Sometimes, when someone steps down from the limelight, they really change their looks, their image, their everything.
And so it is that Late Night talk show host David Letterman, who did nightly comedy for more than three decades, has changed his looks in a major way! I recommend that you open up the link down below and see the picture for yourself, although to offer a clue, he bears a striking resemblance these days to the jolly old man who goes down chimneys to give children wonderful gifts during a certain holiday. I do not want to give it away, but just take a look for yourself!
Letterman is indeed still around, even though he looks different, and he is living his life in a different capacity than ever before.
Yes, he would have a lot to say about the Trump presidency right now. In fact, he wishes that he had the opportunity to interview the president for at least an hour, and even one hour and a half, as he is confident that he could really dish it out, and force Trump to take it.
Of course, that is not about to happen right now.
Still, he offered some thoughts about Trump and his still new administration, and answered a question about turning Trump and his team into a punchline:
"I guess it’s a possibility. On the other hand, Donald Trump can be Donald Trump, but if he doesn’t help the people that need help, then he’s just a jerk. That press conference that he held berating the news media? I mean, how do you build a dictatorship? First, you undermine the press: “The only truth you’re going to hear is from me.” And he hires the Hunchback of Notre Dame, Steve Bannon, to be his little buddy. Bannon looks like a guy who goes to lunch, gets drunk, and comes back to the office: “Steve, could you have just one drink?” “Fuck you.” How is a white supremacist the chief adviser to our president? Did anybody look that up? I don’t know. How’s this interview going? Do you think you’re talking to a normal person here? Don’t I seem like I’m full of something?"
Trump has risen to the status of president now, although Letterman admits to not taking Trump all that seriously for a long, long time before that. In that regard, he certainly is not alone, as plenty of people (myself included, admittedly) undermined Trump and never took him seriously, viewing him as a buffoon-like figure, for all intents and purposes.
"I always regarded him as, if you’re going to have New York City, you gotta have a Donald Trump. He was a joke of a wealthy guy. We didn’t take him seriously. He’d sit down, and I would just start making fun of him. He never had any retort. He was big and doughy, and you could beat him up. He seemed to have a good time, and the audience loved it, and that was Donald Trump. Beyond that, I remember a friend in the PR business told me that he knew for a fact — this was three or four presidential campaigns ago — that Donald Trump would never run for president; he was just monkeying around for the publicity. So I assumed that was the story and now it turns out he’s the president. Now, who owns New York?"
However, he is critical of some late night comedy show hosts these days, and took a jab at Jimmy Fallon in particular for that now infamous interview where he messed up then candidate Trump's hair on national television.
He denied that he was criticizing Fallon, though:
"I don’t want to criticize Jimmy Fallon, but I can only tell you what I would have done in that situation: I would have gone to work on Trump. But the thing about it is, you don’t have to concoct a complicated satirical premise to joke about Donald Trump. It’s not, “Two guys walk into a bar …”
From a personal perspective, I think that Seth Myers has been far better in how he handles Trump than Fallon was, and that is why I, for one, would much prefer watching Seth Myers than watching the overly safe Fallon, who really goes out of his way to avoid any potential Pandora's Boxes that could hurt his ratings and compromise his "King of Late Night" status.
Letterman mentioned another, very different, kind of late night comedy host who never shied away from the political, Jon Stewart:
"I wouldn’t say that, but he made it so that not doing political stuff got to be the elephant in the room. And also it was having Monica Lewinsky and President Clinton. It was hard to ignore that. We’re always looking for the easiest path, the most obvious joke. Bill Clinton having sex with the intern, well, that’s not comedic heavy lifting. After that it became George W. Bush, and I thought he was funny in a harmless way. I mean, Dick Cheney was the guy to keep your eye on at a party, because he’d be going through your wife’s purse. But George W. was nothing but fun."
He also gave kudos to Saturday Night Live for their handling of Trump, and felt that this kind of helped the situation out a bit. Maybe it did not balance everything out, but at least it gave a bit of breathing room. Here he is, talking about Lorne Michaels:
"This guy is now the prince of New York. People are waiting in line to thank him for what he’s doing to Trump. He’s given us a little breathing room. He’s loosened the noose. And the scary goddamn thing is that Don would like that not to be the case."
This was an interesting interview from a guy who we really have not heard much from ever since his departure from late night television.
So, if you remember watching Letterman over the years, then maybe you should take a look at this interview, which presents a bit of a different, more candid side to the former Late Nite talkshow host than you likely have seen before.
Here is the link:
IN CONVERSATION: DAVID LETTERMAN BY DAVID MARCHESE, March 5, 2017:
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