Ichabod's Kin
A place for politics, pop culture, and social issues

Dave and Roman got unwanted headlines due to one’s recent,
and the other’s past, misbehaviors. It all launched a national
review of the social and workplace obligations of those who
“hold power” over others who are underage or in their employ.
Thankfully, in a month or so Tiger Woods would rescue them
from all the attention

Do we hand it to Dave for turning raunch into ratings; or blame jilted boyfriend “Joe” Halderman for blowing his act of revenge; fault Stephanie Birkitt for sleeping with her boss; or impugn the public for eating up this mess of prurient porridge as if it were good?

Some say there are matters of greater import to be concerned with, but ugly is in the eye of the beholder. It distracted us from Roman Polanski, for one thing. And this is beyond Dave and his ship of fools on late-night:  it’s a tip of the iceberg on relations between men and women in the workplace, and not a simple one at that.

Letterman’s not the first to use his celebrity and hire-and-fire power to shag all female underlings in his employ; he thinks it’s because he’s just to die for, but dress him up as a greasy-cap-wearing dude, pumping gas at an Alabama crossroads, and not a gal in the world will notice him. But he’s in tinsel-town, where women think Larry King is “sexy” with the garish suspenders he wears at 9 p.m., before Dave is even out of bed.

Poor Joe now knows that hell hath no fury like men, too, when scorned. And Stephie will not be the last woman to misgauge her employment options or fall in love with the unattainable; did she think she’d be the queen of Dave’s table, and not just hustling scraps that fall therefrom?

Do these people have educations? Has she heard of the women’s movement? Doesn’t Joe know that when you go mano a mano against a celebrity, you’re the one everybody will love to hate? As for Dave the Knave, he has nowhere to go but Up, since celebrities are America’s royalty: not that we fail to see or hear their evil, but that we don’t care–just serve us another dish of entertainment to talk about around next day’s water cooler.

Dave didn’t ‘fess up because it was the moral thing to do, but to get control of the issue before Joe went public with Stephie’s “un-mailed”but revelatory letters, full of rosy thoughts amid purple prose. Lucky Dave: not only do we know that he goes about with his pants down, but exactly his taste in women–with many more to be outted, we may be sure.

They say Clark Gable was driven to women “beneath” him, and given the star status of such studs, one would think Clark would’ve angled for a roll in the hay with the younger Queen Elizabeth, and Dave with maybe Queen Noor.

Let’s just say it has more to do with the power in such relationships, and that works both ways. Letterman has the power to hire and fire, and how unfortunate that is in the hands of so doofish and insensitive a man. The women, it is said, fear for their jobs. How noble: is it really that bread may be snatched from mouths of hungry babes–or is it the chance of being bedded by a TV Prince, or dreams, someday, of being his Leading Lady? Joe’s just odd-man-out here; with one foot in a hole of rejection, with the other he stepped on a banana peel, and the rest is his hapless history.

Polanski may be a helluva film maker, but otherwise possessed of some goofy
lapses in judgment. Here’s a guy who manned up to admit plying a minor with champagne (mm-hmm) and having his way with her, and signed off to pay her a half-mil so she would know it was worth it–then ran away from a sentence of a mere 42 days in the slammer, putting him forever on the fly; now in his dotage they nab him to pay the piper. Stoo-pid. Plus we don’t know if he ever forked over the 500K heretofore mentioned.

Thus, Roman did it right the first time, then fouled his own nest again. Dave did wrong to begin with, but abra-cadabra!–turned it to gold with his Midas Touch and the help of his amoral audience. You gotta love the whole friggin’ lot of ‘em.

Stephanie needs to know that all that glitters is not gold, that her body and self-respect are worth more than imagined, and to consider the spouses that she and others gals hurt. Yep, Dave’s wife is in the news too, but who cares, her role in all this is not sexy enough for significant mention.

There are many women who make better choices in life and one could
wish they’d knock a few heads among the Stephanies of this world. But women need for men to join in the rant too, so that such star-chasers will stop thinking that is what all men “want.”

As if that’ll ever happen. So don’t hold your breath.