What qualifies a man to talk about an issue like feminism?

@spendius,

Here we go!! Mr Letterman admits having sex with a number of women who "work on the show". And hence could hardly be refused some input into editorial content.

And so--through forces all too easy to understand, if not quite having sympathy with, the big tough hunk ends up a spokesperson for women and, until today, without you knowing it.

And one would not be surprised if the same thing wasn't going on in most shows and newspaper offices. And the ones who sit at home tweeting about how virtuous they are and how butter wouldn't melt in their mouths get the benefit without having to sully themselves by engaging in such degrading practices and even going so far as to condemn these women on the show as common hussies and other terms of abuse.

But Mr Letterman makes the point better than I can by going on TV to apologise to you all. No apology is necessary for him having simply shagged them.

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@spendius,

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No apology is necessary for him having simply shagged them

the nambi-pambi's charge Letterman with abuse of power and of creating a hostile workplace, so consider your statement disputed.

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@spendius,

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But Mr Letterman makes the point better than I can by going on TV to apologise to you all. No apology is necessary for him having simply shagged them.

Who is the 'you all' he's apologizing to? I've totally lost respect for the man now ( and I used to watch him all the time)- precisely because he bowed and scraped and apologized to anyone but his wife - and that's only if he lied to her. Maybe she didn't give a crap - who knows?
Either way, whose business is it but their's? It reminded me of when Hugh Grant went on Leno and apologized for hiring a hooker or whatever it was he did - I never liked him that much before but after that - I couldn't even bear to watch him in anything. Not because he was with a hooker, but because he didn't go on tv and say - 'I did it because I felt like it - and it's none of your damn business - so deal with that...' instead of caving into his own addiction for the approval of the public and corporate heads in search of even more affirmation and money.
He's weaker than I thought he was and that has nothing to do with feminism.
It has everything to do with his own greed.
I'll never watch his show again.
It'd be too uncomfortable. I'm embarrassed for him.

Don't these people have enough money yet without having to sell their dignity and right to privacy and autonomy to try to make more off the public who has nothing better to do than worry about who David Letterman and Hugh Grant have sex with?
I couldn't care less.

And Hawkeye- if the women were consenting and apparently, at least one of them still works there, so that fact points in that direction- who has the issue with abuse of power and creating a hostile workplace?
The women haven't said a word about it - have they?

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And one would not be surprised if the same thing wasn't going on in most shows and newspaper offices.

I'm sure it is - how could it not be? Why should it not be? You spend half your waking hours at a job with people who at least on the surface of things have the same interests as you-- where else are you gonna meet people to hook up with?

How stupid to apologize for having sex with someone you find attractive and have something in common with.

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What does David Letterman getting bribed over infidelity have to do with feminism at all?

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@Diest TKO,

Why did these women agree to have sex with an old man who would likely require some special services to get it on? I'm presuming they were relatively young women. CBS is "liberal" isn't it?

Isn't there, at least, a suspicion that these women used their power over him to influence the content of the show. As, for example, in his joke about Mrs Palin's daughters which was somewhat gratuitous. And abjectly apologised for. Mrs Palin is conservative isn't she?

Mr Alderman can hardly be expected to be stupid.

Mr Letterman being bribed over infidelity is not the point. It is who the infidelity was with which is the key issue.

Was the show being run by women whilst appearing to be run by men?

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@hawkeye10,

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the nambi-pambi's charge Letterman with abuse of power and of creating a hostile workplace, so consider your statement disputed.

I'm sorry hawk for not making clearer what I meant by "simply". I meant that there were no other considerations involved. That the incidents, how many I don't know, were similar to any other negotiation between a man and a woman. Or, to put it another way, would these ladies have been attracted to Mr Letterman had he been a fork truck driver? On his sexual charisma. If you think not then there were other considerations involved and the tweaking of the show's agenda in certain directions is a distinct possibility. It is a pity we cannot ask Barbara Stanwyk's opinion on that matter. Or Barbara Amiel if you prefer.

I don't view these things in that abstract, genteel manner so popular with others. I get my head into the rooms and the sheets and use a logic, no matter how twisted it might seem to abstractionists, derived from my observations of these situations in real life and as depicted by historians. I view the participants as human beings rather than as the cardboard cut-outs of the euphemisers.

I have direct and long-running evidence of a newspaper edited by a bloke completely in the control of feminists. They did the "romance is rape" trick numerous times. Front page. In bold. They had a very left-wing anti-men agenda. If some lady had alleged being felt up and had reported it to the police it was the day's headline despite six miners being killed stories having to be placed on page 5. Shopping mania was treated as a sort of quite charming weakness of us little airheads.

