Late Show

Appearing on CBS's Late Show with David Letterman on Tuesday, NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams heaped his idea of high praise onto CBS Evening News anchor Scott Pelley: "Scott grew up firmly in the Dan Rather school of journalism, which is a great tradition." [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump]

Despite that laughable reference to the disgraced former CBS News anchor, who was fired for using forged National Guard memos to smear President George W. Bush in 2004, Williams was quite sincere in his supposed compliment to Pelley. Letterman wondered: "Is he [Pelley] the tradition of the great Dan Rather?" Williams replied: "Oh, a student and acolyte. And I say that as a big, big fan of Dan and a friend of Dan's for many years."

Pelley has certainly followed in Rather's liberal footsteps throughout his journalistic career at CBS.

In a particularly sleazy allegation, David Letterman on Tuesday night alleged former President George W. Bush and former Vice President Dick Cheney “went soft” on finding Osama bin Laden “because they were worried about upsetting their Saudi Arabian royalty buddies.” Talk about a lack of civility and respect for elected officials.

Letterman’s impugning of the former administration came during a sit-down with NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams, just after Letterman charged “we invaded Iraq because Cheney wanted to help out his buddies at Brown and Root and Halliburton.”

While appearing on the Late Show with David Letterman, Mika Brzezinski took time to share her fondest memories growing up in a liberal household with father Zbignew Brzezinski, National Security Advisor to President Carter.  Brzezinski described the upheaval in her life when her father was appointed to Carter’s staff, saying that, “It happened overnight, and all of a sudden we were going to the White House all the time and traveling around the world because my parents believed it was important to do everything together...."  [Video coming soon.  MP3 audio here.]

Recently fired and disgraced liberal commentator Keith Olbermann boasted on CBS's Late Show Tuesday that he's a $10 million chandelier.

Rush Limbaugh on his radio program marvelously responded Wednesday saying, "Keith, you are not a $10 million chandelier. You're the guy wearing a $50 lampshade sitting in the corner of the room that nobody else wants to go in" (video courtesy Daily Rushbo follows with transcript and no need for additional commentary):

When you think of MSNBC's Rachel Maddow, do you consider her one of the smartest people in all of journalism today?

David Letterman does, and actually said so as he introduced her on Monday's CBS Late Show (video follows with transcript and commentary):

In the 7 a.m. et hour of Tuesday's NBC Today, news anchor Natalie Morales fawned over Michelle Obama's appearance on The Late Show With David Letterman: "She...talked about her late-night chats with the President, and joked that he's always upbeat, especially about the notoriously deadlocked Congress. I guess you got to keep your sense of humor about you."

Later, in the 8 a.m. et hour, Morales was equally thrilled by a YouTube video mocking Republican front-runner Mitt Romney: "And will the real Mitt Romney please stand up? This video parody of Eminem's famous rap hit is going viral and being shared across Facebook."

It didn't take long for Republicans to get bashed during David Letterman's interview with Michelle Obama Monday night.

In the middle of an election year, the CBS Late Show host actually asked the First Lady, "Has your husband ever come home and said to you, 'Oh, that John Boehner, what an idiot?'” (video follows with transcribed highlights and commentary):

On the CBS Late Show Thursday, host David Letterman aired a mock video of Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich having sex with a vending machine.

This came at the end of his Top Ten segment called, "Top Ten Revelations In The Interview With Newt Gingrich's Ex-Wife" (video follows with transcribed highlights and commentary):

CBS comedian David Letterman teed off on the Republican presidential field on Monday night while barely batting an eye toward President Obama or the Democrats. The Late Show host joked at the expense of Newt Gingrich's first marriage and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie's weight, while comparing former First Lady Pat Nixon to a reptile from Star Trek.

In addition, the CBS comedian dismissed the entire GOP presidential field as he insinuated that none in the group of rich boring white guys would beat President Obama in the general election. [Video below the break.]

Appearing as a guest on Thursday's Late Show with David Letterman on CBS, Arizona Senator John McCain complained about ABC's George Stephanopoulos because the ABC host asked GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney if states have the constitutional power to ban contraceptives.

On Tuesday, Diane Sawyer absurdly claimed the Occupy Wall Street protests have spread to more than a thousand countries.

