Nell Scovell, one of a handful of women who has ever worked as a comedy writer for David Letterman — or any of the late night comic talk shows — contends that an atmosphere of sexual harassment routinely exists on those shows:

Without naming names or digging up decades-old dirt, let’s address the pertinent questions. Did Dave hit on me? No. Did he pay me enough extra attention that it was noted by another writer? Yes. Was I aware of rumors that Dave was having sexual relationships with female staffers? Yes. Was I aware that other high-level male employees were having sexual relationships with female staffers? Yes. Did these female staffers have access to information and wield power disproportionate to their job titles? Yes. Did that create a hostile work environment? Yes. Did I believe these female staffers were benefiting professionally from their personal relationships? Yes. Did that make me feel demeaned? Completely. Did I say anything at the time? Sadly, no.

Here’s what I did: I walked away from my dream job. The show picked up my option after 13 weeks; then, about two months later, while looking for a nicer apartment, I realized I didn’t want to commit to a yearlong lease. I’d seen enough to know that I was not going to thrive professionally in that workplace. And although there were various reasons for that, sexual politics did play a major part.

As Rachel Sklar points out, Scovell isn’t some unsuccessful woman blaming her woes on her sex: “She created the TV series Sabrina, the Teenage Witch and has written for Coach, Murphy Brown, Monk, N.C.I.S., Charmed, The Critic, The Simpsons and Newhart. And Late Night with David Letterman.”   Indeed, as Scovell notes in her piece, she was the story editor for Newhart when she was hired to write for Dave.

Melissa McEwan, Don Surber, and Ed Driscoll all bring different perspectives on this but still agree this was sexual harassment.  So do I.

But here’s the thing:  I don’t know what you do about it.

Letterman controls these people’s careers, so for him to have sexual relations with them is problematic and opens him and his company up for lawsuits. Sexuality creates incredible tension and problems in a workplace.  Ideally, then, we would just treat each other as colleagues rather than as potential romantic partners.  But people like this spend an inordinate amount of time at work and attraction does happen. Supervisors and subordinates not only become sexually intimate but fall and love and build lives together. It happens all the time.

In larger offices, this is reasonably easy to fix.  People can move laterally to avoid senior-subordinate relationships.  But in a small team like a 14-person comedy show staff?

Scovell’s solution is to hire more women.  She reports that there are currently zero women working on any of the major shows (Letterman, Leno, and O’Brien — no mention of Colbert and Stewart).   But, as a practical matter, having zero women markedly reduces the chance of sexual harassment!  With more women on the staff — something that otherwise seems a no-brainer given the number of women in the audience — there’s more chance for relationships to form and resentments to foster.

So, there’s the law, human decency, and the way things ought to be.  But there’s also human nature and the power of romantic and/or sexual attraction.  These things often conflict.

David Letterman was the victim of an extortion attempt and took a novel approach: going public.

Michael Schneider for Variety:

On the show, Letterman sat down behind his desk and asked his audience whether they wanted to hear a story — and the crowd enthusiastically cheered, not knowing what they were about to hear.

According to the host first received a package three weeks ago from someone who claimed to have information about alleged sexual relations he has had with female employees of the “Late Show.” “I get to looking through it and there’s a letter in the package and it says, ‘I know that you do some terrible, terrible things. And I can prove that you do these terrible things.’ Sure enough, contained in the package was stuff to prove that I do terrible things,” Letterman said on Thursday’s edition of CBS’ “Late Show.”

The host said the alleged extortion suspect claimed he planned to write both a movie screenplay and a book based on what he knew — that Letterman had engaged in sex with staffers. “He’s going to take all the terrible stuff he knows about my life — and according to this packet, there seems to be a lot of terrible stuff he knows about — and he’s going to put it into a movie unless I give him some money,” he said. “That’s a little hinky. I just want to reiterate how terrifying this moment is. Because there’s something very insidious about, is he standing down there, is he hiding under the car, am I going to get a tap on the shoulder?”

Letterman said the individual threatened to go public with the allegations unless Letterman paid the person $2 million. The host, under advisement of his attorney, met with the man on three different occasions. According to Letterman, the suspect even made it clear he knew what he was doing was illegal. Letterman told his audience that he then contacted the Manhattan District Attorney’s Special Prosecution Bureau.

