be suits, not the least of which is men suing that they were fired/demoted whatever in preference to Letterman’s screw of the week. Sexual liasons with the boss and low level female staffers are always costly — the create huge resentment among the male staffers doing actual work (not screwing the boss) and good hunting for lawyers. It’s a down economy — expect lots of men to cash out.
Finally, Letterman’s conduct is “elite vs. commoner” stuff that will kill him long term. No, his ratings will not go down right away. But comedy requires identification with the everyman, quick name a comedian known for his elitist, upper-class ways. Letterman is basically a WWF villain, using his power, position, fame, and prestige to snag multiple women in a way that his average joe audience could not. No one knows Moonves or Redstone, Letterman depends on audience goodwill which will erode away, slowly but surely.
Also of note — the reason for the CBS producer’s action was apparently jealousy. Anyone screwing multiple women is going to create enemies, for life, and generate comeback. Letterman may have killed the blackmail attempt, but he’s going to be hurt by this long-term. Ratings going down, steadily, like a frog boiled in water, until CBS simply cans him for Kimmel or Ferguson or whoever. It would be different if Letterman was a movie star who was in “event” movies, infrequently, but Mon-Fri tune-ins require likeability and a guy pushing sixty screwing college kids while in a relationship by virtue of his power/position is plain not likeable.
[Already TMZ is reporting on his secret sex lair above the Ed Sullivan Theater.]
re “Anyone screwing multiple women is going to create enemies, for life, and generate comeback.”
You sound like a lunatic. And I don’t agree with any of these comments. You think anyone cares what jokes Jimmy Kimmel makes? Get a grip.
Les Moonves has had rumored multiple affairs with CBS staffers over the last ten years. Then he got deeply involved with morning host Julie Chen and finally left his poor wife. Sumner is a wild man. Old guys want to have sex as much as young ones do. Powerful men have powerful passions.
People having sex? This is shocking!
Left unasked is this:
What if Letterman never is the one to ask the women for anything & he lets them be the aggressor?
Who’s the harassing one then?
Dave may be a lot smarter than you think!
Please get over yourselves with the moral discussion. Its 2009 everybody and what Dave does in his private life is none of our business. The whole discussion is absurd!
yet he had a bedroom loft at the theatre for nookie. yeah, the women were the aggressors. sure.
Dave isnt a luv god & he sure aint smart.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-1218280/David-Letterman-kept-secret-bedroom-television-studio-trysts-female-staff.html
read it and weep. this is sad in so many ways. the cross-exam of Letterman should prove to be very interesting. this isnt over by a long shot.
The daily mail is a tabloid. You can’t trust what they write.
…so what. Many “quality” UK papers are tabloids. Please dont lie about the source.
Tabloids contain the truth all the time, at least as much as other “newspapers” such as the NY Times or Post.
…so are you insinuating that a blog tells the truth more than a tabloid?
The Nat’l Enquirer is considered a tabloid and look at how they brought Edwards political career crashing down with the true dirt they had on him.
as i said, the tabloid newspaper format is particularly popular in the United Kingdom where its page dimensions are roughly 17 by 11 inches (430 mm × 280 mm). Larger newspapers, traditionally associated with “higher-quality” journalism, are called broadsheets though several British “quality” papers have recently adopted the tabloid format. Another UK newspaper format is the Berliner, which is sized between the tabloid and the broadsheet and has been adopted by The Guardian and its sister paper The Observer.
The biggest tabloid (and newspaper in general) in Europe, by circulation, is Germany’s Bild-Zeitung, with around 4 million copies (down from above 5 million in the 1980s). Although its paper size is bigger, its style was copied from the British tabloids.
In the UK, three previously broadsheet daily newspapers—The Independent, The Times, and The Scotsman—have switched to tabloid size in recent years, although they call it “compact” to avoid the down-market connotation of that word. Similarly, when referring to the down-market tabloid newspapers the alternative term “red-top” (referring to their traditionally red-coloured mastheads) is increasingly used, to distinguish them from the up-market compact newspapers.
cheers
OMG! People are acting as if this is the first time a boss has slept with an underling. if it was consentual, then what is the big deal. And from everything I have read, it was consentual.
If you want to crack sexual harassment in the workplace in Hollywood, then investigate talent agencies, studios, etc. It happens all the time, whether it’s consentual or not.
Everyone in NY (in the biz) knows that Dave gets oral sex at work. It’s very old news.
But it’s consentual, who cares?
Even Geraldo said on Howard a few weeks ago that he prefered good looking women to work on his shows.
I’ve seen this at every news and entertainment outlet I’ve worked at and it was all willing.
well things are heating up. Dave issues apologies galore on his show and the guy who is alleged to be the blackmailer has high powered lawyer who has advised him to fight back.
I call this “Palin’s Revenge.” what goes around comes around folks.
something stinks real bad about all this from the Letterman side:
http://wcbstv.com/entertainment/letterman.extortion.halderman.2.1229260.html
also the lawyer says this guy received a $2million check which is highly unusual if this guy was a blackmailer.
cheers folks. and as the song says, “…dont let the sun catch you crying.”
It’s a workplace where divergent members of the opposite sex are thrown together for long hours with dressing rooms, motor homes, wardrobe trailers etc., available for short term use. Couple that with women and men who will do anything to move up as in the Rolling Stones song “Star——” and Dave didn’t do anything that the men who started the industry have always done gotten away with.
No matter who is at the center of the ‘sexual’ controversy both participants are fully aware that their experience is usually a ‘win, win’. The boss, usually a male gets to have sex with women half his age, who under normal circumstances would never give him the time of day, while he convinces himself that he is ‘loved’ for who he is, and not for his money and position of power. Ninety percent of the time the female participant gets a position/job she isn’t qualified for, some expensive gifts, gets to travel to places she can’t afford to go to, and if the timing is really right, she may even become the new Ms. Most of these guys were nerds in HS, and never got laid until they made it anyway. It’s a ME ME ME WORLD, so those living in it only know it’s all about them.
This is much more fun than Polanski.
Nikki, your comments are spot on ! Since WWP is his company, he can do what he wants and the liability will be incurred by WWP and it’s owners. CBS will do nothing, other than pay some lip service about this and unless sponsors leave or ratings fall…Dave will go on until the viewers get tired of him or he gets tired of doing the show. Everybody knows a double standard exists in Hollywood between the leadership and others.
However many other public companies are more disciplined about this kind of behavior and rules are more evenly applied, so Hollywood looks worse.
What letterman does in private should stay private, but he is a beneficiary/participant of our celebrity obsessed culture, so his behavior is a public event.
If you throw stones for a living one should not live in a glass house.
Letterman is a once funny, bitter elite who seems to be imitating Bill Mahr by injecting more and more politics into his show.
I’m sorry, did he rape someone? These women were just as willing to take advantage of him as I see it.
The whole affair is tacky. As news, it’s dog-bites-man. Just about the oldest story in the world.
I, for one, am amused to no end by the (conservative) “moralists” posting here. I imagine they come here via Sludge- er, Drudge – and have picked their knuckles off the floor long enough for some serious hand-wringing. All followed by finger-wagging how this negates all the bad (yet true) things Dave ever said about their wingnut icons. And by extension this proves every big city Hollywood “leftie” is also doing drugs, stealing candy, kicking their dogs…
Yeah, sure, right: whatever Rush tells you. Absent a never-ending stream of sorid details, we’ll keep laughing with Dave. And keep laughing at you.
The beginning of the end for Letterman. Within 2 to 4 years he’ll be “retiring”.