On one level, I don't really care whether David Letterman has been dallying with his female employees. On another, I am struck by the hypocrisy of it all.
But there is also a question that has been flopping around in my mind regarding the charges against his accused blackmailer.
David Letterman is a public figure. As such, virtually any detail about his life -- especially about his professional life (and his extracurricular activities with female staffers qualifies as a part of his professional life) is fair game for the paparazzi, the tabloids, and even for more legitimate media. This information, especially given that it is true, could be freely published by any media outlet with no legal repercussions -- and even if the charges were not true it would be difficult to sustain a libel claim because Letterman is a public figure.
So if Joe Halderman could have legally written a book and/or screenplay and could have legally sold them, published the book, or produced the screenplay, on what basis do we as a society make it a crime for him to offer them to the subject of those works (Letterman) rather than to a third party? After all, the only crime here is that he attempted to sell his silence to Letterman rather than his words to a publisher or production company. Isn't what he did morally no different than what he would have done had he sold the story to a third party?
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The whole point of blackmail--hence the name blackmail--is to maintain silence in exhange for money. Halderman's scheme was so half-baked, half-concocted that he should have known it would come to nothing. The real joke is two million dollars. Why not 32 million? Why not being made King of New York, New York for his silence? So farfetched was Halderman's scheme.
If Halderman had written a freelance article about Letterman's sexual escapades, Letterman's sexual harassment, he would have been financially rewarding. But such an article is inherently of no interest; and for that reason rejected for publication.
Kenneth Starr exceeded prosecutorial discretion when he extended his investigation of Whitewater into Monica Lewinsky. Clinton's bad judgment did not warrant impeachment; Clinton was nowhere near the malfeasance of Richard Nixon.
Eliot Spitzer as an attorney should have known that transporting a woman over state lines for purposes of prostitution is crime. Letterman reminded his audience that violation of a moral's clause would have Spitzer fired immediately.
Letterman mocks the politician's private sexual pecadilloes while he is boffing his female staff while he is in a long term relationship with Regina Lasko. This goes way beyond hypocrisy and ends up being morally bankrupt.
'Pecadillo' by the way derives from Latin 'pecare' meaning to sin. The public politician's private sin is mocked in public for public entertainment.
|| Posted by Steven Torrey, October 6, 2009 11:23 AM ||Post a comment