They then set up a sting operation, arrested the perpetrator, and Letterman testified before a grand jury.

As part of the testimony, Letterman admitted that he had engaged in sexual relationships with staff members. “My response to that is, yes I have. Would it be embarrassing if it were made public? Perhaps it would,” Letterman said. “Especially for the women. But that’s a decision for them to make if they want to come public and talk about the relationships.

And:

This is not the first time Letterman has been the victim of an extortion attempt. Police revealed a plot in 2005 to kidnap Letterman’s baby son, Harry, for a $5 million ransom. House painter Kelly Frank was later charged with the crime. Letterman has been married to Regina Lasko, the mother of his child, since March. The two have dated since 1986.

Letterman has also been a stalking victim.  All of which, I suppose, is the bizarre price of celebrity.   And it gets more bizarre, if this Radar report is accurate.

An NYPD source has told RadarOnline.com that the suspect under arrest in the David Letterman extortion case was a producer for CBS’s 48 Hours, Robert Halderman. Halderman often went by his middle name Joe and currently has a residence in Connecticut.

[...]

RadarOnline.com has also learned that the alleged extortionist lived with one of the woman who David was involved with. The affair happened a long time ago, before his son Harry was born, and before he got married, but he was living with his wife to be at the time.

AllahPundit wonders, “Why acknowledge the extortion on the show, though? Even if the news broke in the papers, a studious silence would have led at least some people to believe that the accusations against him were bogus.” Presumably, going public gets the story behind him more quickly and garners some sympathy. Plus, he clearly doesn’t seem to be embarrassed by his own misdeeds here.

President Obama has gone on virtually every network but Fox in a weekend tour de force that continues tonight:

The president’s week-long media blitz has left no other network behind. The president has appeared on CBS’s “60 Minutes,” Bloomberg and CNBC and will appear on five public affairs talk shows on Sunday: ABC’s “This Week with George Stephanopoulos,” CBS’s “Face the Nation,” NBC’s “Meet the Press,” CNN’s “State of the Union” and Univision’s “Al Punto, con Jorge Ramos.” And he’s doing CBS’ “Late Night with David Letterman” on Monday.

This has some wondering if he’s not overdoing it a mite:

With or without an appearance on Fox, the president’s media blitz is without precedent. Presidents rarely appear on Sunday talk shows; none has ever appeared on so many in one week. And no sitting president has ever been a guest on “Late Night with David Letterman.”

Dana Perino, who served as White House press secretary for President George W. Bush, says the president risks “diluting the bully pulpit” by doing so many interviews in such a short period of time. “The next time they really want to pack a punch, they might have to ask [former House majority leader] Tom DeLay if they can cut in on ‘Dancing with the Stars,’” Perino told ABC News.

It’s a concern echoed by Dee Dee Myers, former White House press secretary for President Bill Clinton. “More isn’t always more when it comes to a president’s words,” Myers told Politico. “This is something they need to start to be concerned about.”

The White House dismisses talk of overexposure. “The president is seeking opportunities to speak to a diverse audience about the importance of comprehensive health insurance reform,” Earnest said. “The more that people learn about what he actually supports, the more people support the plan.”

Howie Kurtz sums up the president’s ubiquity:

Sure, this is a president who has dissected basketball brackets on ESPN, gone for burgers with Brian Williams, showed Steve Kroft his swing set, dissed Kanye West (off the record) with CNBC and ordered a general to shave Stephen Colbert’s head. By that standard, Obama’s Sunday blitz was a mere throat-clearing that, as it turned out, produced little in the way of big news. And some journalists — even as they continue to clamor for access — say he is diluting the product.

“It’s simple,” explains White House communications director Anita Dunn. “In an increasingly fragmented audience that gets information from a number of different sources, putting a huge amount of his time behind one medium increases our ability to really break through and get a message out. The effect of one interview, given how rapidly the news environment moves, doesn’t last as long as it used to.”

But is there such a thing as too many?

While the White House plan was for Obama to focus primarily on health care and Afghanistan, he broke no new ground on either subject, repeating points he has made many times. Some topics varied — “State of the Union” host John King asked about North Korea; “This Week” host George Stephanopoulos asked about the ACORN scandal — but the game plans were strikingly similar.

