If I can be accused at all of sentimental idolatry, it is for David Letterman. And like a big little pussy, I've been crying all week leading up to and including last night's finale. Because:
I've watched Dave every night since I can remember. He began intelligently goofy and fiercely witty. Irreverent and sarcastic and funny. There were things on his show you never before saw, like Brother Theodore, by whom I was mesmerized. But Dave was story, an epic, it would turn out. Our hero was was flawed, as in human. Over time, years, he'd succumbed to bitterness. There were entire years he was painfully unwatchable. His heart surgery saved him some, but Harry saved him eternally (and maybe the intervention of antidepressants, but nonetheless). Dave, at the end of this arc, is resolved. There is no greater elixir of love than traveling with your hero through hell and back, especially when back is such loveliness. We so rarely get heroes at all, much less the arc of redemption. Maybe the Iliad, or the Odyssey, I don't know, I never read these.
I've spent more hours with Dave in the last 30 years then with my own family. There were days, many, when the only time I laughed that day was while watching Dave.
Dave after 9/11. Dave after surgery. Dave continuing to have on certain guests well past their prime in respectful homage to those who came before. Dave in conversation with the best and brightest, always engaging and well played, you'd wonder why this guy wasn't instead on PBS. Dave's famous on-air apology, showing everyone how it's done. His one-liner response to Rod Blagojevich's opening statement remains one of the quickest, right-on moments he's given us. Dave was the classiest guy on TV. He knew his place. That's why the final montage to the Foo Fighters had so many bygone guests, so clearly showing us: this era has passed, these people are gone, and this is the only guy who recorded this history so widely, so completely. The show is archive, and Dave was a proficient curator. No one could have done it better.
Thank Dave.
chapter 3.