Last Laugh

David Letterman's account of being the object of a blackmail scheme was extraordinary -- raw, discomfiting, honest, and periodically hilarious. About his relationships with female staff members, he said, "Would it be embarrassing if it were made public? Perhaps it would, especially for the women!" Describing his initial panicked reaction to the perpetrator's threat to reveal his affairs in a screenplay and book unless he forked over $2 million, Letterman said, "I'm a towering mass of Midwestern Lutheran guilt." But he got over that, and demonstrated to guilty politicians and entertainers everywhere how to take care of business. He called the cops and fessed up, and now somebody's going to get to write a genuine prison memoir.