He seemed more ready to laugh at the ridiculousness of it all than he was yesterday on The View – but does that make it any better, since he still plans to return to the region?

Before he got arrested, according to Faulkner, he had at least eight previous attempts to find bin Laden, although during many previous attempts he was stopped long before he made it to the Middle East. For example, one time, he tried to leave from the San Diego harbor. Asked Letterman: how would he get to Pakistan? “The route is really kind of like, you just head in a direction, and then you eventually hit land, and then from there you go from there,” he said.

But the main topic Letterman wanted to clear up was what he was doing there in the first place. “This right here is only the form to let the world know that two heavyweights are ready to fight, and we’re going to see who’s standing at the end of this program,” said Faulkner. (He’s referring to himself and bin Laden.)

Again, this is all happening because of his new publicist, Glenn Selig, who, besides Blago and Mrs. Blago, also represents accused murderer Drew Peterson. Remember him? He also had a brief publicity tour, although he didn’t get the chance to do Letterman.

Quick question: is Gary Brooks Faulkner single? He needs a high-profile Hilton/Kardashian-type girlfriend in order to continue this celebrity push.

Here’s part of the interview:

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Romney has been making the media rounds lately to promote his new book, No Apologies, but for most of the interview appeared to be selling himself as an affable, good-humored, freedom-loving everyman with terrific hair. His admission that the “good swat” he received in the Vancouver airplane incident “broke” the artistic marvel that he carries on his head almost elicited the audience’s sympathy – almost – and his mostly successful attempt to bury the robotic Massachusetts Republican of 2008 was rewarded with what for David Letterman were fairly innocuous jabs, like a correction of his generic “I don’t know if I’ll run for president” statement: “Of course he’s running. I can tell by the cologne.”

Perhaps his only fault, especially in Letterman’s eyes, was his praise for Sarah Palin. “She’s terrific. She’s got energy, passion…” he said, though he quickly handicapped the compliments with a warning: “By the way, be careful what you say about her…she has a rifle, you know.” Letterman learned that lesson the hard way.

Watch Romney’s meeting with Letterman below:

But in a move that combined new media savvy, playful ribbing and the acknowledgment many viewers would be tuning into the potential impending seminal late night moment when Conan O’Brien post-letter Tonight Show airs, CBS released all portions of Letterman’s NBC jabs early on YouTube.

CBS gave some strong descriptions to the videos as well (all below). They ranged from “Dave comments on the crazy world of NBC late-night television” to “Dave analyzes the latest developments in the NBC late-night debacle.” Debacle, crazy world – is there any doubt Letterman is not the only one at the Tiffany network thoroughly enjoying the train wreck happening at the Peacock network?

Here are a few notable quotes, but really, just watch all the videos (more than 14 minutes!):

• Letterman on NBC execs: “If they didn’t know what they were doing they wouldn’t be there” (laughter, applause from audience).

• Letterman on Leno’s 10pm show: “Now the affiliates that carry teh NBC shows, they say ‘We’re out of here, we’re going to Telemundo, leave us alone we’re out of here. Put a camera on teh birdhouse we can do much better.’”

• “This whole mistake over there at NBC has cost them hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of million of dollars. Now the last thing they want to do, they just want Conan to quit and go away and do a show in his basement.”

• “According to the New York Times, al-Qaeda is claiming responsibility for the wreckage at NBC.”

And so on. Enjoy!

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But last night David Letterman seemed to relish pounding his former network more than others who had taken on the subject before – complete with a Jay Leno impression and a Top 10 list.

When Letterman made his very public announcement about having sexual relations with former staffers, other comedians made a few jokes. But Leno went with a full court press – and now it was payback for Letterman.

