David Letterman did the right thing by stinging the person who was trying to extort him.

[Electric Monk]

Fuck me? No..... fuck YOU!

That's the only good way to deal with extortionists, imho.


Thoughts?

[notadmblnd]

1. congress needs to follow his example.

[BlooInBloo]

2. Yep. People who blame the victim of crimes, saying variants of "the slut deserved it" really suck.

[grasswire]

3. the best defense against blackmail is to simply release the truth

...and take your knocks.

[Electric Monk]

4. exactly. nt

[roguevalley]

6. the best defense is to keep your dick in your pants. I am glad he

got it out there and took this apart but he should never have done it. He has a wife and son. They are going to be the object of this forever. How these jackasses believe no one will ever find out is beyond me. I love Letterman but now, for this, he is an asshole.

[napoleon_in_rags]

5. Hell yes. Lets cut down to the truth here.

I just posted about this here btw.

This is the deal as I see it: We need to ask a simple question. does sin equal capital? The extortionist thinks that it does: He strives to gain money, capital, from the act. Now given the fact that any capitalist seeks to increase his capital, what does the extortionist therefore seek to increase? Simple answer: he seeks to increase sin. Every person that cheats on his wife, has a dark liason, means more money to him. Nothing is more profitable to him than these moral failures. An extortionist feeds on the concept of infallibility, that people don't mess up, that we don't sin. Because this what feeds him, what makes him rich. So what will increase in the world if we reward him? Sin.

So I think Letterman did the right thing. Fuck the extortionist. And I think we should all admit that everybody is fallible, everybody can mess up. That Letterman had some affair doesn't effect my enjoyment of his humor at all. He's human. Big deal.

In fact, I'm willing to move on to the point where I see this with everything. Who profits from people screwing up on their mortgage payments? Who profits when people go to jail? Who profits when people become drug addicts? We need to recognize that the fundamental interest of each person who profits from the failure of another human being is to get more people to fail in the way that profits them. Its a simple truth that we each need to face up to, and that we each need to be willing to do something about.

Peace.

[romantico]

7. When

When did this happen? Was it recently? Did he have these affairs before he was married? Before his son was born? Just curious.

[marshall]

9. Presumably all of the above

It does sound like a redux of the Bob Barker situation--many women over a long period of time. I assume there will be conjecture that he has some kind of an addiction problem. And the tabloids will be combing over every employee they can get their hands on to identify the harem of workers--the press has a new target to get into a frenzy about, and the late night crowd have new meat for their jokes. Bravo to Letterman for having the chutzpa to be the first one to make a joke's butt out of himself.

[Festivito]

8. I wonder what Bob Barker thinks. /nt