Letterman vs. Ensign

2:30 pm EST October 3rd, 2009 | News | 14 Comments

A woman writes to the NY Times:

When the Letterman and Sen. John Ensign blackmail stories broke yesterday, I couldn’t help wondering if anybody but me noticed how differently they were handled. The funny man did the honorable thing. The man who was elected on the ‘values’ ticket did everything he could to keep the story covered up.

Increasingly we keep finding in America that the comedians are turning out to be the ones in the public eye that react most realistically.

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14 Responses to “Letterman vs. Ensign”

  1. justadood says:
    October 3, 2009 at 2:48 pm

    Oliver–you sound almost surprised at this…..

    really?

  2. RVnGrammy says:
    October 3, 2009 at 2:56 pm

    Excellent and interesting observation. You make me think at least one time a week. Thanks for that.

  3. kth says:
    October 3, 2009 at 2:58 pm

    Just as much the smart comedian versus the dumb politician, which is perhaps more to type–I’d bet on the average IQ of the 100 most successful comedians versus the average IQ in the Senate, and that’s even allowing for Carlos Mencia and Larry the Cable Guy.

    Point being that paying a blackmailer is never the smart play. You can never buy the silence of a blackmailer, you can only rent it, and even then you never know for how long.

  4. Oliver Willis says:
    October 3, 2009 at 3:10 pm

    Sadly not surprised, just pointing out the new reality.

  5. Mark S. says:
    October 3, 2009 at 4:10 pm

    Not that I have any sympathy for Ensign, but a sex scandal is a billion times more damaging to a politician than to an entertainer.

  6. Carl Martin says:
    October 3, 2009 at 6:28 pm

    How is the Letterman issue a “scandal”? Ensign is a married man preaching family values who decided to cheat on his wife. Letterman was a single man having consentual sex with single women. The only scandal there is the fact that the blackmailer was dumb enough to think it would be an issue and would hurt his reputation.

  7. Felix Helix says:
    October 3, 2009 at 8:50 pm

    A sex scandal is more damaging to a politician because politicians are obliged to present themselves as moral pillars of the community. Some campaign on that status, like Ensign, and some don’t — but even those who don’t push a “family values” standard at all suffer consequences for failing to live up to it. Entertainers, on the other hand, are expected to live hedonistically. Neither expectation — moral pillar or hedonist — is anything but bullspit. The parameters of one’s personal life should not be dictated by the responsibilities of one’s professional life, especially with regard to something as nebulous as “image”.

    If your personal choices negatively impact your ability to get your job done, or if they involve breaking the law, that’s a problem. Letterman gets the job done, and he hasn’t broken any law that we know of; if sexual harassment was in play, that’s different, but there’s no evidence of that so far. Ensign, from all appearances, has broken the law. He’s also guilty of being a big fat hypocrite, which, while not exactly a crime, does make him worthy of contempt.

  8. tom says:
    October 3, 2009 at 9:48 pm

    Isn’t Letterman married? With kids? In that case, I wouldn’t say he did the “honorable” thing, just the wiser thing.

  9. Amused Observer says:
    October 3, 2009 at 9:51 pm

    LOL,
    ” Letterman gets the job done, and he hasn’t broken any law that we know of; if sexual harassment was in play, that’s different”

    Not too long ago when a superviser was having sex with a subordinate the presumption amongst the hairy chested woman contingent was that harrassement was implied. That ended with NOW’s 180 degree turnaround with the perjuror Clinton.

    Ollie speaks of honor as if Liberals value that, lol. Letterman was cheating on his girlfriend/now wife. I hope she constantly keeps in mind she’s married to a guy she can’t trust. Karma’s a bitch. First Kennedy now Letterman, what goes around comes around.

  10. Oliver Willis says:
    October 3, 2009 at 10:58 pm

    If liberals spent their entire lives lecturing about being people’s moral superiors you might have a point. Maybe. But we know human beings are not perfect.

  11. Amused Observer says:
    October 4, 2009 at 1:38 am

    Ollie,
    There is a subtle difference between being morally superior and being morally inferior. Liberals do spend a significant amount of their time lecturing the rest of us on politically correct topics while condoning just about any activity if done by a Democrat.

    The outrage posted here over the Polish sodomist is noteworthy for it’s uniqueness. Juanita Broderick’s story on rape was ignored although she had much more credibility than the perjuror she accused.

    Likewise the left’s fawning love affair with the Coward of Chappaquiddick. Ted Kennedy did perhaps the most despicable thing a man could do and continued a career besot with boorish behavior while he tried to sell out the country all the while basking in praise from liberals like you.

  12. Felix Helix says:
    October 4, 2009 at 3:18 am

    Tom: Isn’t Letterman married? With kids? In that case, I wouldn’t say he did the “honorable” thing, just the wiser thing.

    AO: Letterman was cheating on his girlfriend/now wife.

    Reports indicate that Letterman’s affairs concluded before his marriage began. Whether or not they overlapped with his relationship with the woman who is now his wife isn’t quite clear from what I’ve been able to find. We also don’t know when his wife found out about this, or her reaction. There’s a lot we don’t know. And that’s fine, because for the most part, we have no business knowing it. It doesn’t concern anyone but the people involved.

    Whether Letterman is a fine upstanding guy, or an honorable one, or wise or duplicitous or craven or arrogant, is of very little interest to me; I’ve generally got better things to do than pass judgment on the character of people whose lives don’t intersect mine. I neither condemn nor condone affairs between consenting adults. If sexual harassment is involved — which it sometimes is in office affairs where there’s a power differential — that I do condemn, since it’s a crime, but as I said before there’s no indication at this point that harassment was involved. A presumption of innocence is good place to start from, don’t you think? For example, referring to feminists as hairy-chested women could be taken as evidence of an ugly gynophobic streak, but I’m willing to chalk it up to simple biological ignorance.

    Oh, and Juanita Broaddrick? You mean the woman whose only sworn testimony was a denial of the rape allegations? Please. It is to laugh.

  13. icruise says:
    October 4, 2009 at 3:27 am

    Letterman has been in a relationship with the woman who is now his wife for more than 20 years (and has a six-year-old son with her) so I think it’s a given that these dalliances overlapped with that relationship. And of course a boss having sex with multiple subordinates is not really something that we usually brush off so easily. It’s not nearly as cut and dry as “a single man having consensual sex with single women.”

    But he did handle the situation pretty well.

  14. Repack Rider says:
    October 4, 2009 at 12:21 pm

    Letterman is not responsible to any of us in the way that a political figure is. He will be judged by the marketplace. If he continues to make money for others, he will stay, just as the treasonous rightwing criminals Ollie North and G. Gordon Liddy manage to keep careers in broadcasting despite their disgusting personal histories of crimes against the state.

    I don’t watch Letterman’s show anyway, so I can hardly boycott him any more than I already have.