He started with a breakdown of what happened at NBC. He told his audience that “Jay ‘Big Jaw’ Leno” told NBC “I’m having trouble staying up this late,” so was moved to 10pm. To drive the point home further, he described “our friend” Conan O’Brien and “likable young person” Jimmy Fallon. This was an attack on Jay Leno and NBC, only. O’Brien and Fallon were spared. (Not so for Carson Daly, who people haven’t been talking about much. Letterman: “He’s like the Pluto of talk shows. It’s like, is it really a show?”)

Letterman suggested, jokingly of course, that O’Brien and Leno co-host the Tonight Show. Leno, said Letterman, “likes to tell jokes at 11:30 and he’s got an old truck he likes to work on.”

And then came a rarely used Leno impression by his rival: “Can you get me some air filters, Mavis, I’ll be under the car all day.” (That would be a reference to Mavis Leno, Jay’s longtime wife. Just in case it didn’t seem personal enough.)

There was also a top 10 list. Some examples: “Winner on Deal Or No Deal gets to run the network for a week.” “Just gave 10pm show to Snooki.” “It’s so bad, they’ve even considered me.”

No matter what late night show audiences turn on now, they get to hear about NBC. What does Comcast think about ‘all press is good press?’

Dave’s “advice” for NBC:

Here’s the Top 10 list:

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Shortly after news of the Letterman scandal broke (you may recall that it was broken by intrepid reporter David Letterman), Nikki Finke theorized that CBS wouldn’t investigate Letterman’s “single man sex with staffers at his independent production company Worldwide Pants.” CBS boss Les Moonves and his boss, Sumner Redstone, had both had adulterous affairs, she argued, and so they wouldn’t be too keen on digging into Letterman.

But as the New York Observer‘s Felix Gilette reports, CBS will be looking into the sex-and-extortion saga the way they know best: with a crack investigative reporter. Armen Keteyian, who has won eight Emmys over the course of his career for a distinguished blend of sports and straight news reporting, is heading up the investigative team.

Gilette reports:

Whether the story ever makes it to the airwaves remains to be seen. But current and former CBS News staffers who spoke to The Observer said they’d be surprised if the news divisions pulls any punches. “From having talked to some friends there, who are pretty highly placed, they really want to hit this story hard, like any other journalistic story,” Dr. Bob Arnot, a former CBS news correspondent and friend of Mr. Halderman’s, recently told The Observer. “They want to be ahead of the pack because it’s in their own house.”

As a news network, CBS is in an unusual position when it comes time to investigate one of its own. Whereas a typical corporation might respond by launching an internal investigation, complete with outside auditors and a standardized procedure, CBS has a stable of its own auditors working in the newsroom. As such, the process by which they will handle this is murky: “Whether the story ever makes it to the airwaves remains to be seen.” Could a producer, in theory, axe Keteyian’s piece not because of the awkward internal element, but because she thought it was bad journalism? If that happened, would anyone believe that was the real reason?

The very news that this is happening represents a firm commitment by CBS. CBS Evening News executive EP Rick Kaplan went on the record saying that they would cover the story “as aggressively as we cover any story of this kind, trying to learn what we can and get the critical interviews.” If this was all behind-the-scenes, it would, a conspiracy theorist might say, be easier to kill if it wasn’t to someone’s liking. But if the exposé doesn’t air now, it would unleash a wave of horrible PR for the network. CBS’s integrity in following through with this and so boldly stating its intentions should be lauded — and could just lead to the scoop of the year.

(image via ABC News)

New York Times’ David Carr acknowledges that thus far Letterman has appeared to escape the worst repercussions of a sex scandal; namely loss of advertisers and viewers, but warns tougher days could be ahead:

There are two issues, the first having to do with media dynamics: will the drip, drip, drip of coverage of the legal case eventually erode his standing as someone suitable to tuck us in every night? And second, could his pratfall hurt his comedy?

Mr. Letterman’s hero Johnny Carson thrived in people’s living rooms at the same time that he worked his way through three divorces; his lack of skill in marital matters never seemed to diminish his appeal. But Mr. Carson lived in a very different media epoch, when there was no Gawker, the tabloids were far tamer and TMZ were just three letters of the alphabet.

