Hanna, Linda, the parallels are amazing between the David Letterman blackmail story and the the New York Times exposé of how Sen. John Ensign was pressured by the cuckolded husband of his lover. In both, a powerful man is told unless he comes up with $2 million, the story of his cheating will be made public, and in both the perpetrator is the significant other of a woman who worked for the powerful man. Ensign went for the coverup and payoff then was forced to confess—in one of the dreary “I have sinned” press conferences—when when the cuckold went to the press. Letterman (who seems to be flypaper for wackos) went straight to the D.A. then told the story in a weird, funny, compelling monologue. Ensign is a hypocritical, moralizing jerk. But unless Letterman makes a condition of the employment of female subordinates that they have to sleep with him—well, gee, if celebrities can’t have affairs with willing, adult women, what kind of world is this?

Tags: blackmail, David Letterman, polanski, sen. john ensign

Your Comeback editor and writer Emma Gilbey Keller is co-hosting a discussion with Park Slope Parents in Brooklyn on Monday, Oct. 5. We'll be talking about women leaving from and returning to the workplace. Are you thinking about switching careers? Are you coming back after taking time off to raise children? Are you mulling over leaving your job? We'll discuss it all. Please join us! Here are the details:

Where: The Old Stone House, 336 3rd Street, Brooklyn, NY.

When: 7 p.m., Oct. 5, 2009.

The event is free for members of Park Slope Parents and $5.00 for nonmembers. We hope to see you there.

Tags: coming back, Emma Gilbey Keller, park slope parents, women in transition, your comeback

Hanna has a great insight into the Letterman audience's laughter at his confession of having sex with several of his female employees. It's not that Letterman's statement was funny; rather, like Pavlov's dogs, the audience at a comedy show is conditioned to laugh no matter what he says. But it's still interesting to think about why their laughter was so annoying. Could it be because sex between a powerful old man and his nubile young employees is more often tragic than comic? Sometimes it's funny: Reports say that 86-year-old media mogul Sumner Redstone's fortysomething second wife just got a million for each year of their five year marriage. She's probably laughing ... all the way to the bank.

But the hilarity in the Letterman affair was not helped by the other stories in the sexual misbehavior category this week. Alert Swiss bounty hunters nabbed director Roman Polanski as he arrived to accept a lifetime achievement award at the Zurich Film Festival, holding him to answer for the rape of a 13-year-old who came to audition for something when Polanski was a mere 45. Senator Mike Ensign might be in the next cell, if the ethics charges arising from his cover-up of a roll with his campaign aide, followed by bribery of her husband, hold up. Married ex-Senator John Edwards' wedding plans with his much younger former mistress leaked to the New York Times, while his cancer-stricken wife was still alive to read them. Not too many yuks there.

As Emily pointed out recently, there's a big difference between illegal sexual conduct and what's just a pretty terrible idea. I think having sex with one's much younger female dependents is a pretty terrible idea. Without more, Letterman doesn't deserve a jail sentence or probably even a damage judgment. But there's gotta be something between a striped suit and a laugh track. A round of hearty booing would have been nice.

Tags: David Letterman, David Letterman confession, john ensign affair, polanski, sexual harassment, sumner redstone

I've been obsessed with WASP culture for as long as I can remember. Maybe it was because I watched too many Whit Stillman movies at an impressionable age, or maybe it's because I visited too many homes of gilded age robber barons on historical field trips. More likely it's because I was raised in a town that was restricted to non-WASPs until the '60s, and they were my best friends and early crushes. In any event, I was looking forward to reading Tad Friend's Cheerful Money: Me, My Family, and the Last Days of WASP Splendor, because I thought it would reveal the inner workings of a group I've long observed from the outside.

And it does provide compelling ethnographical details—how high WASPs say "coffin" rather than "casket" because the former is "the earliest "Anglo-Saxon word available;" how they will discuss the cost of heating oil but never their yearly salaries; and why they prefer ungainly, massively slobbering dogs as pets. ("[A]n emblem of our pastoral and sporting roots, and because they help us get muddy. They are transitional objects, allowing the otherwise unseemly romp and snuggle.") But the memoir is not just a litany of amusing affectations. It's the story of the Friend family, and more importantly, the benign neglect school of WASP parenting.

The allowance of physical muddiness but not emotional muddiness is key to the WASP parent/child relationship. Cheerful Money is at its best when Friend writes about his attempts to express those messier feelings with his forebears. Early on in the book, Friend describes a sort of "intervention" that he and his siblings have with his widowed father. Tad and his siblings Timmie and Pier tell their father that they want to spend more time with him, that they want him to be more present in their lives. Their father misunderstands, and thinks his children want to hear more about his quotidian outings with his new girlfriend, (whom he only refers to formally, by her full name) Mary French. Friend writes, "We glanced at each other: No, we want you to pay closer attention to us ... None of us had had the heart, or nerve, to correct him."

In this way, Cheerful Money is relatable even for those without a vested interest in high WASP trappings. The loneliness in the space between parents and children is something even people without threadbare L.L. Bean sweaters and last names for first names can relate to.

Tags: and the last days of wasp splendor, book of the week, cheerful money, cheerful money: me, my family, robber barons, tad friend

David Letterman’s confession last night that he has slept with women he works with was a perfect window into the twisted psyche of the comic. (Read Troy Patterson’s excellent close reading here.) This is why women don’t want to stay married to comedians (the subject of Judd Apatow’s Funny People). They can’t break form, even in what should be the most shattering and intimate of moments. Even as Letterman is changing our view of him forever he is exactly himself, with his deadpan delivery and self-mockery. There is hardly a moment when you’re totally sure whether he’s joking or not. The audience laughs in the beginning because they think it’s one of his usual routines, but they keep laughing even after he’s made his confession. Because they’re in shock? Because that’s how the relationship works—he makes the jokes, they laugh.

Troy asks: “Say sorry to whom? To his public? Why do we deserve an apology?” We don’t, I guess. Do the women? Who knows; we don’t know anything about what actually happened. But we will hash over endless scenarios involving Letterman the sleazebag predator until he actually says something real. Which, if the comedian stereotype is true, he never will.

Tags: David Letterman, David Letterman confession