The Misleading Coverage Of David Letterman’s Extortion Case
Thus far Stephanie Birkitt, former Letterman staffer and onetime girlfriend of alleged extortioner Robert Halderman, seems to be bearing the brunt of of all this shock and awe. Again you’d be forgiven for assuming, based on the headlines, that Birkett was actually knowingly involved in the extortion case against Letterman. In fact, as far as we know, Birkett had nothing to do with it and is apparently mortified that Halderman has allegedly used her diaries and correspondence to extort her old boss.
So yes, slightly less tawdry and dramatic than the coverage might lead you to believe — except of course the part where someone tried to extort Letterman for $2 million, which is tawdry and dramatic but sort of seems to be getting lost in the mix.
Does any of this actually matter? Thus far, not so much. Granted the story is still in its early stages; as noted we have yet to actually hear from any of the women allegedly involved, though no doubt Stephanie Birkitt is currently fielding a lot of offers. Also, it’s the weekend, and the tabloids and the talk shows have pretty much had free rein to run rampant, come Monday Letterman has a pretty powerful platform from which to comment on all this, and as he’s demonstrated he’s not afraid to use it.
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31 comments
KatrinasmediaAngel says: Glynnis I wondered how long it would take for the tabloids to jump all over this, not long. Then again they tend to deal in speculation not facts or facts they made up through speculation. My take let’s wait and see what happens.
Tom Benson says: Letterman said because of age he couldn’t marry one of the ‘victims’; but they weren’t too young to boink, eh? As for the woman, you gotta be kidding if you don’t believe they didn’t think bedding Letterman wouldn’t be good for their career or at least lead to something better. Letterman, the comedian, proves he is a joke.
evie says: First, Dave never pretended to be a saint. I don’t see how this story will hurt him long term, assuming nothing worse comes out. I’m a fan and will continue to be.
However, there are some narratives out there that I completely disagree with:
1) “Dave was only married in March.” C’mon, he has been living with his now-wife for a couple of decades. I’ve heard some people say they were “dating.” They weren’t just dating, they had a life together. That is a commitment. We don’t know the inside of their relationship, but to say that because they didn’t have a marriage certificate he therefore did not betray his then-girlfriend/now-wife, is utterly wrong. And it diminishes the relationships of those in non-marriage committed relationships, including same sex relationships.
2) “The relationships were consensual.” Yes, but sleeping with people who work for you is always a bad idea. Always. It happens often — and those who say a boss in a regular business would not get away with that behavior are dead wrong; this stuff happens every single day — but it is still a very, very bad idea. I fully believe his relationships were consensual, but they were still misguided.
3) “Birkitt has not complained.” Yes, but I believe Birkitt still works at the Late Show. By definition, her job would be in jeopardy if she were to say she felt exploited, or worse. Which is one of the reasons why sleeping with people who work for you is a bad idea.
Maybe I missed it but were the people complaining now about Letterman pronouncing their disdain when he married someone who worked for him? So far, it seems the only ones complaining about his behavior are people who never worked with him! All we know for sure is that the authorities believe he was the victim of a scary crime.
Kit Kuzma says: As someone who’s been in that position, a lack of complaints about workplace harassment (of any stripe – mine wasn’t sexual) doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. There’s almost nothing that could make me feel protected from having my speaking up come back to bite me in the ass, even now.
I’m not going to run around saying he makes a habit of forcing himself on women, because I truly don’t believe there’s physical coercion involved. But there’s no way pursuing multiple sexual relationships with your subordinates (and frankly when you’re someone like David Letterman almost everyone is your subordinate) doesn’t demonstrate a profound lack of judgment and unawareness of how skewed the balance of power in that relationship is.
I don’t think it’s right to obsess over the names and identities of the women involved because, really, it’s their choice as to whether or not they want to say anything to anyone outside the CBS execs, and whatever other criticism, I’m glad Letterman is aware of the need to protect them from the kind of scrutiny he’ll get. But Letterman already admitted he’s a guy who did “creepy” things – that his relationships with his staffers were “creepy.”
