Letterman’s after more than laughs

ASSOCIATED PRESS

NEW YORK — It took all of seven seconds for David Letterman to cut Rod Blagojevich off at the knees during the disgraced politician’s “Late Show” appearance last week.

The episode was a reminder of Letterman’s least-appreciated skill. The monologue is fun, the “Top Ten” list an inspired creation, but often the best work on the “Late Show” comes when Letterman interviews the people invited to sit across from him.

Letterman rarely avoids or glosses over difficult subjects, drilling in with a journalist’s tenacity that he sometimes masks with a self-effacing attitude, and sometimes not.

He uses humor to lighten a mood or make a specific point. His personality rarely allows him to conceal what he’s really thinking, setting him apart from most journalists.

Many of those qualities were in evidence when the former Illinois governor stopped by on his impeachment media tour.

“Why exactly are you here?” Letterman opened, summing up popular bewilderment about the impeached governor’s appearance schedule.

Blagojevich unwittingly served up a straight line, telling Letterman that he had been wanting to be on his show in the worst way for a long time.

“Well, you’re on in the worst way, believe me,” Letterman responded.

That was it. Blagojevich was impossible to take seriously from that moment.

But they did settle into a serious conversation, and for an entertainment show, the “Late Show” came well prepared, playing a tape of Blagojevich and his brother talking about a payment.

His administration is accused of trying to shake down seekers of state contracts for campaign contributions.

Blagojevich suggested many of the details used against him were taken out of context.

“So, now, as I recall, there were 13 articles of impeachment leveled against you,” Letterman said. “So you’re telling me each one of those was a misunderstanding?”

Later, Letterman used a laugh line to deflate another Blagojevich assertion that he had done nothing wrong.

“Do you use shampoo or conditioner?” Letterman asked the helmet-haired politician.

Letterman’s show hearkens back to talk shows of old hosted by Jack Paar, Johnny Carson and Dick Cavett, where discussions often were more than just entertainers hawking their latest projects, said Neal Gabler, author and cultural critic. As an interviewer, Letterman can cut through the thickets, he said.

“He does to a limited extent with political interviews what he did earlier to a talk show in general, “ Gabler said, “which is deconstruct it.”

Letterman rode John McCain hard in last year’s campaign, even after the GOP candidate acknowledged his error in canceling an earlier appearance.

He confronted McCain directly about people in the candidate’s past when the Republican talked about Barack Obama’s associations.

The talk show host also took a personal approach by asking McCain if he really thought Sarah Palin was the best person to be vice president. “In your gut, in your stomach — you’re a smart, tough, savvy guy — if I were to run upstairs and wake you up in the middle of the night and say is this really the woman to lead us?” McCain said that she was.

Letterman is equal in stature, or higher, to most everyone who comes on the show, and this gives him a certain amount of freedom to break through convention, said Rob Burnett, one of the “Late Show” executive producers.

Guests don’t expect the same treatment they’d get on “Meet the Press,” he said.

“He has an ability to take things in an odder and sillier direction than a journalist,” Burnett said. “He can make points in very powerful ways by being funny.”