The first clips released by the networks — and picked up in news stories — showed the hosts were especially interested in a subject the president has been trying to avoid. They all asked about the recent chatter that some of his critics are motivated by racism. And Obama’s answers took on a certain sameness.

Ronald Reagan famously managed the message by giving very controlled access and basically giving the press no choice but to run with the sound byte of the day since if the president says only two sentences that day, whatever he said is by definition news. But that was before multiple 24/7 cable networks, blogs, TMZ, and all the rest. Maybe the world has just changed.

Veteran Democratic communications strategist Chris Lehane agreed, arguing that for Barack Obama there is no such thing as overexposure. “It’s the Angelina Jolie phenomenon,” said Lehane, a former spokesman for Vice President Al Gore. “People don’t get tired of seeing Angelina Jolie.” Is Lehane comparing President Obama to Angelina Jolie? “Yes. He is a natural talent,” Lehane said. “People do connect with him.”

The president as sex symbol famous for being famous is perhaps just the natural evolution of things.

As we discussed on last night’s edition of OTB Radio, Sarah Palin is a story that simply refuses to go away.  Despite the campaign being long over and her return to Alaska, where she had managed to live without notice in the lower 48 for years, controversies surrounding her continue to crop up.

Has a failed vice presidential nominee every stayed in the news cycle nine months later?

We had the seemingly-never-ending David Letterman kerfuffle (see “Letterman Palin Jokes Cross the Line” and “Palin Ignored Worse Jokes Than Letterman’s.”)

There was even a mini-scandal over Sarah Palin’s toenails, of all things.

This week, a Vanity Fair piece dusted off stories of infighting inside the McCain-Palin campaign and CBS News is rehashing it as well.  I don’t much care about the story, frankly, but I’m bemused by much of it.  Despite having believed from Minute 1 that the Palin was an awful choice for the VP nomination, the idea that she had some duty to do whatever campaign manager Steve Schmidt instructed because he was “the commanding general” is absurd.  Clearly, though, a lot of people on Team McCain bear a lasting animosity towards Palin, as if they blame her for losing a campaign that was so out of reach that they picked Sarah Palin as running mate.

Palin also managed to garner attention from a recent spread in, of all places, Runner’s World.  First, it was because she looked a little un-governorlike in some of them.

Now, there’s concern in some circles that she used the American flag as a prop:

This one, too, strikes me as rather silly.  But the upshot of all this, I think, is that Palin has crossed the line from politician to pop culture celebrity. A handful have done while retaining their gravitas.  Palin hasn’t. And while she’s had some “help” in this regard, she’s largely done it by her own choices.

UPDATE: Amusingly, I no sooner finish this post than see Jim Geraghty has written a post dubbing Palin “The Angelina Jolie of Politics.”

Today almost everyone faces some sort of challenge in balancing work and family; I don’t know too many people who believe there are sufficient hours in a day. And then along comes this woman who’s made all of these “conservative” choices and now has an amazing career, a supportive husband, a beautiful family, great health and appearance, and she bears it all, including the inevitable hard times, with pluck and a smile, as far as we can tell. (For all we know, perhaps behind closed doors, Sarah Palin screams into a pillow when it all gets to be too much. But what we know about her suggests she relieves her stress by shooting moose.)

A short while back, Los Angeles Times columnist Meghan Daum suggested, only half-jokingly, that actress Angelina Jolie’s “entire Oscar-winning, serial-adopting, Brad Pitt-snagging, plane-piloting, unattainably hot-looking existence makes women around the world feel hopelessly inadequate and therefore unhappy.” Perhaps Sarah Palin is the Angelina Jolie of the political world.

In her opponents’ minds, Palin’s made all the wrong choices, and cannot, they insist, be very bright. Yet she’s happy and successful. She is an anomaly that invalidates their worldview, and for that, they attempt to immiserate her — regardless of whether she wishes to run for national office again.

I think that’s one leap of pop psychology too far.

While I’m willing to defend HuffPo’s discussing Sarah Palin’s Toenails for reasons outlined yesterday, I think David Letterman’s quip about her “slutty flight attendant look” is pushing it a bit far.

