Last Night, David Letterman used his show as an outlet to come clean in the face of extortion. The style of his confession and the audience’s response speaks volumes about the nature of the Late Night Talk Show.
Letterman Comes Clean
– October 2, 2009
Last Night, David Letterman used his show as an outlet to come clean in the face of extortion. The style of his confession and the audience’s response speaks volumes about the nature of the Late Night Talk Show.
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Richard Clark (Co-Founder/Editor-in-Chief) has spent his entire life writing, reading, listening, and playing. He has a Bachelors in Theology from the Baptist College of Florida and has a Master of Arts in Theology and the Arts from the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. He lives in Louisville, KY where he is the classroom technology manager at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. In addition to writing at Christ and Pop Culture, he is also a staff writer for Kill Screen Magazine's website and has written for various other outlets such as Paste, Gamasutra, and Collide.
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How disturbing was the laughter? I can understand at the start when people were working out if it was a confession or a joke. But when he came out and admitted what was going on? And he said how it would be embarrassing for the women involved if they were named etc? How was that even the least bit funny? How difficult is it for a comedian to be taken seriously?
Yeah, well David was clearly using laughter as a defense mechanism. That, coupled with the fact that those type of shows tend to trivialize the serious anyway, meant the audience can’t really be blamed for laughing through the whole thing.
But yeah, the most disturbing part was the laugh and applause for the actual admitting of the action… I just found that so telling.