So yes, he’s a victim of a really terrible crime, and Halderman should be punished. But Letterman already acknowledges that his relationships with his staffers reek of ethical quandary, and addressing how much this sort of professional impropriety happens in the television industry, or any industry, is pretty important too. It’s not like Susie Producer having a fling with Joe Editor in the cubicle next to her. David Letterman isn’t just another run of the mill staffer.
It seems to me that we’ve learned: if you’re in the public eye and if someone were to try and extort money from you, you should just shut-up and pay it. Otherwise, if you contact the police, testify before a grand jury and come clean, it could cost you much more than two mil.
Gianrico says: I reiterate a comment I made last thursday. The media is driving the news instead of reporting it. More specious and self serving comment have been generated that has scant to do with the alleged crime perpetrated. You’d think from the “news” articles, that it was a referendum on Letterman’s character. His sexual predilictions has nothing to do with the alleged extortion attempt. MSM is reacting like tabloid press or the gossip mongering blogosphere. Where can we turn to obtain impartial reporting?
@ evie “C’mon, he has been living with his now-wife for a couple of decades.”
Do you actually know that? They commenced dating in 1986, but no one has any actual proof that they’ve been living together anywhere near that long–news articles keep stating she was his “girlfriend of 23 years,” but we don’t actually know the inside of their relationship well enough to know the status of it for a solid 23 years–they could have been on-and-off for several of those years, and how would we know? The spokesperson not only stated the relationships occurred before the marriage; he added that they occurred before Harry was born, so we’re talking pre-2005. How are we to know whether he and Regina Lasko were on the outs at that point? They were so private we didn’t even see a picture of her until around that time, if I recall correctly.
Also, we don’t know what their private arrangements were, because they were *private*. People have open relationships. It’s none of our business–too bad the MSM hasn’t seen it that way.
@ Tom Benson “As for the woman, you gotta be kidding if you don’t believe they didn’t think bedding Letterman wouldn’t be good for their career or at least lead to something better.”
Wow. So women always have an ulterior motive when they have any kind of sexual relationship? Nice.
@Mr. Abrams, not only did he recently marry someone who worked for the show, his ex Merrill Markoe–whom he lived with for *years*–also worked for the show.
@Gianrico–ditto. To everything you said.
libra blue says: Letterman may not have gotten married until last March, but his kid was born in 2003. He is not exactly the poster boy for morality so let’s not pretend that he is so innocent. It will be interesting to see if any of those “liaisons” happened between 2003 and now.
The problem with Letterman and what makes him such a sleazebag is that while he was making vulgar remarks about Bill Clinton and Sarah Palin’s daughter he was humping the help.
He deserves to get trashed.
Okay, I got the kid’s birthdate wrong. I thought he was younger.
Really, unless the spokesperson, Stephanie Birkitt and the other woman (Helen somebody) are all lying about when the affairs took place, it doesn’t really matter. They all say it was pre-kid. That said, nobody called him the poster boy for morality, just that there’s absolutely no evidence for the vast majority of what people are accusing him of having done. And that it’s sad that the MSM hasn’t had bigger fish to fry for the last 72 hours.
Also, “the help?” Lovely. I wonder how these women would react to being referred to as such when most of us born in the last half-century would consider it a demeaning way to refer to anyone, certainly to people with white-collar jobs.
libra blue says: Come on take a look at Letterman, who the hell would find him charming or attractive? If you think these women were not gold diggers looking for their 15 minutes you are living in fantasyland! Calling them “the help” was a compliment.
I still say Letterman is a hypocrite for trashing Bill Clinton and Palin’s daughter, among others, when he allowed his kid to be a bastard for six years.
boymimbo says: For those who are calling Letterman a hypocrite, he self-deprecates *all* the time. He called his actions “creepy”. Anyone who has watched the show knows that Letterman is very far from perfect. While he pokes fun at Clinton, Lewinsky, Palin, etcetera, he also makes fun of himself.
