Letterman demonstrates ‘Mad Men’ isn’t history
One of the chief appeals of a period piece like “Mad Men’’ is the way it lets us congratulate ourselves for being so enlightened. Ah, those poor folks from the dark ages of the 1960s, we can say. They smoked when they were pregnant! They littered after picnics! And their workplaces? Bastions of sexual harrassment, where the bosses flirted openly with their assistants and slept with many of them, too.
Then along comes David Letterman to tell us we haven’t come so far, after all.
It has been more than a week since Letterman’s announcement that a CBS colleague tried to blackmail him for having sex with women on his staff. What the “Late Show’’ host clearly hoped would be a one-time clearing of the air - unspooled as a rambling joke before a confused studio audience - turned into a tabloid frenzy, filled with stories of affairs, romantic walks, even a secret “love nest’’ inside the Ed Sullivan Theater.
Letterman came back Monday night with an extended apology that amounted to clever public relations. He was humble, self-flagellating, funny throughout. He apologized directly to his staff for putting them in the position of being hounded by the press. He acknowledged that he had caused pain for his wife, whom he had dated since 1986 and married in March. He said he would have to work to win back her trust.
But Letterman did not address the most disturbing charge against him, the allegation that he presided over a workplace where sex with the boss was commonplace, where every promotion of a woman could be questioned, and where the question of consent was inextricably mixed with the question of who had the power. (Even if he did feel bad, his lawyers probably would not have let him say so.)
So Dave is a modern-day version of Roger Sterling, the fun-loving “mad man’’ who cracks jokes at tense meetings, the married guy who slept with one secretary and then another, the guy who couldn’t understand why his colleagues weren’t thrilled for him when he left his wife for his much younger assistant.
And while Letterman has heard condemnation from some expected corners - the National Organization for Women issued a scathing statement last week - a huge portion of his fan base has rushed to his defense. The “Mad Men’’ characters might have believed they were boys being boys. Today, some people seem happy to give a pass to celebrities being celebrities.
That has been a chief argument from Letterman’s defenders: first, that his job as a comic means we shouldn’t care what he does offscreen; second, that his celebrity somehow made his workplace dalliances inevitable. Women must have thrown themselves at Letterman, some say, because that’s what they do with powerful men - and a powerful man must be powerless to resist. (Some defenders have also noted that no one on the “Late Night’’ staff has sued, as if the absence of a formal complaint against the boss is somehow proof that no one cared.)
The fact is that we can’t have two moral standards, one for brilliant entertainment-industry auteurs, and one for everyone else. If having sex with a 13-year-old is a crime when perpetrated by the creepy guy down the street, the one who didn’t make “Rosemary’s Baby,’’ then it’s a crime when perpetrated by Roman Polanski. If we no longer accept Roger Sterling behavior from the standard-issue CEO, we can’t accept it from a boss who has a talk show and millions of adoring fans.
Letterman is likely to survive this. His ratings were rising before the scandal broke, his apology drew huge numbers, and his studio audiences and guests seem undeterred. His show is still a fantastic forum for a plug, all the better if viewers stick around to watch him squirm.
There’s a sick kind of symbiosis these days between celebrities caught in bad behavior and the tabloids that shower them with publicity; ask Paris Hilton if she minds the relentlessness of TMZ. (For that matter, ask if she minds that interview with Letterman two years ago, a vicious dissection of her time in jail that became a viral-video sensation.) David Letterman’s reputation as a stand-up guy might suffer from this mess. His place in the entertainment pantheon will not.
But if viewers stay with him, here’s hoping they also keep thinking about the scandal itself, the way it differs from a garden-variety adultery story, the chance it gives us to address, in real time, the gender-in-the-workplace issues that have made for such fascinating fictional TV. By unhappy accident, Letterman may have given us a chance to start putting the ’60s behind us.
Joanna Weiss can be reached at weiss@globe.com. 
© Copyright 2009 Globe Newspaper Company.