One assumes that Mr Letterman's ladies were high flyers in most respects. Not easily taken advantage of. Street savvy.

And if romance is rape then what is abuse of power? The consent of the ladies is then neither here nor there as they are being deemed to have been relieved of their senses by the hypnotic effect of proximity to power and influence. That sort of effect can also be got by spiking a drink. So if the "nambi-pambi's" charge abuse of power they are making a charge of rape. I think that's the feminist's position roughly.

One can hardly suppose that the ladies will be charged with abuse of a higher power and it must be a higher power if it has brought Mr Letterman, a seasoned doyen of the media circus, to his knees.

They don't like the idea of being "given away" by their father or a ring being placed on their finger as a symbol of capture or knuckling down to the washing up and ironing their owner's underpants and pointing the chimney stack. They believe themselves to be deserving of better things. And they are pretty determined to have them. Things that they have seen successful heroines getting in the books and films they choose to look at. And they are confident because they are lookers and always have been.

And everybody working on that show would have known. Women know these things are going on as soon as they start. And they love gossiping. Especially about this stuff. If Mr Letterman did not know that the lid was bound to blow off at some point then he is hardly a man to take much notice of. Dylan did do Jokerman on his show. "False hearted judges dyin' in the webs that they spin."

It's a great story and I make no apology for bringing it here.

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@Diest TKO,

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What does David Letterman getting bribed over infidelity have to do with feminism at all?

Well, my daughter had an interesting question when we were discussing this today that actually DOES have something to do with feminism and she said, 'How do you think people would react if this had been Oprah (assuming Oprah really is straight) having serial affairs with young male interns? In other words, how would people react differently - either positively or negatively?

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@aidan,

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Women know these things are going on as soon as they start. And they love gossiping.

Maybe - but it was a man who let the cat out of the bag - and who appeared to be fond of extortion.

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@aidan,

the answer to the Letterman Feminism question is that this event highlights a fault line in the feminist movement. Traditionally feminists have felt that men have more power, and use that power to get over on women, so women must be protected by making it legally and morally unacceptable for the men to use that power in their relationships with women. To these feminists the women in question are victims, and letterman is the abuser of power, and must be condemned.

on the other side is mostly younger feminists, who are offended at being treated like babies, who think that feminism means choice and the freedom to use their sexuality as often and however they choose. To them there is no crime here unless the women come forward and say that they had a sexual and/or romantic relationship with Letterman under what they felt was pressure to go forwards. Otherwise the default is in force, which is women are free to get as much sex as they want from what ever men they want to get it from. Rising above stereotypes and being a slut for their boss (if that is what they were) is the FULLFILMENT of the feminists ideals, it should be championed.

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@hawkeye10,

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the answer to the Letterman Feminism question is that this event highlights a fault line in the feminist movement. Traditionally feminists have felt that men have more power, and use that power to get over on women, so women must be protected by making it legally and morally unacceptable for the men to use that power in their relationships with women.

That's almost insulting...that women don't take responsibility for their own choices.

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To these feminists the women in question are victims, and letterman is the abuser of power, and must be condemned.

Has he said anything else- other than that he had affairs? Have the women spoken about it at all?

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on the other side is mostly younger feminists, who are offended at being treated like babies, who think that feminism means choice and the freedom to use their sexuality as often and however they choose. To them there is no crime here unless the women come forward and say that they had a sexual and/or romantic relationship with Letterman under what they felt was pressure to go forwards.

Well, I must be one of the younger feminists then because as far as I can see these women had a choice just like Dave had a choice - and if they based their choice about how to use their sexuality to either get a job or keep a job - just as Dave is making the choice to grovel to keep his audience and by extension his job - they're both playing at the same game.

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Otherwise the default is in force, which is women are free to get as much sex as they want from what ever men they want to get it from.

Yeah, just like men have traditionally been free to get as much sex as they want from whatever women they want it from.

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Rising above stereotypes and being a slut for their boss (if that is what they were) is the FULLFILMENT of the feminists ideals, it should be championed.

- and its even better if they actually liked him....but that couldn't have been the case - no.... Laughing

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@hawkeye10,

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on the other side is mostly younger feminists, who are offended at being treated like babies, who think that feminism means choice and the freedom to use their sexuality as often and however they choose. To them there is no crime here unless the women come forward and say that they had a sexual and/or romantic relationship with Letterman under what they felt was pressure to go forwards. Otherwise the default is in force, which is women are free to get as much sex as they want from what ever men they want to get it from. Rising above stereotypes and being a slut for their boss (if that is what they were) is the FULLFILMENT of the feminists ideals, it should be championed.