Absolutely, it is wrong for an employer to sleep with an employee, and that it is very “creepy” to do so. But Letterman is in the entertainment industry, and this stuff happens everywhere all of the time, and he got caught. He got caught become he made the wrong choice to engage in a relationship with someone who would eventually date someone else — a producer for a crime drama show who was “desparate”. He couldn’t have predicted this undoing and it’s just bad luck for him.
Frankly, as much as a giant fan of Letterman that I am, I have lost respect for him. His actions were lewd and wrong. Unfortunately, the way the audience reacted glorifies his actions. For those who commented that the women knew what they were doing, it’s still wrong. Don’t forget that Letterman is beyond his own show. As president of “Worldwide Pants”, he is responsible for “Everyone Loves Raymond”, “Rayhall Letterman Racing”, and the Craig Ferguson show. He is very powerful, so naturally, women might expect that sleeping with him might have its rewards. Take Ms. Birkett, for example. Do you attribute her screen appearances on the show now with actual talent or did she get on TV for sleeping with Dave? Mission accomplished. The message: “sleep with me and you will be on TV” and that’s very powerful message. Even if Dave gave Ms. Birkett TV time based on non-sexual merit, it still looks bad. Very creepy indeed.
Whether David’s wife knew about these sexploits or not, it is really between them.
Are you all so sure that Letterman isn’t the REAL target of a politically-motivated take-down and that the TV producer Halderman was deceived into thinking he was participating in an official investigation of workplace sexual harassment? In other words, Halderman was used as a “patsy” in a character assassination scheme that could take down both Letterman and an investigative producer who did some revealing work about 9/11? Read this: http://groups.poynter.org/members/blog_view.asp?id=160568
zflynn says: Lettermans trial by mob hysteria is another example of the unholy combination of the feminization of America-which villifies anything masculine, deifies anything feminine, particularly the demand for universal worship of the convoluted, exaggerated sense of feminine honor-and the puritanical kidnapping of the American Psyche. A man who took what was handed to him, the sexual commodity women universally trade and use as blackmail but then cry about when the results aren’t as they want? Or maybe, worst of all, the sex was consensual. The horror! The horror!
libra blue says: Letterman has every right to “self deprecate,” but I draw the line at trashing people like Palin’s child, who is not a public figure or anyone else’s child, no matter if it is a known fact. It is a sleazy thing to do.
I am sure this bad behavior is not unique. I would not be surprised if most TV talk show hosts and TV news anchors are hiding similar types of “secrets,” they just haven’t been caught . . . yet.
Jim Treacher says: “One, Letterman didn’t actually get married until last March.”
To the woman he’s lived with for 8 years, and the mother of his six-year-old son. This is really what you’re going with?
“Two, and this is arguably the most important point, thus far not one of the women staffers allegedly involved with him have stepped forward now, or at any point in the past, to suggest that they were in any shape or form harassed.”
Was Monica Lewinski harassed? Was the woman Mark Sanford had an affair with harassed? Was Ashley Dupree harassed? Letterman has spent a lot of years going after the dalliances of powerful men. Not to mention the daughters of powerful women.
Jim Treacher says: “Maybe I missed it but were the people complaining now about Letterman pronouncing their disdain when he married someone who worked for him?”
I think they were pleasantly surprised that he married the mother of his child. And isn’t it cute that Birkitt babysat for him? It’s always fun to go to Daddy’s work and play with Daddy’s girlfriend.
For years Letterman has had a reputation as a tough boss, a man in complete top-to-bottom control of his production company. You take that reputation and combine it with having sex with multiple women you employ, and you have now ventured into territory that would have job-ending repercussions in just about any other industry (well, maybe not running a Nevada brothel) in the country.
To be perfectly clear, he could go out and have sex with a different woman every single night of his life, and although I might have an opinion on his taste in lifestyle, that’s all his business. However, the fact that he obviously has a taste for his employees, is a whole different kettle of fish.
