I'm a David Letterman fan. My appreciation for him as a late night icon has grown even greater in reent years.
Sure, some of his schtick is lame. His penchant for making fun of certain people's physical shortcomings can be annoying. Height deprived guys like Tom Cruise and New York City mayor Bloomberg get skewered all the time in Letterman's opening monologues. The hair lid on top of a certain egocentric rich guy is featured regularly. Okay, in the Trumpster's case, the personal ridicule is welcome. Nobody deserves it more...
The thing I love about Letterman is he's willing to book serious guests and empathise about serious subjects. The other day, he went off without warning about fracking - the gas industry practice of extracting natural gas by pumping seriously toxic chemicals into the ground to loosen up trapped gas deposits. Problem is, that toxic slurry ends up contaminating underground aquifers, doing incredible damage to the lives of the locals affected. When late night comedian, David Letterman talks about fracking, the public's awareness rises, and so, ever so slightly, does the chances of a sensible public policy response.
About six weeks ago, Letterman had as a guest, Mohamed Nasheed, the duly elected President of the Republic of the Maldives, a cluster of resort islands off the southwest coast of India. Nasheed was deposed by his country's military a short time before his Letterman appearance, mostly becaue he was too vocal about the precarious state of his nation due to the specter of global climate change. The Maldives are at most a few tens of feet above sea level, and sea level is rising relentlessly and inevitably becasuse of climate change. All of the Maldive islands could be underwater in as little as fifty years from now. Well, the corporations that own the hotels and resorts in the Maldives don't want to discourage tourism. Can't have sensible public policy stand in the way of those tourism dollars. So, the hotel guys encouraged the local military to get rid of Nasheed, who was replaced by the previous President, who is a toady for the hotel owners. The main stream media gives the story minimal coverage. Long story short, Letterman steps up, gives Nasheed, the deposed President, a bigtime, late night forum to talk about global climate change.
It takes courage for somebody in the public limelight to take on powerful interests like the natural gas industry. It takes genuine awareness and also compassion to give a deposed President of an obscure nation a spot in late night media. Letterman has become a beacon. He stands for things that matter. For that reason alone, I'll take him over Leno any night.
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