David Letterman was blackmailed $2m for having adulterous sex in the past with women who worked on his chat show. One day he found a mysterious letter on the back seat of his car which threatened to expose his promiscuity through a book and a film screenplay. Letterman recounted this incident live on his chat show to an audience who laughed sceptically. Police have since arrested a suspect following a sting.
The story as told by the Guardian then recalls a number of other intrusions the $31m per year king of television has suffered in the past. The first was about a stalker called Margaret Ray:
The star has had to contend with a number of stalkers during his career. In 1998, Margaret Ray, who has schizophrenia, spent two years in prison and a mental institution for breaking into his home and driving his Porsche. She then killed herself by kneeling in front of a train.
By kneeling in front of a train. She didn’t jump in front of the train, as we’re used to hearing; she made a decision, and carried out her plan with clarity and composure. She knelt (kneeled) and waited. Nor did she sit. She wasn’t haphazardly resting or idling while waiting for her train, she was kneeling.
What a disturbing image. People kneel when they pray, it’s a profoundly thoughtful act. Getting hit by a train should be a spontaneous act, a decision as explosive as the impact, a crudely concluded fuck-it and bang. But here the image is eerily contemplative, the gesture frighteningly humble.
Kneeling. It jars in the sentence, it jars in the punchy article, and it jars in the world of American television whose hyperactive audience can’t tell a confession apart from joke.
Tags: adultery, blackmail, David Letterman, guardian, kneeling, margaret may, mental illness, prayer, schizophrenia, stalker, suicide