Carr goes on to note that Gerald Shargel, the lawyer for Robert Halderman, is a pitbull who will stop at nothing to produce dirt on Dave. So far of course it seems like the excess in coverage, especially coming after Roman Polanski’s arrest and numerous political sex ‘scandals’, has only succeeded in highlighting the absurdity of the coverage Letterman has received. An irony that the Washington Post‘s Howie Kurtz touches on, and appears to sort of defend.

But what made Letterman think he could offer an open-ended admission about sleeping with subordinates without sending the media into a frenzy? [What indeed!] Perhaps he sees himself as occupying a different realm — an entertainer who pokes fun at politicians for sexual shenanigans, not a public figure whose own dalliances are deserving of such scrutiny.

The Ensign story is complicated and not very visual. Letterman is far more famous. So the comic is turned into media fodder and the officeholder largely stays under the radar…But Letterman left too many blanks in the picture — how many women, over what period of time? — and reporters rushed to fill them in.

One might argue reporters would have rushed to fill even minor fractures in Letterman’s story regardless of what Letterman had said. Also? At least the “realm” Letterman is occupying is not of the high horse variety, the same of which cannot be said of, for example, Howie Kurtz.

Lizzie Widdicombe begins the piece invoking the would-be extortion case surrounding Orson Welle‘s Citizen Kane, which put then–media mogul William Randolph Hearst‘s reputation on the line:

Moral-reasoning pop quiz: There’s a film coming out—a thinly disguised portrayal of a media mogul — and word is that if it’s released it will hurt the mogul’s reputation. Powerful people intervene: they call a meeting and offer the movie studio money — eight hundred and forty-two thousand dollars—to scrap the movie and destroy the negatives. Would it be wrong for the studio to take the money? “It’s an interesting question,” James Lindgren, a law professor at Northwestern, said last week. The mogul in question was William Randolph Hearst, and the movie was Orson Welles’s “Citizen Kane.” The studio turned down the offer, but, Lindgren asked, “had they given in and taken the money, could the studio have been prosecuted for extortion?”

Widdicombe continues by questioning the essence of blackmail, citing several law professors and blackmail experts, arriving at the question: If screenwriting is legal, and exchanging $2 million with somebody else is legal, what’s wrong with putting them together? Definitely worth a read.

Lizzie Widdicombe’s “Brainteaser: You’ve Got Mail,” on newsstands and online tomorrow.

Illustration courtesy of The New Yorker.

This morning, Howard Kurtz writes in the Washington Post that Halderman, the man who attempted to squeeze Dave Letterman for some $2 million, was motivated by revenge, not money, even though he has struggled to pay alimony for two previous marriages and afford visits to an 11-year-old son by his second wife in Colorado.

Dr. Bob Arnot, the only source in Kurtz’s write up and a friend who worked with Halderman for 15 years, says that Halderman was driven to threaten Letterman after he watched him hug Stephanie Birkitt while dropping her off near Halderman’s home in Norwalk, CT.

When Halderman saw the two embrace at the end of a private road near his Norwalk, Conn., home, “he felt betrayed,” Arnot said in an interview Friday. “He felt he was the backup. He felt lied to. He felt very angry, more at Letterman than at his girlfriend. . . . Joe was furious, beside himself, that this was being thrown in his face.”

Kurtz speculates that the ‘hug version’ of the story may “represent an attempt to defuse the blackmail charges by maintaining that he was motivated by emotion and not money.” But blackmail is blackmail, right?

