In the hours and days since David Letterman's bombshell assertion that he was being blackmailed by a 48 Hours producer with whom he had shared a mistress, the shock has somewhat subsided, replaced by further tumbling skeletons, the taunts of Letterman's competition, and questions from an insatiably curious public -- to the tune of a nearly 40% surge in ratings for the Late Show.
Letterman has been carrying on as best he can, seeming even more disjointed, more caustic, more ironically detached than usual. Whether by accident or Divine design, Friday's guests -- Larry David and House's Olivia Wilde -- both managed to slip in references to the firestorm (even though both taped before his admission). When the subject turned to David's dating life, the Curb Your Enthusiasm star joked about breaking the TV star celibacy record -- "Besides you, of course, Dave" -- while Wilde cooed, "I'm sure lots of girls would live in a bus with you," after the host expressed disbelief that the beautiful actress would live with her Italian husband in a converted school bus on Venice Beach. Ah, if they could only be as blithely braindead as Kim Kardashian, who was his final guest the night of the big reveal, and whose bubble-headed recollections of her recent, diamond-trade-underwritten voyage to Africa seemed the perfect mental vacation from his current travails.
Meanwhile, Joe Halderman's attorney, Gerald Shargel -- who previously got John Gotti acquitted and defended Hamptons high-society murderer Daniel Pellosi -- appeared on Good Morning America today. He told Robin Roberts to consider the pedigree of the accused -- "at CBS for 27 years...an investigative journalist [who] knows all about cops and wiretaps." And what about that smoking $2 million check? Shargel claims that in the history of extortions, no one was ever "paid by check," and relishes his moment to get Letterman on the witness stand. Here's the interview: