From New York, It's The Late Show SCANDAL With David Letterman!

I have been a huge David Letterman fan for a solid two decades now, yet I have pretty much viewed this recent extortion "scandal" as a non-event since day one. I just find it uncompelling and totally underwhelming that a late night talk show host would have multiple affairs especially if he's always been known to be flirtatious and consistently turns into Don Draper (of Mad Men, for the uninitiated) whenever the likes of Julia Roberts and Drew Barrymore come into his show. I just found no reason whatsoever to pay attention to any of it.

Some guests blush at Dave's advances, some just flash him.

Drew Barrymore is his most versatile guest.

Then of course Stephanie's name comes up. Stephanie?! Monty?! (as Letterman inexplicably likes to call her on the show) The oft-uninterested Letterman segment go-to girl?! Un-fucking-believable!

Like many of Letterman's senseless and absurd gimmicks, I somehow found it exciting whenever Stephanie showed up for any Late Show segment. Whether it was her mimicking her ex-boyfriend dancing to Rod Stewart's "Don't Ya Think I'm Sexy?", or half-assedly covering the Winter Olympics, or answering one of Letterman's insipid phone calls, she always ends up effortlessly funny for some reason.

When the name "Stephanie Birkitt" got involved in this supposed scandal, I was instantly hooked. Now there's an angle! Talk show host having affairs with co-workers: boring. Talk show host having an affair with intern-turned-cult-favorite: compelling stuff. It makes me want to go to Youtube right now to rewatch all those Stephanie segments and look for possible new subtexts in her exchanges with David Letterman. Yes, I have absolutely nothing better to do.

Hold on...

Wait...

Okay, found one:



See? That clip is automatically 10 times better now (the alleged extortionist was described in the news as "Stephanie Birkitt's ex-boyfriend"...uh-oh). Not that I think Stephanie has suddenly made this issue "scandalous" in any way. I mostly find this funny and amusing, especially from the perspective of someone who watches the Late Show religiously. I won't, however, find anything "scandalous" about this story ever, unless someone ends up being murdered or something.

One of the most abused words this decade has got to be "SCANDAL". We even reached a point here in the Philippines where the word got routinely inserted after any random place and...voila! You got yourself a quote-unquote scandal! Dumaguete, La Salle, Jolibee...represent!

What does the word mean in the first place? Webster's defines "scandal" as:

a circumstance or action that offends propriety or established moral conceptions or disgraces those associated with it.

In the Philippines, and even in the U.S. (as the Letterman story demonstrates), it seems that the only action or circumstance that is deemed offensive anymore is sex. That's pretty much it. Everything else is fair game. Our dear president wastes millions of pesos in a swanky New York restaurant and no one cries "scandal". Sure, everyone's up in arms, but the word "scandal" curiously never gets thrown into the discussion. Meanwhile, her silicone implants gets discovered and, yes you guessed it - SCANDAL!

It's actually quite fascinating how similar we are with the U.S. in terms of attitudes towards sex. Ostensibly, it doesn't seem that way - taking a look at their porn industry alone is staggering - but their mainstream society isn't that far off from ours. Puritanism is still very much ingrained in both countries. While we have the MTRCB and the CBCP, the U.S. has Evangelical Christians and the Republican Party.

All we need to know about our attitudes towards sex seemed to have been fleshed out singlehandedly by Hayden Kho, or to be more precise, the scandal named after him. It was one of those cases where the "scandal" label was actually appropriate. Personally, I found it scandalous for one reason and one reason alone: that Hayden Kho was actually sleazy enough to videotape his trysts without the women knowing it. I, along with some people I know, found it infinitely compelling for a completely different reason: that this internet age has allowed us to see a commercial model with an elegant and squeaky clean-image suddenly turn into an unwitting porn star (something that couldn't have happened 20 years ago).

On the other hand, it was interesting to hear other people's reasons for deeming it scandalous:

a.) that Hayden Kho was actually sleazy enough to videotape his trysts without the women knowing it

b.) that these people who weren't married to each other were having sex with each other

c.) that they were doing...um...unwholesome stuff

So after years of Britney Spears, TFs (Titillating Films, for the uninitiated), Baywalk Bodies, FHM, Wowowee, Eat Bulaga, Viva Hot Babes, etc., The Hayden Kho Scandal showed us that some apparently still get shocked and indignant over unmarried people having sex with each other. Either that or they're just big hypocrites.

So if these people exist by the millions, both here and in the U.S., then maybe it isn't that shocking to know that a talk show host's affairs can still be considered shocking. In fact, at the end of the day, I still can't see anything shocking or "scandalous" about this issue, even after Stephanie became involved. If anything, it's just weird and funny; in the same way that "Would You Like To Eat A Sandwich In Dave's Office?" or "Will it Float?" or "Is This Anything?" or "Would You Like Some Gravy With That?" or any random Late Show segment is weird and funny.

It all boils down to perspective. There are other "circumstances" and "actions" out there, far more heinous and consequential, that I consider "offensive" to my "established moral conceptions".

I have now officially broken my record for most sarcastic quotation marks used in a single blog entry. Thank you, thank you very much.

photo from: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/mediatechnologyandtelecoms/2821793/David-Letterman-says-pants-to-Jay-Leno.html#