The hug occured after Letterman drove Birkitt to Halderman’s home in CT. From the Post:

On Thursday nights, when the show wrapped for the week, Arnot says, Letterman, 62, regularly drove Birkitt in his electric Tesla to Connecticut, leaving her off just down the road from Halderman’s home. If Letterman and Birkitt were still romantically involved in August, when Halderman says he saw them in an embrace, it would contradict a Worldwide Pants statement that Letterman’s sexual relationships with staffers predated his marriage. He wed Regina Lasko, another former “Late Show” staffer and his steady girlfriend of two decades, in March.

One question Kurtz doesn’t address: Why did Halderman see them on a private road near his home? This whole thing kind of gets creepier and creepier.

Photo from OK Magazine.

And it did not occur to me last week when I was discussing having had sex with women who worked on this show, that then what would happen is reporters and newspaper people and radio and TV would start hounding the staff and saying, ‘What do you say, are you, and this and that.’ It was very, very unpleasant and I would just like to set the record straight, no, I’m not having sex with these women, those episodes are in the past.

Really? Really it did not occur to him that the tabloids would have a field day with this story and do their best to dig up all parties involved? Come on. Did David Letterman just move to New York City? Was this past weekend his first encounter with the morning newsstand tabloids? I’ve never met David Letterman but I’m pretty confident that the answer to both questions is no. A big resounding no.

This story arrived straight out of central tabloid casting; no matter how upset or distracted Letterman was — and no doubt he was both — the man has too much media savvy not to know better. You don’t announce multi-million dollar extortion sex scandal on a national television program in the manner in which he did without some forethought. Anyway, the question now is how many more days can the papers stretch this story out as cover material (we’re currently on day five – gallery below) and how completely will Stephanie Birkitt’s life be ruined before a) this is over, or b) she pens a book deal to turn those infamous diaries into a proper book?

The Five Day Arc of a Tabloid Scandal – Day One

NEXT: The Five Day Arc of a Tabloid Scandal – Day Two

As Rachel Sklar asked earlier tonight, “Which Letterman should we believe?” Well here’s what they both had to say.

In addition to the jokes released in the monologue clip earlier tonight (video below), here were a few more from the monologue:

There’s a possibility that I’ll be the first talk show host impeached.

It’s Fall here in New York City, and I spent the whole weekend raking my hate mail.

It’s cold too. Chilly outside my house, chilly inside my house.

Normally when I’m shaken down for money, it’s my relatives.

This is only phase one. This is phase one of the scandal. Phase two, next week I go on Oprah and sob.

This was phase one of Letterman’s handling of the awkward situation. The funny, self-deprecating, somewhat surprising route. Then, after a commercial break, he got serious:

I wasn’t going to talk about it anymore, but it seems like people want to talk about it. And when you’re blackmailed, it’s a crime and you are a victim. It’s felony extortion is what it is. And it’s a nasty thing to do to people. Now being a victim, and if you happen to, your behavior is responsible for hurting people, that’s a separate part of the equation. And it did not occur to me last week when I was discussing having had sex with women who worked on this show, that then what would happen is reporters and newspaper people and radio and TV would start hounding the staff and saying, ‘What do you say, are you, and this and that.’ It was very, very unpleasant and I would just like to set the record straight, no, I’m not having sex with these women, those episodes are in the past. So my apologies to subjecting them to that vulnerability.

It’s equally surprising that Letterman didn’t think the press would look into who these women would be, since he decided to admit to this in such a public setting, and in such a vague way (considering the salacious subject matter). Then he moved to his wife. “She has been horribly hurt by my behavior. And when something happens like that, if you hurt a person, and it’s your responsibility, you try to fix it,” he said. “Let me tell you, folks, I got my work cut out for me.”

He did throw in a joke at the end: “Now because what can it hurt, I’d like to apologize to the former governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin.”

He joked about being the “first talk show host impeached,” but while impeachment won’t happen, the legal entanglements are likely just getting started. The lawyer of the man arrested for Letterman’s extortion, Robert J. Halderman, was out over the past couple days dropping hints to what the defense of his client would be – and bashing Letterman in the process. Tonight he told the New York Times “he would put forward evidence that Mr. Letterman had engaged in sexual harassment of his staff members.”

