Letterman's Legacy

Comedy may be humanity's salvation, at least on this earth.

If you're like me, you find a lot of your laughs on late-night talk shows. Some say the medium's too formulaic and dying, or completely changing, due to advent of the internet and streaming technology. I don't know how much of that is true, but I do know I'm something a late-night talk show junkie. I've spent a handful of days watching the previous night's episodes of every host's show. Yep, all of them. Why? Why not? What's life without laughter?

For a week (for anyone born before 1990 at least), we all knew exactly how empty that felt.

September 11, 2001 stunned America, and we didn't know what was right any more, what normalcy was or should be, if we would ever get back to it and what it would look and feel like. The late-night talk shows, Saturday Night Live and seemingly anything with a laugh track went completely dark for a week. It wasn't okay to laugh, not that anyone really wanted to -- but we surely needed to. My 15-year-old self was chief among them.

No one in entertainment or Hollywood seemed to know when it would be okay to laugh again, to just live life again. It's a president's job to lead and comfort a nation, but even a president is powerless when it comes to determining when it's okay to chuckle while there's a gaping void in your city blocks and your countrymen's hearts. Nope. Only the instincts and astute observation of a seasoned comedian, a court jester, one that had his finger on the American pulse every night for decades, could determine that. Maybe it had to be one who could see the still smoldering ruins of collapsed skyscrapers from his own place of work, his backyard.

After being in the dark for a week, Letterman turned the lights of his, and seemingly every other comedy show, back on. His 9/11 Monologue wasn't particularly funny, nor was his episode. It was thick with grief, anger and confusion with just bits of laughter sprinkled in. In other words, it was the perfect transition into a post-9/11 world, one where it was okay to laugh again.

Within that monologue he gave a quote that rocked me, one of those ten or so quotes that inspires and sustains you for life: "There's only one requirement of any of us, and that is to be courageous. Because courage, as you might know, defines all other human behavior. And, I believe -- because I've done a little of this myself -- pretending to be courageous is just as good as the real thing."

Picture courtesy of Adweek

It was 2008, and I was flying in the belly of a CH-47 Chinook Helicopter surrounded by Special Forces Green Berets fast approaching what would surely be my first combat experience. I was completely out of my league. These bad asses had infinitely more training than I, a mere regular Army, convention soldier kid. They had been through the most rigorous training in the world. Nearly all had been tested in the conflagration of combat dozens of times over. I was nothing short of a liability; I was the weak link. If something went terribly wrong, surely it would be my fault, warrior blood on my hands.

When that reality set in, I started shaking like a leaf. Luckily it was early morning and the back hatch of the Chinook was open, throwing in a constant stream of frigid wind eddies that chilled us to the bone. One SF Soldier noticed my shaking and gave me the thumbs up/down signal, asking if I was alright. I used the universally recognized "I'm freezing" gesture. He seemed to buy it. I didn't.

I don't know what came over me shortly after that wordless exchange. I started to hear Offspring's "Hammerhead" song playing in my brain. I got amped, pumped the fuck up and suddenly felt every bit of he Green Beret they were, though I so clearly was not. In other words, I played pretend and convinced myself that in that moment and for the duration of that mission that I was indeed courageous. I performed well; I wasn't a weak link.

During future combat missions, for the few I ever went on, I didn't have to fake courage anymore but only because I ever feigned courage in the first place.

That's what I look like when I'm "pretending to be courageous."

I'm not saying his poignant words crossed my mind in that arctic belly. They did not. They didn't have to. I had already internalized them. I felt them. I've been pretending to be courageous in every facet of my life off and on ever since. He's right; it's truly just as good as the real thing.

There's another point in his monologue that has never left me: "We're told that they were zealots fueled by religious fervor... religious fervor and if you live to be a thousand years old will that makes any sense to you? Will that many any goddamn sense?

David, I've only lived just shy of 30 years. But in those few dozen years that include 27 months of time spent in Afghanistan I can definitively say to you, no, it never will make any goddamn sense.

But your turning the lights back on September 2001 and ushering back in comedic entertainment and just showing it was okay to laugh among our friends and family made the world make a lot more sense again. That 15 year old in me will never forget it, it's a big reason I'm a late-night talk show junkie and it's a shame after tonight you'll never turn your show's lights back on.