Should David Letterman Be ‘Canceled’ For Sexist Interviews?

Everything we can't stop loving, hating, and thinking about this week in pop culture.

View in Browser Subscribe with Kevin Fallon Everything we can't stop loving, hating, and thinking about this week in pop culture. This Week: That's not hot, Dave. Losing my mind over the Mr. Potato Head nonsense. A very important Dolly Parton update. The only Oscar campaign I care about. Bowing down to Jane Fonda, as always. Revisiting the Icky Letterman Interviews  One of David Letterman's own quotes is on the screen at the start of the episode of My Next Guest Needs No Introduction in which he interviews Kim Kardahsian: "My irritating personality is timeless."   Remember that quote. I'll get back to it. I swear.   The reason for revisiting Letterman's interview with Kardashian, which premiered on the streamer in October, is the recent spate of past Letterman interviews that have re-emerged and gone viral. They're from when he was host of The Late Show. And they are all with female celebrities who, like Kardashian, were tabloid mainstays. This happened after the recent Framing Britney Spears documentary detonated a sort of crisis of conscience about how cruel, unforgiving, violent, and, above all, misogynistic the media had been to Spears, and the ways in which we as consumers were complicit in fanning the flames.  In the documentary, people are aghast at the different lines of questioning Spears faced from journalists like Diane Sawyer or that European interviewer who asked then-teen Spears about her breasts. It was a wake-up call to how we normalized invasive sexism and exploitation. It also was occasion to reconsider how other stars have been treated over the years, surfacing past examples of interviews that are similarly shocking when viewed through the hindsight of today. And it happened that the interviewer who kept coming up was Letterman. One of those examples was his 2007 interview with Paris Hilton, who spoke this week on her podcast about feeling humiliated by him. Her emotional realization came in the wake of watching Framing Britney Spears. At the time of the interview, Hilton was a comedy punching bag, having recently served time in prison. She says in the podcast that she was told Letterman would just ask one question about it. Instead it became the only thing he talked about.  "He just kept pushing me and pushing me and I was just getting so uncomfortable, and I was so upset," she said. "It was just very cruel and very mean." A similar interview that went viral was with Lindsay Lohan from 2013, during which Letterman badgered the star about her rehab stint and sobriety despite the fact that she was visibly upset. Not only did she appear blindsided, but the sniveling tenor of the conversation fortified the stigma around addiction. The permission and entitlement he seemed to display reeked of misogyny. Of course, that's after viewing it through our 2021, #FreeBritney-branded woke glasses. Now more than then, when the interview actually played as funny, you can't help but admire how well Lohan handled herself. She's remarkable. But also, I worked in entertainment journalism at the time. I remember that this interview didn't just escape criticism for being sexist. It was actually lauded.  Letterman's interview skills were celebrated for getting her to "go there." He got the scoop every media outlet was after: Lohan talking about rehab. It was a triumph, not a scandal. The same can be said about his interview with Hilton, which has often been exalted as one of the greatest late-night interviews of all time—a designation we'd cringe at now.  That is why it's not exactly fair to place the blame on Letterman, who truly is one of the best celebrity interviewers and does have a knack for what's become a lost art form in the increasingly PR-staged and vapid talk-show interview format. We were all entrenched in the deplorable mindset that this was OK, blinded to reality because we were all enjoying the amoral delusion. It's not just young starlets, by the way. I don't know why this, of all late-night moments, sticks out to me, but I have a visceral memory of Letterman and bandleader Paul Shaffer orchestrating a bit when Julia Roberts appeared on the show in which they tried to get her to confirm a recent break up. Shaffer, after some goading from Letterman, finally asked her, "You getting laid these days?" But it's because of this purported evolution and the hindsight we have now that I wanted to see what Letterman's recent interview with Kardashian was like.  Viewing it through this angle, I was stunned that it starts with somewhat of a mea culpa. "Years and years ago I, and I think I was not alone about this, probably joked about you and your show," he said. "Because I didn't know. And that's what I get paid to do, make jokes about that stuff. Everybody did. And here we are, and we're not laughing now." It's a fantastic interview. They talk about the fallacy of the idea of being famous for being famous. She talks about her relationship to O.J. Simpson and her experience during that case, her impression of the Trump administration after working with them, Caitlyn Jenner's transition, the sex tape, and the robbery in Paris.  