So…jokes!

Seriously, more media coverage will come tomorrow and the rest of the week (and weeks and months ahead) about the story, the various legal issues as well as Letterman’s public handling of the situation. If anything comes out of this, Letterman will likely gain an even bigger nightly audience as he further cements his place as the top late night host. Cynics will say this is a ratings ploy, but there has to be more to it. Whether CBS and Letterman’s lawyers agree with the out-in-the-open, half-joking (literally and figuratively) route the CBS host has chosen to deal with these issues, we’ll find out soon. As long as Letterman keeps talking.

Here’s part of the monologue tonight:

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Thursday night — as I’m sure you know by now — he went on the air and told an extraordinary story, first about being blackmailed and then about what he’d been blackmailed for. “Creepy” things, that vague descriptor, was put into a little sharper focus like so: “I have had sex with women who work for me on this show.”

You know, you can’t un-hear that. And it’s not because Dave is no spring chicken — whatever, you can’t deny that he’s a guy with charisma — it’s because you feel you know him, watching him all these years, but suddenly that’s knowing him a little too well. And at first it’s a lot to take in — the blackmail; the $2 million demand; the screenplay weirdness; the revelations that the extortionist was a high-level Emmy-winning producer for CBS; the emergence of Stephanie Birkett, affable on-screen sidekick, as but one of the women; the surfacing of other names, too; claims of a Late Show love nest. Ew. Let’s stop there.

Over the weekend, this all had time to marinate, along with the questions — was there pressure? Was that the way to get a promotion? What about if you weren’t favored by Dave? Were there any legal issues brewing? Would CBS take disciplinary action? Meanwhile, they were removing YouTube clips of the host’s mea culpa in an eyebrow-raising, attention-calling move that ratcheted up the curiosity about what Dave would say tonight.

Maybe that was the point.

Actually, I can’t tell what the point was — because two narrative emerged from the taping of the Late Show this afternoon: (1) Dave apologized on air, to his staff — and his wife; and (2) Dave told jokes. About it.

As someone who writes about this for a living, this is the order in which I wrote up these stories: First, “David Letterman’s On-Air Apology: “Terribly Sorry” To Staff, Wife.” He said his wife had been “horribly hurt” by the revelations. I chose an accompanying image to match the tone of the apology — somber, rueful.

Then I figured I’d check CBS.com for clips, just in case. Lo and behold, there was a teaser for Dave’s monologue. So I clicked on it. Out he walked at the top of the show, to huge applause. He said “Thank you,” a few times; the applause got louder. Then he grinned, and the audience laughed in response. “Did your weekend just fly by?” he asked, tongue in cheek. So much contained in that sentence — the subtext of all of the above, the punchline present only in the unsaid. “I’ll be honest with you, folks, right now I’d give anything to be hiking on the Appalachian trail.” Ba-dum-bum. “I got into the car this morning and even the navigation lady wasn’t speaking to me.” Rimshot! To accompany this second post, I took a screengrab from the monologue — Letterman smiling impishly.

Now I don’t expect a morose, self-flagellating talk show host — that’s no fun — but the contrast between these two moments is confusing. Which one am I supposed to identify with? Which one am I supposed to forgive? Which one am I less likely to imagine having sex with an intern? The release of both of these images prior to the show sends a mixed message. On the one hand, the apology is what everyone was waiting for. On the other, posting a monologue clip means a return to business as usual…business as usual, that is, with jokes essentially about his wife not talking to him. That’s not to say he didn’t mean his apology, but it does feel a little…disconnected from it.

Which one should we believe? One? The other? Both? Can’t an apologetic Dave still be funny? Can’t a wisecracking Dave still be sincere? Can’t he address the giant elephant in the room and still get back to his routine, because if he’s still there, what else is he gonna do?

Maybe that was the point.