Still, Palin’s a public figure and a grown-up.  Jokes about Palin’s 14-year-old daughter being “knocked up by Alex Rodriguez”?

Way over the line. Even if the butt of the jokes was Alex Rodriguez. Kids are off limits. Period. Whether it’s Amy Carter, Chelsea Clinton, or the Obama girls, the extent of the commentary permissible is how cute, sweet, adorable, precious, and clever they are. ( If they aren’t cute, you’re not allowed to say so. If you think they’re hot now that they’re grown up, I suppose that’s fine.)

Adult children of politicians who have become public figures by virtue of going into politics themselves or actively campaigning on the issues, like Mary Cheney?  Fair game.  The Bush girls off at college?  Borderline.   Minor children?  See above.

That said, I stop well short of going where same in the blogosphere have gone.  Letterman’s a decent fellow. He’s not a pervert. He’s been doing monologues for a national television audience for thirty years and has a very solid reputation as a professional and as a human being.  It was just a bad joke that crossed a line.  But he should apologize and show a little better editorial judgment from now on.

UPDATE:  Letterman apologizes.  Or clarifies.  Or, well, something:

Camp Palin apparently took the joke to be a crack against Palin’s 14-year-old daughter Willow, who had recently attended a Yankees game, but Letterman insisted today that the real target was 18-year-old daughter Bristol.

“We were, as we often do, making jokes about people in the news and we made some jokes about Sarah Palin and her daughter [Bristol]… and now they’re upset with me…” Letterman says on tonight’s show. “These are not jokes made about her 14-year-old daughter. I would never, never make jokes about raping or having sex of any description with a 14-year-old girl…. Am I guilty of poor taste? Yes. Did I suggest that it was okay for her 14-year-old daughter to be having promiscuous sex? No.” Saying he hopes he’s “cleared part of this up,” Letterman extended an invitation to Palin to come on the show as a guest.

Making fun of Britol’s out-of-wedlock pregnancy is still rather tasteless.  She’s a technical adult and has taken steps that make her a public figure.  But still. As AllahPundit puts it, “He’d never condone statutorily raping a girl who’s underage. All he meant to do was goof on the idea that Palin’s eldest daughter, a single mother with a baby, is a whore.” (Given that no discussion of money being transacted was involved, I think “slut” is the operative word.)

Here’s a video of the whole clip:

A good line: “There are thousands of jokes I regret telling on this program.”

I was scouring the op-ed pages of the papers today and came across a David McGrath piece in the Washington Post introduced with the blurb “When was the last time you saw or heard a writer credited at the end of a speech by John McCain or Barack Obama?”

I clicked through, expecting a piece expressing bemusement over CNN’s commentators last night continuing to point out the Matthew Scully wrote Sarah Palin’s VP acceptance speech when nobody bothered to point out that Obama, Joe Biden, and others didn’t exactly write their own speeches, either.

Instead, McGrath had a much more substantive point:  Why is it that we accept ghost written speeches at all?

He notes that we universally decry term paper mills and that public figures are routinely excoriated for passing off others’ words as their own in just about every other circumstance.  And the arguments excusing ghost writers — they’re paid, they consent to let others use their words, everyone knows it happens — apply in cases we deplore.

Can voters this year be sure they learned something about the real Sarah Palin from her GOP vice presidential nomination acceptance speech last night, considering news that it was originally written by speechwriter Matthew Scully over a week ago for an unknown male nominee? The commissioned draft was subsequently customized by Palin and a team of McCain staffers in the 48 hours leading up to its presentation.

Psychologists, composition teachers, college admissions officers and personnel directors all know that when it comes to extracting truth and character, there is no more reliable indicator than a person’s original, written words. Why, then, as we watch two finalists compete for the most important job in the world, do we tolerate their lip-syncing of someone else’s creation?

If contemporary political candidates cannot find time to write all their speeches, the way Teddy Roosevelt or Abraham Lincoln did, they should at least craft the major ones. And when they must use speechwriters, they should credit the writer at the conclusion so the public knows the true source of the work.

Now, it’s not clear that being a gifted writer of prose necessarily translates into executive leadership.  And, one could argue that, since we’d never be certain that candidates didn’t get surreptitious help with their speeches, we might as well do away with the pretense.