I keep hearing the term “coworkers” with regards to Letterman’s dalliances, but that’s really not the right term. It implies equality of status, like two production assistants dating… not anything like, as we have here, a head of a company with a hidden, on-site love nest, used for a string of assignations with women in his employ.
ChrisNH says: “he was humping the help. ” Pretty crude, but it accurately sums up Letterman.
@ libra blue: “Come on take a look at Letterman, who the hell would find him charming or attractive?”
I do. Wit and intelligence is very attractive…to some of us. Merrill Markoe certainly didn’t need any help with her career, and if Regina Lasko did she didn’t need to have a *child* with him in order to get it.
I’m not even touching the “bastard” comment, but I still hope you’re at least seventy, with an attitude like that.
@ Jim Treacher: “To the woman he’s lived with for 8 years”
Again, you don’t know that. Where did you get the number eight from, anyway?
“Was Monica Lewinski harassed? Was the woman Mark Sanford had an affair with harassed? Was Ashley Dupree harassed?”
Those were all situations where the men in question were married politicians. A single entertainer is not a strong parallel–and Dupree was a prostitute. Try again.
zflynn, I wasn’t going to go that far, but you pretty much got it.
libra blue says: @Laurie Beth, I will admit that working at a fitness club has made me more “selective” than I would like, but I don’t think Letterman is witty or intelligent. Regina Lasko would be an unknown if not for her “connection” with Letterman so she will hold on for as long as she can.
Decency and morality has no age limit. It may “comfort” you to believe that, and apparently you don’t possess those qualities, but some of us younger people do have morals.
From the Oxford English Dictionary:
“Bastard: a person born of unmarried parents.”
You seem to find it more offensive that I called Letterman’s kid a bastard than the fact that Letterman didn’t care to make his kid legitimate for six years. Your priorities are questionable to say the least.
BTW, judging from Letterman’s statement yesterday he must have been “humping the help” while he was married or at least in a “relationship” with Lasko at the time.
libra blue says: Correction: “Decency and morality ‘have’ no age limit.”
libra blue says: @ChrisNH, It wasn’t any more crude than Letterman’s “joke” about Palin’s daughter.
@ libra blue: “I will admit that working at a fitness club has made me more “selective” than I would like, but I don’t think Letterman is witty or intelligent. Regina Lasko would be an unknown if not for her “connection” with Letterman so she will hold on for as long as she can.”
I’ll buy that first thing–there’s nothing more subjective than one person’s attractiveness to another person, and that was kind of what I was driving at, so we’re actually completely on the same page there.
Regina Lasko has done everything humanly possible to stay away from the Letterman limelight. Other than money–which she could have gotten from a less famous person if she is as intent on staying private as she seems to be–what has she gotten from him? She’s a stay-at-home mom who despises the public eye as far as I know (there’s certainly no evidence to the contrary; we rarely even see pictures of this woman), and she could have been a very rich stay-at-home mom and been with someone less famous, so there must have been something to him, at least for her.
“You seem to find it more offensive that I called Letterman’s kid a bastard than the fact that Letterman didn’t care to make his kid legitimate for six years.”
Exactly. Your medieval ideas about what makes a human being legitimate are uncommon in our age group for a reason. They’re medieval.
“BTW, judging from Letterman’s statement yesterday he must have been “humping the help” while he was married or at least in a “relationship” with Lasko at the time.”
Still not proven. Likely, yes, but not proven. Either way, still none of our business.
libra blue says: @Laurie Beth, I really don’t know where to begin.
First of all who made you the spokesperson for any generation? Just because you may run with a circle of degenerates doesn’t mean all younger people are so amoral. We will have to agree to disagree on this one.
Just so you know, I am a supporter of gay rights, gay marrige, a woman’s right to choose and other “liberal” type issues.
