Once celebrities retire from Hollywood can’t they just stay out of the spotlight from now on?
There should be a rule that once you fold your cards then the hand is over. You can’t just buy your way back into the hand because you caught something good. That’s not how it works.
And retired late night host David Letterman just made a ridiculous comment about Vice President Mike Pence that will make you wish he stayed gone.
NBC’s “The Tonight Show” has always been the king of late night talk shows with a string of hosts that included Johnny Carson, Jay Leno and now Jimmy Fallon. But David Letterman of CBS’ “The Late Show” will always be known as the host who revolutionized late night television.
When the show premiered in 1982, its ironic, irreverent, prankish sensibility brought a fresh new style to late night comedy. Then, after over 30 years on television, Letterman hung up his cleats, grew a long grey beard, and was whisked away down the path of retirement.
It didn’t take long for Letterman to be bored with his retired life because Netflix came knocking on his door for a new talk show called “My Next Guess” where he’s already interviewed former President Barack Obama, George Clooney and superstar rap mogul Kanye West.
Like many other self-infatuated celebrities, they just can’t help from bathing in the spotlight.
That’s why it wasn’t all that surprising when Letterman appeared on Howard Stern’s SiriusXM radio show recently to discuss the new coronavirus ravaging throughout the world right now. Particularly, he had a huge problem with Vice President Mike Pence photographed without wearing a medical mask last week when he visited the Mayo Clinic.
Letterman told Stern, “Now if you go to the Mayo Clinic because you have COVID-19, you really have it. [Pence] takes time off from his gig as a mannequin, and he’s walking around without a mask taunting these poor people who are bedridden and wearing a mask. To me, that is just taunting people who are ill, to see that guy walking around in his $40 suit walking around in the Mayo Clinic without a mask.”
There’s a lot to unpack about this hyperbolic take. Letterman appears to suggest that Covid-19 patients at the Mayo Clinic experience symptoms of the disease more acutely than others because it’s an elite hospital, but that’s disingenuous towards everybody else who has contracted it thus far.
At what point has Pence appeared to be a plastic clothing doll? Letterman infers that Pence is a lifeless doll who is only for show, but he mustn’t have gotten the memo that the vice president is in charge of the federal government’s coronavirus response.
He gets his information from some of the greatest doctors in the world. He doesn’t need a retired comedian telling him how things are done.
Why is it the end of the world if Pence doesn’t wear a mask? He’s not egging or “taunting people who are ill” simply because he’s in a hospital where the disease is being treated. Hospitals are taking extra precautions to make sure everybody at the hospital is kept at a safe distance from those infected by Covid-19.
David Letterman added that Pence’s decision not to wear a mask was “particularly a thorn in my side” because both the vice president and he were from the same state, Indiana.
In response to social media outrage, Pence’s office issued a statement explaining that he did not require a mask as he has repeatedly tested negative for the coronavirus.
The statement noted, “As vice president of the United States I’m tested for the coronavirus on a regular basis, and everyone who is around me is tested for the coronavirus. And since I don’t have the coronavirus, I thought it’d be a good opportunity for me to be here, to be able to speak to these researchers, these incredible healthcare personnel, and look them in the eye and say ‘thank you.’”