Letterman makes her feel comfortable and underlines every intimate question he has for her with dignity and validation. It's probably why she's so candid. It's in stark contrast to the entrapment you see in the earlier Lohan and Hilton interviews. She's not made to squirm like they were, where dishing the way he wants was the only way out of the discomfort.  Sure, his "creepy old man" character was still there. But it's self-deprecating, not menacing. It's why I was so struck by that opening quote that flashed on the screen: "My irritating personality is timeless." Every moment of the Kardashian conversation feels like a Letterman interview. But it doesn't feel like those Letterman interviews.  It's a testament, to me, to how it's not a stretch for the media to still function as the media—probing and interested in scandal—without reverting to lecherous and abusive old patterns. Yes, there are fundamental, systemic changes that have to be made. But small calibrations can be seismic, too.  Letterman is an interesting figure to be at the center of this post-Framing Britney Spears discourse about the media's misogyny.  If today's cancel-culture instinct is to scream "off with their head!" at the first whiff of something problematic, then Letterman has escaped the guillotine a few times. After a blackmail scandal, he confessed in 2009 to having sex with his female employees. He was accused of fostering a toxic workplace environment for female staffers, especially writers. And now these videos have resurfaced. Of course, Letterman may be so venerated as to be non-cancelable, and his contrition has seemed genuine. It makes him and his legacy, which is still being dissected and considered, a test case for how things do or do not change over time. Is he a hero in this story just because he was nice to Kim Kardashian? No. But the uncomfortable interrogation he targeted at those starlets this time being aimed at him is, in some ways at least, progress. One last thought on all this, kind of making the point that we were all in this then, and we've all tried to evolve our thinking since. On her podcast, Hilton also called out Sarah Silverman for making "vile, perverted" jokes at her expense around the same time as that Letterman interview, when Silverman hosted the 2007 MTV Movie Awards. They're gross. "Imagine if that happened today?" she said about those jokes. "It wouldn't." Here was Silverman's response in her own podcast, which I'll let speak for itself:  "She's right. I would never do those jokes today. I've actually dedicated the past several years to trying to do comedy that marries hard-hitting jokes with, you know, actual heart. Back then, the consensus seemed to be that was not possible. And I fully accept that. I came up in a time when talk show hosts and comedians hired to make fun of pop culture were roasting the biggest celebrities and pop culture icons at the time. And nobody was bigger than Paris Hilton.  So here we are in an awakened world, and I'm totally into it. It's how we grow. It's how we change. I'm super down with reflecting on the past and my part in perpetuating real ugly shit. And yes, we can continue to litigate the past, but I do believe that maybe that should be coupled with taking into account any growth that has come with those passing years." Does Mr. Potato Head Have a Penis or Not?!?!? The emails have not found me well this week.   Email sender: "I hope this finds you well!"   Me:  There are several reasons for this, most between myself, God, my therapist, and my bank statements. But there is also the swan dive into madness after being pushed off the cliff, once again, by Fox News' Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee of dumbass faux-outrage talking points: Wokeness and Cancel Culture.  The Dr. Seuss stuff is honestly too ridiculous to even get into, such a naked and lazy attempt to manipulate truth and logic into political scandal that it's like watching a blindfolded person search for a "triggered" button. On the other hand, the Mr. Potato Head stuff is SO ridiculous, I delight in mocking the lunacy.  Everyone's sensible Target-brand panties got into a bunch over toy company Hasbro's recent announcement that it was removing "Mr." from the Potato Head brand name to be more inclusive.  All the people on Facebook from your high school who failed biology but suddenly are experts in gender said a quick prayer to their patron saint Marjorie Taylor Greene and furiously typed out their social media sermons, furious about woke-liberal cancel culture and their ungodly insistence that everything, including their children's precious toys, be gender non-conforming. The reason I can't stop laughing is because these people are so stupid. They're so eager to seize any talking point for their political agenda and performative anger that they didn't bother to read what is actually happening. Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head aren't going anywhere, and neither are their designations as Mr. and Mrs. The brand is just no longer going to be called Mr. Potato Head.  Playsets and potato homes and whatever else there is in the "broader Potato Head universe," as Vox called it in its explainer and which I need to learn every single thing about, will be under the umbrella of the renamed "Potato Head" brand. Yes, the goal is to be inclusive, so that kids can choose to play with families of two Mr. Potato Head dads or two Mrs. Potato Head moms, but can you imagine being pissed off about that?  Besides, wait until they learn that spuds, in general, fall all over the Kinsey scale. Russets are typically heterosexual leaning, which explains why they have no taste. Of course, all sweet potatoes are gay. Purple potatoes: Mostly straight! Who'd have thought? Dolly Parton Still Out There Saving Us All We can, as a nation, finally breathe a collective sigh of relief. Dolly Parton has received "a dose of her own medicine," as her Instagram quipped in a caption for a four-minute video in which the legend narrates her experience receiving her COVID vaccine, taking a violent knee to the groin of anyone who refuses to get one while she's at it.  Parton, you'll recall, saved us all, as is her wont. She donated $1 million for research into what is now the Moderna vaccine, and in the video, she gets her first dose.    She's wearing a purple top with peekaboo shoulder cutouts, and I cannot stress enough how much she needs to market this. I would buy the Dolly vaccine blouse immediately. But more importantly, she is brandishing a flame torch of such passive-aggressive savagery, she might as well have been your sixth-grade bully on the playground.   It starts off subtle. "I've been waiting a while, and I'm old enough to get it, and I'm smart enough to get it," she says, before breaking out in a rewritten version of "Jolene": "Vaccine, vaccine, vaccine / I'm begging of you please don't hesitate / Vaccine, vaccine, vaccine / Cuz once you're dead, that's a bit too late." She laughs, but then lays down the law: "I'm dead serious."    Then the boss-level parting shot: "I just want to say to all of you cowards out there, don't be such a chicken squat. Get out there and get your shot." Somewhere in the Smoky Mountains right now, Dolly Parton is slow-motion walking away from an exploding building where presumably anti-vaxxers met to plan their rally.  Anyway, all hail Dolly, and this made me laugh: Iceland Awards Campaign It is my firm belief that the masterpiece of unabashed silliness Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga should be an Academy Award-nominated film. The people of Iceland stand with me.  The people of Húsavík, the remote Icelandic town the characters played by Will Ferrell and Rachel McAdams in the Netflix movie are from, have launched their own FYC campaign to get the climactic ballad from the film's climax—aptly named "Húsavík"—nominated for Best Original Song. They even made an adorable video to explain why the song, the film, and a potential Oscar means so much to the town, which relies heavily on tourism dollars and had been economically hurt by the pandemic. (Watch it here.)   Gotta give the Icelanders credit where it's due: They're so creative and authentically themselves they manage to make even an award-season campaign, among the crassest tenets of the entertainment industry, seem cozy, cute, and noble.  This Maya Rudolph Photo Will Add Years to Your Life On the occasion of Jane Fonda being among the only watchable parts of last week's disastrous Golden Globe Awards ceremony, I would like to share with you one of my favorite Jane Fonda moments, ranking just higher than when I watched her deliver a speech at the Women's March during a blizzard at the Sundance Film Festival in Utah. (I nearly passed out because it was so cold but stayed conscious because the fabulousness of the cowboy hat she was wearing sustained me.)  I worship her. (Make sure to scroll down.) The Real World revival: What a time to stop being polite! (Now on Paramount+) Coming 2 America: Completely nostalgic, fan-servicing, and fun. (Friday on Amazon) Critics Choice Awards: Legitimate in every way the Golden Globes are not. (Sunday on The CW) Oprah With Meghan and Harry: A CBS Primetime Special: This is my Super Bowl. (Sunday on CBS) Boss Level: They really think we have any patience for Mel Gibson trying to be an action star again. (Friday on Hulu) Advertisement © Copyright 2021 The Daily Beast Company LLC 555 W. 18th Street, New York NY 10011 Privacy Policy If you are on a mobile device or cannot view the images in this message, click here to view this email in your browser. To ensure delivery of these emails, please add emails@thedailybeast.com to your address book. If you no longer wish to receive these emails, or think you have received this message in error, you can safely unsubscribe.