Like I said in my lengthy Roman Polanski apologists’ post (here ), most of society feels that Hollywood directors, producers, and actors are in the wrong for petitioning the arrest of Polanski because – among the most repetitive of reasons – he is a talented director and has gone through a lot in life. But the biggest part of the defense of their beloved Chinatown director has to be the simple fact that Hollywood is Polanski and vice versa. Why wouldn’t they defend him? He is ONE of them. The rest of us outside of Hollywood wouldn’t “understand” that. (See, I’m still bitter about it.)
Then I read an article on Vanity Fair’s website by Nell Scovell – one of the few female writers to ever work for David Letterman. She writes that after Letterman announced on his show that he’d had sexual affairs in the workplace…:
Most media stars responded by defending one of their own.
That’s when it hit me.
Despite how Hollywood felt, all of us “ordinary” people in society became re-outraged by Polanski’s sexual crimes. But Letterman? We shrugged it off, appreciated that he “handled it so well,” and felt relieved that his sexual affairs with female staffers were not “as bad” as what Polanski did to an unwilling 13-year-old girl.
Then again, the timeliness of the two cases was undoubtedly convenient for Letterman. As Kate Harding parenthetically wrote in a Jezebel article on the subject, “Letterman should probably send Roman Polanski a big fruit basket for ensuring that this scandal came with built-in perspective.”
Don’t misunderstand me here: the two sexual cases between Letterman and Polanski are NOT – I repeat, NOT – in the same boat. Just as a reminder, Polanski drugged and raped a 13-year-old girl and fled the country to escape charges in the U.S., and Letterman had affairs with some of his female staffers.
However, after reading the articles by Kate Harding and Nell Scovell, I’m starting to ask myself…Didn’t we end up doing the same thing for Letterman that Hollywood did for Polanski? After all the sympathizing we did, and after all the “let’s not jump to conclusions” kind of statements we made, I believe we let Letterman off the hook as a society. I mean, he still cheated on his life-long partner (and now wife), and created awkwardness and inappropriateness in the office with his affairs. And what did we say in his defense? You know, without REALLY saying it? Something like this: “Well, he’s funny, and we’ve always loved him, so…what’s the big deal really?”
As much as I love film, I think we relate more to television as a culture. We feel that it’s almost a part of us because we grew up with it and we spend time with it daily. Maybe that’s why we united with the media on the Letterman case and protected one of our own. Much like Hollywood did with their own.
Maybe I’m grasping at straws here too, but I’d like to think I’m on to some kind of connection, one that unconsciously happened within our society.
I agree with you. That makes a lot of sense. Comfort and acceptableness stems from repetition. Television provides that repetition of faces, characters, caricatures of people that are meant to appeal to a broad audience. Letterman is someone that we’ve (America) loved for a long time. He is part of our daily culture.
That same idea can be applied again and again. It’s the culture that makes groups of people more willing to accept faults. They are accepting of those they consider to be “their own.” The Black community does this frequently, as I imagine many other communities and cultures do too.
I think that’s pretty much what happened…unless you’re from Kentucky where everyone seems to prefer Leno over Letterman, haha.
And you bring up a good point that brings it back to “protecting one’s own” – it happens all the time within communities as a cultural protection.
Not the gays. We turn on bitches who make us look bad.
All those ministers and politicians aren’t going to find any support from the gays when they get caught with other men, their pants down and meth cooking on the bathroom counter.
I wonder how future generations would feel about this. I say this because icons Leno and Letterman might be less known (in my opinion) because of the advancements of high speed internet and video game consoles that are basically computers.
That’s true…We already care a little LESS about late shows as a generation. Especially compared to older generations, who made it a nightly tradition to gather around and watch the late shows with Carson, etc.
I think a big difference would be what happened with Letterman was really none of our business and Polanski broke the law.
Did Letterman create an environment in which the women he wasn’t sleeping with felt uncomfortable? We don’t know because the show has had women succeed there and none of the women who worked there have said that. Was it selfish to risk creating that kind of environment just to get his rocks off? Definitely. Was it an abuse of power? I don’t really know because I think office romances are a lot more complicated and wide-spread than most people want to admit.
I do think Letterman expressed some pretty genuine remorse for what he did. If he hadn’t, I’d second guess my respect for him. Polanski made good movies. Letterman’s a great interviewer and comedian. Their “products” are unrelated their moral flaws. Only in the case of Polanski, he was victimizing someone, so it makes me not want to support that other side of him. With Letterman, he owned up to a failing that’s not ours to forgive. He can’t apologize for sexual harassment or creating an environment of male-dominating power abuse if no one involved felt that was the case, but I feel like people keep expecting him to.
“Did Letterman create an environment in which the women he wasn’t sleeping with felt uncomfortable? We don’t know because the show has had women succeed there and none of the women who worked there have said that.”
I don’t think you’ll feel that way once you read the article that I referenced to: http://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/features/2009/10/david-letterman-200910?currentPage=1
Nell Scovell – former writer for Letterman – says she was DEFINITELY uncomfortable and that women having sex with Letterman and other high-up men at the show were given breaks or favored over women who were just doing their jobs.
I also like that article because she points out how astonishingly sexist – or, to be fair, “lacking female writers on staff” – the late shows are.
However, I do agree that Letterman’s was more of a “none of our business” type deal, especially in comparison with Polanski, of course. But the more I hear about the Letterman affairs and the conflict it caused in the workplace, it makes me wonder WHY we didn’t really care…Yes, he’s just a late show host, not a politician or a priest. But I think it’s fair game to think twice about it since Letterman is the one who brought it out in the open on air.