Letterman’s Admission and the Decline of Shame

Writing in The Daily Beast, Rebecca Dana contends that by avoiding the use of euphemisms in his announcement of his sexual affairs, David Letterman “has perfected the art of disclosure.”

When David Letterman confessed last week to having had sex with women who work on his show, the real shock wasn’t the affairs themselves (I mean, honestly people) but rather the language he used to describe them.

“I have had sex with women who work on this show,” he said.

He didn’t euphemize. He didn’t dissemble. He didn’t confess alcoholism, drug addiction, or personal weakness. He didn’t appeal to Jesus or the state of New York; didn’t define simple verbs, praise his in-laws, haul out his wounded spouse or dwell on how much he’d let everyone down. It was the most skillful handling of a sex scandal in the modern era.

via Letterman’s Immaculate Confession – Page 1 – The Daily Beast.

Dana contrasts Letterman with Mark Sanford, Eliot Spitzer, John Ensign and other politicians who cloaked their admissions with evasive language. “All of these men had sex. But none of them plainly mentioned the fact of it, as if `seriously sinning’ somehow softens the blow.”

Dana’s observation is accurate but myopic. Letterman not only broke no law but is allegedly the victim of a crime, while Spitzer and Ensign may have been guilty of violations and Sanford had disappeared. More importantly, a frank admission based on the Letterman model would have been useless to these men. Does Dana really believe that if Spitzer had said “I was having sex with high-priced call girls” his `perfect disclosure’ would have helped him weather the storm any more easily?

The real implication of Letterman’s admission is that for a large and growing segment of the population, shame is an outdated concept, a vetigial idea from a disappearing world. Whole ranges of behavior that just a generation ago needed to kept secret out of fear of embarrassment and humiliation are now forgiven, accepted and even encouraged. Young people live their entire lives on Facebook with no fear of reproach. Various empowerment efforts mitigate the stigma of a disadvantaged background. Struggles with drugs and alcohol are causes for therapy and ultimate vindication. Homosexuality, interracial relationships, children born out of wedlock, divorce–mere retro plot points on Mad Men. People don’t even bother to deny looking at internet porn. Ordinary girls go wild and bare  their boobs while starlets flash their labia. In the UK, where CCTV security cameras are prevalent, young drunks arrested for fighting outside pubs frequently ask police for copies of the tapes of their brawls.

Privacy is a crucial legal concept to those of us who remember when a person’s private actions could be used to cause him or her emotional, financial and even legal harm. But among young people, the domain of privacy is shrinking, and as it diminishes, the idea of shame is shrinking as well, and across all sectors. Is there any sense that the gang of bankers and brokers who brought on the financial collapse feel any shame? I’m not aware of any.

Letterman could get away with his admission because audiences have fewer moral expectations than electorates, and because his audience in particular simply had no expectation of faithfulness on his part at all.  He would have invited judgment had he acted ashamed. But younger people are getting older and older people are getting deader. One can well imagine in twenty years time a politician who’s being questioned about sexual misconduct looking into the camera and saying “Yeah, I did it. Haven’t you?”