And, I’d argue, professional speechwriters are more akin to the behind-the-scenes writers who work for Jay Leno, David Letterman, Jon Stewart, and others than term paper mills.  The point of a political speech isn’t — as with a college paper — to demonstrate mastery of writing skills but rather to convey a candidate’s message effectively to a wide audience.

Still, McGrath has a point.  Even if people theoretically know that candidates don’t write their own lines, we all fall into the psychological trap of acting as if they do.  We credit them, not their handlers, for getting off good zingers in the debates or a particularly funny line in a speech.  That’s true, of course, for the standup comic as well.  But politicians are not, at least in theory, mere showmen.

From my favourite band:

And just look at all that hair! On Dave, I mean. But, yeah, Michael, too.

John McCain stepped on his own presidential announcment on last night’s Letterman Show, saying that American troops killed in Iraq have been “wasted.”

Republican presidential contender John McCain, a staunch backer of the Iraq war but critic of how President Bush has waged it, said U.S. lives had been “wasted” in the 4-year-old conflict. Democrats demand the Arizona senator apologize for the comment as Sen. Barack Obama did when the Democratic White House hopeful recently made the same observation.

“Americans are very frustrated, and they have every right to be,” McCain said Wednesday on CBS’”Late Show With David Letterman.”"We’ve wasted a lot of our most precious treasure, which is American lives.”

McCain, who is the only one of the significant candidates for the GOP nomination not at CPAC, certainly isn’t going to win any points with the conservative base with this one. And given his staunch support of the war, he’s obviously not going to draw a lot of votes from war opponents. I’m not sure what he hopes to accomplish by saying this kind of thing.

The Great Escape Clause Edition OTB Caption Contest^TM is now over.

(AFP/Andrew Yates)

The Winners:

First: Michael Demmons – Liquor Store’s open!

Second: Anderson – This year, only two tourists were trampled in the annual Running of the Kringles.

Third: SgtFluffy – Quick guys, RUN!!! It’s the ACLU!!

Honorable Mention:

Hermoine – The reindeer strike galvanized Santa to clone himself and do away with the whole caribou thing.

Barrett Metzler – First one to the house gets the milk and cookies.

Don McArthur – Department of Homeland Security identifies ‘devious yet ingenious’ jihadist plot to infiltrate U.S.

Venomous Kate – “Nobody at the Santa parade knew who was responsible for putting Ex-Lax in the eggnog…”

Kevin Murphy – Outsourcing hits the North Pole

elliot – Not wanting to waste one minute, these Santa’s hurry to the nearest brothel, after all they only come once a year.

yetanotherjohn – The ‘dress like Santa’ day certainly seems more popular than the ‘talk like a pirate’ day.

Rodney’s Bottom of The Barrel

“Yep, Abramoff has been pretty hard to replace.”

It takes a Santa village to amaze a child.

Black and white and red all over.

David Letterman’s How Many Men in Santa Costumes can you Get Into Congress contest was more successful than anticipated.

New on Fox, Santa Run, starring Marion Barry as the Snowman

The Thursday contest is already smoking.

TMZ has a very blurry video of what purports to be Michael Richards launching a bizarre, racist tirade at a black member of his audience.

Richards, who played the wacky Cosmo Kramer on the hit TV show “Seinfeld,” appeared onstage at the Laugh Factory in West Hollywood. Kyle Doss, an African-American, told TMZ he and some friends were in the cheap seats and he was playfully heckling Richards when suddenly, the comedian lost it.

The camera started rolling just as Richards began his attack, screaming at one of the men, “Fifty years ago we’d have you upside down with a f***ing fork up your ass.” Richards continued, “You can talk, you can talk, you’re brave now motherf**ker. Throw his ass out. He’s a nigger! He’s a nigger! He’s a nigger! A nigger, look, there’s a nigger!”

The crowd is visibly and audibly confused and upset. Richards responds by saying, “They’re going to arrest me for calling a black man a nigger.”

One of the men who was the object of Richard’s tirade was outraged, shouting back “That’s un-f***ing called for, ain’t necessary.”

After the three-minute tirade, it appears the majority of the audience members got up and left in disgust.

