Sam Wyskocil writes to ask…
I'm completely puzzled by this matter of McCain cancelling on Letterman and then doing an interview with Katie Couric. Joe Scarborough said on Morning Joe that the video Dave showed of McCain being made up to do Kouric's show was not live but was old tape from six hours earlier. I haven't heard that any other place. What do you think of McCain's decision to bail on Letterman? What are the ethics in a situation like that?
Well, the ethical thing to do is to show up and honor your commitment. If there's a reason not to, the ethical thing is to be utterly honest. If McCain had called Dave and said, "I'm sorry but I think it would be inappropriate for me to be on a comedy show today so I'm going to do an interview with Katie Couric instead," Letterman might still have been angry but it wouldn't have been due to what was apparently a lie. I say "apparently" because we didn't hear the Letterman-McCain phone conversation and can only go by Dave's report on what was said. He claimed McCain insisted he had to fly right back to Washington…and then the Senator stayed in New York to do the CBS interview and, the next day, to address the Clinton Global Initiative over at the Sheraton Hotel in Manhattan.
Scarborough was wrong. It was a live internal network feed, as proven by the quotes coming out from CBS folks who are ticked off that Dave used it in his show. (As far as I know, no network has any rule about this…but they may institute one now.) You wonder what would have happened if Letterman had grabbed up the phone and at least tried to phone Katie Couric's studio at that moment. Maybe he wouldn't have gotten through to McCain or even to Couric but I bet it would have been amusing if he'd just been turned away by some CBS operator as he told her, "But you don't understand! John McCain told me he had to race to the airport and fly back to Washington…"
Letterman tapes at 4:30 in the afternoon. The cancellation from McCain came between 3:00 and 3:30, which is very tight. Over on a Dave newsgroup, Don Giller (probably the world's foremost authority on Letterman) reports that at the time, he was in Rupert's Deli, the little sandwich shop around the corner from Dave's studio that figures into so many remotes. According to Don, "[Rupert] told me that secret service had instructed him to close his shop early, so he sent his workers home. Just minutes before, he had just learned that McCain had cancelled, so he had lost a lot of business."
It would be interesting to know if Keith Olbermann was their first choice as a last-minute fill-in. Every show like that has a little list of people who are nearby and friendly and who can be called upon in an emergency. In the past, I believe Letterman's #1 go-to guy has been Regis Philbin. They may have called Olbermann first on this one because Dave wanted to spend the segment bitching about McCain so he needed someone who would join him in his disdain for the Senator. Chandra Wilson was also added as a guest. (The McCain interview had been scheduled to take up most of the show.)
Incidentally, this whole episode points up one of the weaknesses I think Letterman has had in his show for some time. He's been taping his Friday episodes on Mondays so he can't address current events on them. A lot of folks probably tuned in last night to hear him continue his McCain bashing…but not a word, of course, was said. I'm hearing that this is not going to happen next week; that Dave is going to back to taping Friday's show on Friday, at least for a while.