Bob McCarty Writes

David Letterman admitted during taping of The Late Show with David Letterman yesterday that he had sex with female staffers and, later, became the target of a $2 million blackmail attempt.  Immediately thereafter, it appears his handlers at CBS began to spin the talk show host as a victim, working overtime to limit the damage to their network and, possibly, save the show.

In reviewing how The Early Show reported on Letterman’s infidelity this morning, I found it disgusting — but not surprising at all — how the network spin doctors cut and spliced the clips to minimize the damage.  Instead of airing the entire admission, they cut the show clip after Letterman said, “…and I can prove that you do some terrible things.” Only running the entire admission segment would have revealed the full scope of his Ted Kennedy-like actions as shown below.

Next, the network used positive fan-on-the-street comments about Letterman and a morality-means-nothing discussion with a “veteran Hollywood publicist” about how the admission will affect Letterman’s image in the short run and might actually help him long term.

But it wasn’t as bad as the pseudo-news clip, also aired by the network during the morning show, which portrays the talk show host as a victim seeking to protect his family rather than a philandering old man who got caught.

Yet another entertainment-industry episode that supports the mantra I follow — I DON’T LISTEN TO HOLLYWOOD!

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