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. . . . David Letterman . . . . .
He's dumped the dulled weapon of irony and become the
Leon Trotsky of Talk: The Last Late-Night Revolutionary.

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By Ken Tucker

July 20, 1999 | Given the irony that saturates his humor like blood in a sponge, it's fitting that the very title of this Salon People department makes something of a mockery of David Letterman at this stage of his life. After all, how many of you would agree, in 1999, that he has had a "brilliant career"? Looked at one way, Letterman has blown it. He lost out to Jay Leno in his quest to replace his hero, Johnny Carson, as host of "The Tonight Show," a failure documented in Bill Carter's 1994 book "The Late Shift," among whose many fascinating details was the fact that Letterman campaigned for the position by not campaigning for the position. It wasn't a matter of hubris, but rather the fact that it is simply not in Letterman's character to seek the favor of anyone, be it audience or network brass. (In Carter's book, Letterman assumed that even the execs he calls "weasels" would, through some combination of common sense and loyalty, give him the promotion he deserved.)

Since his subsequent move to CBS, Letterman hasn't beaten Leno since 1995, when Hugh Grant, fresh from a prostitution bust, gave Leno the exclusive interview that, for reasons that still beggar the imagination, put Leno's ever-increasingly dumbed-down, carny-show version of "The Tonight Show" on top of the late-night ratings heap and have kept it there ever since. Then there was the 1995 Oscar fiasco, when Letterman's hosting strategy -- a disastrous blend of New York-style lordliness and a misguided faith in the silly-absurd ("Oprah, meet Uma; Uma, meet Oprah ...") -- left most of the Hollywood audience, accustomed to a night of un-ironic stroking, glaring grimly and unamused. Add to this the fact that "Late Night With Conan O'Brien" and Letterman's own new follow-up act, "The Late Late Show With Craig Kilborn," trade on youth-cult references that frequently make "The Late Show With David Letterman" seem more like the Rest Home Where Bart Simpson's Grandfather Lives, and you've got yourself one aborted show-business trajectory. Anyone for clicking on "Stalled Careers"?

Read more about David Letterman at BARNES & NOBLE

But what I've sketched out above is merely the conventional wisdom on David Letterman, the interpretation put forth nowadays by most TV critics, industry observers and more than a few Leno fans. This is the view of Letterman from those who've stopped watching him; who are perennially more interested in following whoever's getting the most media ink or attracting the biggest ratings; who, indeed, didn't cotton to Letterman's ironic take on the talk-show role in the first place. I propose an alternative reality to everything stated above -- namely, that David Letterman is, right now, as funny as he's ever been (ratings be damned); that he is certainly the most important talk-show host of his era and arguably second only to Johnny Carson as the best of all time (more on Steve Allen and Jack Paar in a bit); and that Letterman -- and I'm convinced you can date this from the moment he flicked his contact lenses in the garbage can about 18 months ago and started wearing those little wire-rimmed glasses -- has jettisoned the dulled weapon of irony and is currently engaged in a kind of comedic guerrilla warfare that, if you were to pencil in a goatee on his face to complement those tiny spectacles, would render him the Leon Trotsky of Talk Shows: The Last Late-Night Revolutionary.

He is, of course, a highly unlikely anarchist. Born in on April 12, 1947, Indianapolis, to parents Joseph (a florist) and Dorothy (a homemaker), Letterman and his two sisters (one older, one younger) led the Midwestern idyll that breeds either contentment or wackiness, and in Dave's case, wacky won out. This, despite the fact, as he once told Maureen Dowd, "My mother, bless her heart, was the least demonstrative person God ever breathed life into." (Watching Dorothy over the years playing prim straight woman to many of Dave's stunts, including sending her to the Olympics as a correspondent, you have no trouble believing she is one cool customer. Gee, do you think this had any effect on the formation of Dave's own renowned reserve?) Letterman majored in semi-pro fooling around at Ball State University in Muncie (1965-70), hamming it up as a communications major on the campus radio station and on local TV. During his college years he also found time to marry, at age 21, fellow student Michelle Cook. The union collapsed in 1977 after the pair moved to Los Angeles, and Letterman has always taken the full blame: He was immature, too consumed with jump-starting his career. It's the real-life version of what Carter described in "The Late Shift" as Letterman's "penchant for self-denigration, no matter what was going on in his career."

Next page | He went the Hollywood comedy-club route with moderate success