Will CBS dump Letterman?

Andrea Peyser in the New York Post:

CBS has got to dump David Letterman. Right now.

If the Tiffany Network continues to coddle the crotchety king of late night, it will rightly be known as the destination of choice for any girl who jiggles, giggles and puts out repeatedly for a man old enough to be her father.

Dave must go. If not, CBS will have lost any remaining shred of credibility, not to mention common decency.

By his own admission, the married Letterman has bedded any number of women working under His Highness. Problem is, he doesn't seem to know precisely how many. And brass has long looked the other way.

Letterman's dream life came crashing to earth when an ex-boyfriend of one of his conquests allegedly attempted to extort him for $2 million to keep the affairs quiet. This development certainly makes Dave a victim -- a victim of his own recklessness.

The very livelihoods of the young women who caught Dave's fancy depend on making Letterman happy. But Letterman, 62, certainly knew what he was doing.

This is a full-grown adult who made a grown-up choice. And he chose to sleep with junior staffers rather than take the standard route and walk to the corner bar to conduct a sad, ordinary affair. Instead, he's working out some twisted Freudian issues on dewy-eyed underlings.

Letterman is guilty of cheating on the woman he eventually married after a 20-year relationship and trashing the trust of their 6-year-old son, Harry. This was not one little slip-up, but a deviant pattern. And when Letterman got lazy, egotistical and sloppy, he became a ticking time bomb -- a walking, breathing, sexual-harassment lawsuit waiting to happen.

The man who has been famously stalked in the past intentionally made himself into stalker-bait. Worse, he became the punch line in one of his own Monica Lewinsky jokes, which Dave told with such glee not so long ago.

A former staffer at "Late Show" described to me a "toxic" atmosphere in the studio. She said women flirt mightily with the man. Sometimes, it works in their favor.

Everyone inside the program knows what it takes to get ahead.

In recent years, Dave's comedic chops have taken on a mean streak, as well. He has shown a wicked hatred of Republicans, which reached a climax when he joked about Sarah Palin's 14-year-old daughter, Willow, getting "knocked up" in the seventh inning of a Yankee game by Alex Rodriguez.

CBS brass could have taken that gag as a sign that Letterman was slipping. Instead, bosses chose to ignore it.

[. . .]

Letterman's contract expires at the end of next year. I count on CBS to pull Letterman off the air, then kick him to the curb.

It couldn't happen to a nicer guy.

Bottom line is that CBS will dump Letterman if the audience turns him off but if he is still pulling in the numbers and making them money he will stay.

This saddens me since I used to be a fan of Letterman. Back when he was following the Tonight Show he was creative and funny. He stayed that way for a while after moving to CBS but then seemed to lose it, becoming bitter and mean - and unfunny.

It could be that he had expectations of beating the Tonight Show in the ratings and sunk into a permanent funk when he never managed to do so.

Whatever the reason for his deterioration I had given up on him before his sharp turn to the political left. This is why I was surprised by the "Palin incident" when I kept hearing callers to talk radio talk about how much he hated Republicans.

Whether CBS cancels Letterman or not each member of the audience has the power to do so just by changing the channel.

I'm sorry, so sorry

NEW YORK (AP) - David Letterman said his joke about Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's daughter was a lousy joke, no matter how you cut it, and he's sorry.

But the late-night host insisted that what's got people really riled is the misconception over which Palin daughter the joke was about.

On Monday's edition of "Late Show," Letterman explained that the risque joke thought by some to have targeted Palin's underage daughter, Willow, was actually referring to 18-year-old daughter Bristol. The name of the daughter wasn't mentioned in the joke, which was part of Letterman's monologue on last Monday's show.

It was "a coarse joke,""a bad joke," Letterman told viewers. "But I never thought it was (about) anybody other than the older daughter, and before the show, I checked to make sure, in fact, that she is of legal age, 18."

"The joke, really, in and of itself, can't be defended," he declared.

Even so, the ongoing outcry, led by Palin and her husband, Todd, has centered on Letterman intending to make a joke about the Palins' 14-year-old daughter having sex with a Yankees baseball player.

Todd Palin issued a statement last week that said "any 'jokes' about raping my 14-year-old are despicable."

And Sarah Palin charged Letterman with "sexually perverted comments made by a 62-year-old male celebrity."

On Monday's show, Letterman said, "I'm wondering, 'Well, what can I do to help people understand that I would never make a joke like this?' I've never made jokes like this, as long as we've been on the air, 30 long years."

There are those who said that Letterman would rather quit than apologize to Sarah Palin. But I suppose that the negative publicity was making the network nervous enough that they lowered the boom.

Of course I'm sure that everyone really believes him when he says that he didn't mean that the daughter who was actually at the baseball game was the one who got "knocked up" - at the baseball game - but was actually talking about the daughter who was on the other side of the country at the time. That is the logical conclusion to draw from the context of Letterman's remarks - isn't it?

The conventional wisdom has always been that it is all over for a politician if the late night comics start heaping ridicule upon them. But this time it was the comic who came away damaged and the politician who was elevated. I think this not only says something about the way that ordinary Americans feel about Sarah Palin (they love her) but also about the fact that we are simply tired of the way the entertainment industry is degrading our culture.

We are also tired of the reflexive leftism of the media, news and entertainment and the way they use their access to our living rooms to push their agenda. An agenda which most of us regard as hostile to our best interests.

If I am right we can expect to see more "push back" coming in the months ahead.