I agreed with that completely until I reached

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Rising above stereotypes and being a slut for their boss

.
Why are these women being 'sluts' for him?
In the context of the show/issue, he's the one who has had SEX WITH THE MOST PEOPLE.
Yet apparently he is not a slut, they are.

Christ.

The only ACTUAL way to 'rise above' a stereotype is to forget it exists. Start afresh.
'Inverting' a stereotype does nothing since it is still controlled/dictated by the original form of the stereotype.

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@The Pentacle Queen,

Slut: woman with a pronounced sexual appetite who is willing to feed it outside of a monogamous primary relationship.

When men do it we call it being men, we don't need a special name for it.

I do not consider the term derogatory, nor do a sub community of feminists.

However, I don't know for sure that these women with Letterman are sluts, I don't know enough about them. They might be, and if they are they might have some high fives comming from some of the feminists.

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@aidan,

I wrote-

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Women know these things are going on as soon as they start. And they love gossiping.

To which Rebecca responded-

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Maybe - but it was a man who let the cat out of the bag - and who appeared to be fond of extortion.

This is how women distort things. The point I made with those is that Mr Letterman was a fool if he thought it wouldn't become public. Who put the cat in the bag? Shouldn't the public know that behind a respectable facade of a TV show there exists a seething, depraved and anti-Christian orgy and thus the viewers are being duped. The high priests of materialism are just as good at cynical hypocrisy as they claim the high priests of the Church are.

Whatever Mr Alderman's claims involve he has made us all a little wiser. From what I can glean he was asking for compensation for not writing what would have been a sensational screenplay. He certainly wasn't one of the ladies involved and for him to know as much as he seems to have done the cat must have been out of the bag a fair time, as I said, but having it kept quiet by our upstanding defenders of free speech, transparency and decency.

And the "maybe" is a bit grudging. I think it a certainty if a number of ladies were involved who were all working in the same office.

Did he enjoy them singly or in groups.

But by continually avoiding the question of whether the situation led to a bias in the show's content towards the feminist cause, the important matter, you are admitting it to be an area you wish to avoid and we can all draw our own conclusions from that. At the extreme, a coven of feminists could have come to be running a nationally popular TV show and then we would all have been on the Ovarian trolley. Goodstyle.

Not that I'm against that but I am if the audience doesn't know. You have already said you are watching the show no more as a result of this story which means you had been watching it before in a state of ignorance and innocence which you must now regret. And your deliverance from that state has been brought about by Mr Alderman.

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@The Pentacle Queen,

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Yet apparently he is not a slut, they are.

He's not a slut because that word only applies to females or possibly to promiscuous homosexual men.

He is a weak-willed, devious nincompoop and arrogant with it. What someone like that is doing as a national figure with an influential TV show is a matter for CBS and its customers to wrestle with.

Are there no ladies here who will speculate that the ladies on the show found him to be sexually irresistable at the visceral level. The only alternative is that they were whoring their way up some alleyway or other.

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@aidan,

aidan wrote:

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What does David Letterman getting bribed over infidelity have to do with feminism at all?

Well, my daughter had an interesting question when we were discussing this today that actually DOES have something to do with feminism and she said, 'How do you think people would react if this had been Oprah (assuming Oprah really is straight) having serial affairs with young male interns? In other words, how would people react differently - either positively or negatively?

You know, the last time I brought up the social stigma and inequity of a man and woman doing the same thing, it was "mystifying" things.

You're right, this would play out different in a few ways if it was Oprah.

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@Diest TKO,

TK grabs hold of the irrelevant diversion as if it were a lifebelt.

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@spendius,

spendius wrote:

TK grabs hold of the irrelevant diversion as if it were a lifebelt.

I was addressing aidan's point. It's a perfectly fair example to draw contrast. She was right, there is a feminist issue present (explicitly not directly).

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@spendius,

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The point I made with those is that Mr Letterman was a fool if he thought it wouldn't become public.

Yes. There's no doubt about that. Same with Kobe Bryant (I don't know if you guys got that story over here or not) but the point is - this **** happens over and over and over and over again - and the men NEVER seem to learn that they will be found out.

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Shouldn't the public know that behind a respectable facade of a TV show there exists a seething, depraved and anti-Christian orgy and thus the viewers are being duped.

It was just a silly talk show - it didn't put on any facade of respectability. Drew Barrymore once got up on his desk and flashed the audience. It was all silliness and hijinks. I'm not at all surprised to find out something like this was happening behind the scenes. I'm only surprised we didn't find out about it before now.

