Letter to Letterman: It’s Ok to Be Human

Comic David Letterman now admits “I could never be better than Johnny” & the whole showbiz gig made him a “worse person,” one even he didn’t like. Now living a quiet life in Somewhere’s Indiana, he’s found his “humanity.”

The Fox News story recalls how the former “Late Night” host, now 77, left the popular show in 2015 after 22 years making people laugh. It appears that during all that time, he wasn’t laughing with them. As he recently told GQ: “In show business, I [found] I had to be someone I’m truly not …. Maybe it’s only because I went through show business. I got that out of my system so that I can concentrate on being a better person ...” Looking back, “I just felt like personally, I have greater humanity than I did when I was in show business. It was all single-minded & great pressure, real or unimagined.”

Drinking heavily, Letterman notes, added to his reputation during the 80s & 90s of being a “miserable” man who had a gift for making others happy. Also weighing upon him constantly was “expectations to which I could not live up to,” and not achieving what I imagined to be – you take Johnny Carson, there’s never going to be anybody as good at that kind of show … So here I am thinking: ‘Oh crap, I am not going to be as good as Johnny. What am I doing here?’” After more than 2 decades of that self-doubt, Letterman walked into the sunset, but finally with a smile on his face. In the end, he said, “I realized that what I liked most was just talking to people.” So, a decade after retiring from Late Night, he’s not through working, now talking up a storm by hosting Netflix’s “My Next Guest Needs No Introduction.”  He explained: “Retirement is a myth … The human mechanism won’t allow you to retire. As long as you are healthy, you still want to produce … Once I stopped doing the show, it took me a couple of years to figure out … [what’s still] important to me.”

Davd Soul