One would think.

Here’s the video:

Even compared to the infamous Mel Gibson rant, this is quite inexplicable.

Update: Shakespeare’s Sister writes, “I’ll never be able to watch an episode of Seinfeld again without thinking about that loathsome tirade—and I certainly won’t be completing my collection of the series on the DVD, lest another penny of my money end up in his pocket.” I’m generally able to compartmentalize my views of performers’ personal lives and their entertainment value; otherwise, I would be boycotting most of Hollywood. (I won’t be buying the Seinfeld DVD’s, either, but then I wasn’t before this.)

She links an interesting CNN report on the incident at YouTube which, interestingly, does not allow embedding but works at the moment on the site. Richards is back at work at the comedy club, it seems.

Meanwhile, Pajama Media’s Tel Aviv correspondent quips, “[I]t’s not like his career can afford to take the hit. But who knows? Maybe Mel Gibson has a part for him in his next movie.”

A pretty good discussion is going on in the comments sections at both Althouse and Unfogged, too.

UPDATE: Richards offered a lame apology on Letterman.

He called two black hecklers the “n-word” and enthusiastically referenced a time when blacks were often victims of civil rights abuses, but Michael Richards said his verbal barrage during a stand-up routine was fueled by anger and not bigotry. “For me to be at a comedy club and flip out and say this crap, I’m deeply, deeply sorry,” the former “Seinfeld” co-star said during a satellite appearance for David Letterman’s “Late Show” in New York. “I’m not a racist. That’s what’s so insane about this,” Richards said, his tone becoming angry and frustrated as he defended himself. Richards described himself as going into “a rage” over the two audience members who interrupted his act Friday at the Laugh Factory in West Hollywood.

His explanation was reminiscent of Mel Gibson’s assertion that he wasn’t anti-Semitic after he let off a barrage of Jewish slurs during a traffic stop last summer: despite what came out of his mouth, that’s not what is inside him.

Industry colleagues were in no hurry to accept Richards’ apology.

“Once the word comes out of your mouth and you don’t happen to be African-American, then you have a whole lot of explaining,” comedian Paul Rodriguez, who was at the Laugh Factory during Richards’ performance, told CNN. “Freedom of speech has its limitations and I think Michael Richards found those limitations.”

Veteran publicist Michael Levine, whose clients have included comedians George Carlin, Sam Kinison and
Rodney Dangerfield, called Richards’ remarks inexcusable. Comics often face hecklers without losing their cool, he said. “I’ve never seen anything like this in my life,” Levine said Monday. “I think it’s a career ruiner for him. … It’s going to be a long road back for him, if at all.”

It’s ironic that Sam Kinison’s former publicist is outraged by this, as Kinison’s entire act was over-the-top misogyny. And I disagree with Rodriguez that the use of the “N-word” exceeds the boundaries of permissible free speech.

Still, speech has social consequences and Levine is likely right that this will cause substantial damage to Richards’ career.

Gone Hollywood

This is probably a few weeks old but I just stumbled on it:

I just received a press release entitled, “Ten reasons to vote for Hillary Clinton for president.”

Mike Wiley, author of the new non-fiction book “Diary of Hillary’s Right Wing Conspirator”, has just placed on his “freedom” website a “David Letterman” style Ten Reasons to vote for Hillary Clinton, so that Americans who are too busy paying for the free health care of illegal immigrants, can get the message. And here they are:

1) Destruction of Israel – They cause trouble all the time, we won’t miss them. There only Jews, right Hillary!

2) Acceleration of world terrorism – World Socialists need Terrorists to keep America in check.

3) Nuclear Proliferation of North Korea, Iran and Syria – Hillary supports Nuclear power for the new “Axis of Evil”

4) $5.00 per gallon gas – I take the subway so I don’t care and the states need the tax revenues.

5) End of talk radio. If no one is going to voluntarily listen to Left Wing radio then no one will be allowed to listen to conservative radio.

6) Mandatory Health Care – Hey its free, no one pays for it right?

7) Mandatory gun control – Then only the criminals will have guns and half the problem will be solved.

8) Texas will be given to Mexico – One less Red State to lose.

9) Communist Chinese will run all our ports – They donate more to the Clintons, then the Arabs did.

10) Bill Clinton to be the First Male First Lady – Unemployment of interns will be lower.

This is some embarrassing, ungrammatical nonsense.

I’m hardly a fan of Hillary Clinton or the Democrats but is simply outrageous to charge that she favors 1, 2, 8, or 9. As to the others:

4. Hillary doesn’t take the subway. She’s rich and has a driver. It’s true that many Democrats think we should tax gasoline at confiscatory rates to get the prices up to European and Japanese levels and force conservation and the search for alternative energy.

5. I’m not sure of her position on talk radio but there is a significant segment of Democrats who would like to see the reinstatement of the Fairness Doctrine, which would have something like this effect.

6. It’s true that she favored some variant of a single payer system, although I’m not sure of her exact policy stance now.

7. Glib but not entirely out of bounds.

10. Okay, he’s got me on this one.

Surely, we can find legitimate reasons why conservatives might be opposed to Hillary Clinton without making up nonsense?

When I saw the headline, “Hatch Guilty of Failing to Pay Taxes,” I naturally presumed that Utah’s Orrin Hatch was in some trouble. It turns out to be the naked hairy guy from the first season of “Survivor.”

Richard Hatch, who won $1 million in the first season of “Survivor,” was found guilty Wednesday of failing to pay taxes on his winnings. Hatch was handcuffed and taken into custody after U.S. District Judge Ernest Torres said he was a potential flight risk. He also was convicted of evading taxes on $327,000 he earned as co-host of a Boston radio show and $28,000 in rent on property he owned. He was acquitted of seven bank, mail and wire fraud charges.

Hatch, 44, faces up to 13 years in prison and a fine of $600,000. Sentencing was scheduled for April 28.

[...]

More than five years after winning, Hatch remains reality TV’s most famous villain, the man viewers loved to hate. He first captured their attention for shedding his clothes on “Survivor,” prompting David Letterman to call him “the fat naked guy.” But he made the biggest impression — and won the show — by scheming his way to the top. He reveled as squabbles among his fellow contestants thinned their ranks, connived with teammates to stick together then pitted his allies against each other.

Early on, he used his success on the show to get more work, including a “Got Milk?” ad and an appearance on “Survivor All-Stars” — where he was voted off by fellow contestants. He also appeared on TV game shows, including “The Weakest Link.” That appearance, made on behalf of Horizon Bound, netted a $10,000 donation to his charity camp — money prosecutors said was among the funds misused.

But Hatch’s shrewdness did not serve him well in the legal world. A year ago, prosecutors offered him a deal: plead guilty to two counts of tax evasion and they would recommend less than the maximum 10-year sentence.

As with the Dukes of Hazzard, making his way any way he knew how was just a little bit more than the law would allow.

At long last, our long national nightmare is over: Oprah Winfrey and David Letterman have ended their 16-year feud.

Granted, until a few days ago, I never realized they were feuding but it’s now over. According to AP entertainment writer Jake Coyle’s account, Letterman was exceedingly gracious, catching Winfrey by surprise.

“I can’t thank you enough,” Letterman said Thursday. “It means a great deal to me and I’m just very happy you’re here.”

“Does it really?” asked Winfrey. “I’ve been hearing for the past week you talking about it, and I didn’t know if you were really serious or you were just doing your `Dave thing.”‘

But Letterman proved his intentions were earnest, discussing in-depth Winfrey’s efforts to lend support to communities in Africa and the good intentions of her syndicated program, “The Oprah Winfrey Show.” “You have meant something to the lives of people,” Letterman said. “We’re just a TV show.”

The approach clearly caught Winfrey off guard, as she repeatedly exclaimed, “I can’t believe you’re being this serious!”

“What do you want, Tony Danza?” quipped Letterman, alluding to another fellow talk show host who waited in the wings as a “stand-in host.”

To cap off his gallant reception of Winfrey, Letterman escorted her during the show taping to the premiere of “The Color Purple,” which opened Thursday across the street at the Broadway Theater. Before walking her out, Letterman said, “I think we’ll just pencil you in for the next 16 years.”

Clearly, Letterman is going soft.

Early reviews of Winfrey’s musical, by the way, are excellent.