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Did he enjoy them singly or in groups.

It seems he liked them singly. And goofy looks and all, it seems they were certainly in love with him.
One said:

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"I was madly in love with him at the time," Holly Hester told TMZ.com. "I would have married him. He was hilarious."

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Another said:“Aside from being incredibly funny and personable he is generous, kind, and is great fun to play catch with,” Birkitt said in a 2003 interview with a publication of her alma mater, Wake Forest. “I really couldn’t ask for a more fun work environment. Dave is truly the greatest boss I could ever have.

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But by continually avoiding the question of whether the situation led to a bias in the show's content towards the feminist cause, the important matter, you are admitting it to be an area you wish to avoid and we can all draw our own conclusions from that. At the extreme, a coven of feminists could have come to be running a nationally popular TV show and then we would all have been on the Ovarian trolley. Goodstyle.

Okay, and one example you mentioned where this might be the case had to do with the joke about Sarah Palin's daughter. Given that Dave has never been a conservative and when placed in context of his habitual behavior that has come to light which seems to point to the fact that Dave favors young women - that joke seems ever more likely to have come from his own mindset and thoughts than that of the young women he was fooling around with- who started out as interns. Would a young girl who fooled around with an older man and was jilted for another young woman, and then another, and then a wife, write a joke about an older man fooling around with a young girl to the young girl's detriment? I don't think so.
If they were the manipulative puppet masters you describe holding Dave by the strings don't you think the joke would have played the older man as the dupe and not the young woman- who ends up 'knocked up' in his joke?

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Not that I'm against that but I am if the audience doesn't know. You have already said you are watching the show no more as a result of this story which means you had been watching it before in a state of ignorance and innocence which you must now regret. And your deliverance from that state has been brought about by Mr Alderman.

spendius - I haven't watched this show regularly in ten years. I used to watch it for Paul Schaefer and the band and Dave's musical guests on the nights when I didn't have to get up early to work the next day. When I started watching it - it came on at 12:30 at night- and used to be less mainstream and slightly clever! Then they switched it to 11:30 to compete with Leno when he got Johnny Carson's spot on the Tonight Show over Dave - and Dave went mainstream and it all went downhill from there.

I used to think he was engaging in an artless sort of gap-toothed kind of way- but he had good taste in music- that was his main draw for me.

I don't think you can sustain this feminist take-over conspiracy agenda. This is just one more guy who couldn't control his urges.
What a surprise...why do you want to blame that on women?

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And your deliverance from that state has been brought about by Mr Alderman.

Too bad our deliverance will cost him his freedom.
*Interesting side note - one of Dave's girl's went out with this guy too - apparently that's how he got the information - he was sharing the goods.
It does make me wonder what HER story is- you could be onto something when it comes to her as an individual.

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@Diest TKO,

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You know, the last time I brought up the social stigma and inequity of a man and woman doing the same thing, it was "mystifying" things.

You're right, this would play out different in a few ways if it was Oprah.

I don't think she'd be asked to apologize. I think the reaction from most folks would be ' You go girl!!'

And I think that's interesting. I think that says that people still think young women need to be protected from scheming men- this moral outrage that begs an apology - while at the same time, it seems young men are fair game for older women.

And I think that dichotomy in terms of thought around this subject is insulting to young women.

But I don't go as far as spendius and automatically assume that all the young women who slept with Dave are schemers (except the one who started out as an intern, became a producer and just happened to have a relationship with Dave and the guy who is trying to blackmail him)- just as I don't automatically assume the young men who might want to sleep with Oprah are all schemers.

I wonder though if that same innate scheming tendency would be attributed to a young man when coupled with a powerful older woman - or is that manipulative, scheming trait purely feminine in some peoples' minds?

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@Diest TKO,

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I was addressing aidan's point. It's a perfectly fair example to draw contrast. She was right, there is a feminist issue present (explicitly not directly).

There can be no point based on inventing Oprah Winfrey having a bunch of lads in the studio. How can it be fair when it hasn't happened compared to this case where it has happened.

You have forgotten my point about men needing to be sexually aroused and women not having that need. They can fake it. And further to that Ms Winfrey is above the age which Ms Greer, and she is an anthropologist, said that most cultures consider sexual relations to be "comical". And I'm informed that she is as white as the driven snow in this respect. You addressed a null point. Which bodes ill for your manner of proceeding.

The Russian Empress, Catherine the Great, is said to have had the Guard of Honour at her beck and call.

There is a feminist interest here. Basic and both explicit and direct.

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What qualifies a man to talk about an issue like feminism?

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