Letterman, Imus, Stern

I saw a news report about an anti-Letterman protest in NYC. The people shown were as frightening as Obama supporters. One should advise against overkill. It is wise to keep one's attacks proportional or one can easily turn the aggriever into the aggrieved.

Bill Clinton was gracelessly attacked by Kenneth Starr and the news media and those attacks solidified his approval ratings. Like most Americans, I saw the Starr hearings as a witch hunt, a fishing expedition, a giant farce. I never voted for Clinton but I felt sorry for him and I had no sympathy for the petty people who publicly humiliated him.

Something similar might happen with Letterman. The people outside the CBS studio were chanting "perv" and calling him a sex offender. People, your greatest weapon is the truth. Letterman is to be despised because he is spineless, gutless and ballsless but his verbal attacks on a 14 year old girl were anything but sexually motivated. Nor is Letterman part of a widespread conspiracy against women and his comments do not promote the sexual abuse of anyone (I would take exception to Palin's comments on this issue but then again that was not Governor Palin talking, it was Mother Bear Palin talking. She has more license.)

As with Don Imus before him, Letterman's larger sin is that he has ceased to be funny. You can get away with anything if you are funny. Howard Stern gets away with much more edgy material than his rivals because he is not simply outrageous; he is outrageous in a humorous way.

Imus got run off the air for calling the Rutgers basketball team "a bunch of nappy-headed ho's." That line is DOA. No comedian who ever lived could make that line work because there isn't even an element of humor to it. "It's the difference between 'your momma's so stupid she has to call information to get the number for 9-1-1' and 'your momma sucks.' Imus's comment did not even rise to the joke level.

But Imus's non-joke was delivered in the context of declining ratings and a career that was always of dubious quality. Imus's slogan could have been "I am not Howard Stern." People who hated Stern wanted a Stern-Lite to knock the King on his ass. Imus was that guy. But Imus never delivered the goods. He was the Joey Bishop of radio who just kept going and going and going.

Whereas Imus was never funny, Letterman is a bona fide has been. He was probably always bitter but for years he masked his bitterness in humor. When the humor vanished a decade or so ago, we were left with distilled bitterness and bad ratings. Dave never regained his edge.

Letterman, Imus, Opie and Anthony: their downfall was never "going too far." Their downfall was a chronic lack of humor. When Howard Stern is no longer funny, he might join the list. But for now, Stern is king. You can get away with anything if you are funny.