If Lasko “despises the public eye” so much why did she get involved with a famous person? That was her choice. I never believe it when I hear that excuse.
“there must have been something to him, at least for her.” Of course there was, a big bank account, but she isn’t the only gold digger out there.
My advice to you is to resist reading my comments whenever you see my little blue avatar.
Hey, I have nothing against you personally, but I’m pretty sure that particular opinion is uncommon–people having children out of wedlock is “degenerate?” Come on. Are you really under the impression that many young people share this opinion?
Glad you support all those other things. 100% with you.
Maybe she got involved with a famous person because she loved him? She hasn’t used the fame at all, so as I already said, why not just hook up with some non-famous rich guy if all she wanted was money?
Why should I avoid reading your comments when you so easily came up with a few majorly contested issues on which we agree?
RedRock says: So we’re all agreed that women throw themselves at men in high position, but it is wrong or at least distasteful for these guys to become involved with their subordinates even if it is consensual.
So how about a little cooperation between these guys. Suppose they all enter into a pool. That way Craig Ferguson, the next time one of his underlings makes herself available (which must happen alla the time), can just send her over to David Letterman. And Letterman, busy canoodling with Ferguson’s staff member, can send Stephanie Birkitt over to, say, Arsenio Hall.
Wait a minute. Arsenio’s not on the air anymore. Well, you get the drift. Make it Jimmy Kimmel and that way Sara Silverman gets some new material too.
Sounds silly. But it actually makes a lot of sense once you realize that the people involved are pretty much interchangeable. The guys are catches only because they are powerful, and the women are attractive only because they are young.
Of course we wouldn’t be in this situation if Letterman had an affair with one of the many ballsy, hot dames around his own age with intelligence to rival his. Now that would be interesting news, and much more to his credit than bedding this kid-sister type. But no, it was not to be. See above.
libra blue says: @Laurie Beth, I really could care less whether you approve of my position on these or other issues or not, that is not why I mentioned it. My opinions are even stronger on my personal blog. They might make your head explode.
I am sure my disapproval of unmarried parents is an uncommon opinion among people who have bastard children, but they don’t concern me.
In fact, I would not be surprised if Lasko had this kid because she knew about Letterman’s indiscretions and decided to make sure she had some kind of hold on him. Many women who go with famous men do that on purpose.
Knock yourself out.
I think you meant to say you *couldn’t* care less, right?
Are you sure?
Are you always this defensive, or only when someone on the Internet that you don’t even know calls you on your medieval “disapproval” and labeling of innocent children?
“I am sure my disapproval of unmarried parents is an uncommon opinion among people who have bastard children.”
I have no children.
“My opinions are even stronger on my personal blog.”
Yeah, you and everybody else in the free world. Congratulations.
libra blue says: @Laurie Beth, My mistake, “I couldn’t care less.”
I wasn’t particularly aiming my comments at you. You may not have any illegitimate children, but judging by how fiercely you are protesting my characterization, you must be “acquainted” with a few.
Do you always feel the need to attack people who disagree with you on the Internet or anywhere else for that matter? You are pretty defensive yourself. I wasn’t labeling the “innocent children,” the parents did that by having them out of wedlock. You can mock my opinion all you want, but many people, young and old, share it whether you like it or not, and last time I checked opinions were still protected by the first amendment. .
Like I said, if you don’t like my comments ignore them. It will make your life so much easier.
Kind of typical of anyone with silly medieval opinions to whine about it when other people have differing ones, nonsensically using the First Amendment. Nobody touched your First Amendment rights. You were not thrown in jail or otherwise punished by the state for your opinion, you were just disagreed with.
Freedom of speech does not equal freedom from response. My response to your opinion is just as protected.
Nobody “attacked” you, either. I am sure you are a fine, upstanding citizen. You just have a silly, medieval opinion. :)
Not that I’m trying to prove anything, but you genuinely made me think about it & I tried to think of a single person I know who had a kid out of wedlock and I don’t think I do. Not even a distant cousin.
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