The creepy Letterman post

You probably know by now, but David Letterman, after receiving a gentle nudge from a friendly blackmailer, recently confessed to having seduced a number of nubile underlings. Letterman himself acknowledged that his behavior was “creepy.” And, as more and more comes out, that certainly seems to be the case. Vanity Fair’s Jim Windolf, for one, doesn’t seem surprised. In his opinion, the warning signs have been there for years. I don’t know that I buy Windolf’s analysis, but it makes for interesting reading. Here’s a clip:

…At around the same time—there were twelve instances between 1994 and 1997, to be exact —Late Show hit its viewers with a character odder, more disturbing, and not quite so laugh-inducing as Jimmi Simpson’s Lyle the Intern. It was a fascinating wreck of a man played by Letterman himself. It was known as Creepy Dave.

Creepy Dave was like some botched, Frankenstinian clone version of Letterman himself. (Thanks to Kansas City Star television reporter Aaron Barnhart, who runs the great TV Barn, and his sometime associate David Yoder, for helping me track down this long lost Letterman character.) There he was, looking lost on the other side of the false window that is part of the Late Show set. He would stare at the host with something like longing—or was it envy? And desk-protected Dave would attempt to shoo him away, commenting on his double’s creepiness all the while. Creepy Dave was the underside of Letterman; in his varsity high school jacket and baseball cap, he looked like some sort of American Elephant Man; he was the uncouth and monstrous version of the man who had successfully hidden himself inside a solidly built and highly remunerative stage persona, a construct that has begun to crack only in the past week or so, after a three-decade run…

The best part of the article is at the end. Windolf links to an audio clip of Letterman appearing on Howard Stern’s radio show in 1996. Anyway, the segment is genius, and here it is for your listening enjoyment.

[This post was brought to you by Lyle the intern and Creepy Dave.]