Following in this arithmetically-challenged tradition, David Letterman told former President Bill Clinton Wednesday Obama's been in office "a year and a half, close to two years" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Updated [12:45 ET]: Full transcript added.

Appearing on Monday's "Late Show with David Letterman" on CBS, NBC "Nightly News" anchor Brian Williams responded to Letterman's assertion that Texas Governor Rick Perry was a "right-wing conservative psych job" by declaring: "In a Republican primary race in this early stage, you run far to the right....You can't say something shocking enough in some of these crowds." [Audio available here]

Williams observed: "You're trying to keep tacking to the right of your opponent." He then warned: "This will all settle down, though comments last forever. They will all be held accountable for what they're saying now. It's tough to run in the general after this."

View video after the jump

Back in May, actor/comedian Martin Short celebrated the killing of Osama bin Laden by singing, on the Late Show with David Letterman, “Bastard in the Sand,” a parody set to the tune of Elton John's “Candle in the Wind.”

With the tenth anniversary of 9/11 on Sunday, I thought I'd re-post video of the entertaining song (original May 30 NB post).

Is there anything David Letterman hates more than conservative women?

On Wednesday's "Late Show," the host went after Republican presidential candidate Michele Bachmann saying, "She is now publishing her memoirs, and I thought, well, wait a minute, why can't we pray that away?" (video follows with transcript and commentary)

The hypocrisy of Rachel Maddow knows no bounds.

On Tuesday's "Late Show," the MSNBCer scolded Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) for meeting with Libya's Moammar Gaddafi in August 2009 while completely ignoring the fact that President Obama met him at the G8 summit the month before (video follows with transcript and commentary):

 A truly amazing coincidence happened on Monday night as former President George W. Bush was praised for helping millions in Africa by two separate public figures in two unrelated matters - the fight against AIDS in Africa, and South Sudan’s successful fight for independence - on two different television shows.

As rocker Bono of U-2 appeared as a guest on CBS’s Late Show with David Letterman, he praised President Bush for helping to save so far five million lives in Africa over the past eight years because of his push to supply treatment to AIDS patients.

And on Comedy Central’s Colbert Report, guest and human rights activist John Prendergast of the Enough Project, when prodded by host Stephen Colbert, noted that it was under Bush that America used its influence to help the South Sudanese secure a peace deal with the north.

Regurgitating the same kind of derogatory comments he regularly spews on his Friday night HBO show, Bill Maher showed up Monday night on the Late Show with David Letterman where CBS, unlike HBO, excised his vile terminology for Tea Party activists.

Maher denounced Tea Party followers as “sad, unfortunate people” because they are “corporate America's useful idiots” who don’t allow “facts” to “get in that tin foil helmet.”

Then he employed his usual “tea-baggers” phrase, but CBS silenced the “baggers” so viewers heard dead air when Maher spoke that foul term:

I don't have any respect, no, I don't have any respect for the tea-(baggers) [word silenced] and I do call them the tea-(baggers) [word silenced again] -- even though they hate it. I will stop calling them Tea-(baggers) [word silenced for a third time] when they stop calling it Obamacare, that's my deal.

Are you old enough to remember the polio-era line: "funny as an iron lung"?  After all, what kind of person would find funny the notion of someone fighting to breathe?

Answer: Mika Brzezinski.

Today's Morning Joe played a Letterman clip of a faux-promo for an imaginary TV show called "The Dick Cheney Story."  As the title song from the Mary Tyler Moore Show plays merrily in the background, we're treated to images of Cheney wielding a gun, in a wheelchair and undergoing open-heart surgery.  The clip closes with video of Cheney fighting to get a breath of air.

Cut to Mika, doubled-over, laughing hysterically, literally to the point of tears.

View video after the jump.

Catching up with a Thursday night appearance by Senator Rand Paul to plug his new book, Paul’s segment on the Late Show exposed David Letterman as an arrogantly ill-informed ally of Wisconsin’s public employee unions: “Why don't we just raise the taxes and let these folks have their collective bargaining, have their union representation and go back to their jobs? Raise the taxes on the wealthy.”

When Paul tried to educate Letterman about how a small percent of the wealthy pay far more than their fair share, Letterman was an oblivious student as he baselessly countered: “I think there's something wrong with those numbers. I don't know what it is exactly, but I'm pretty sure there's something wrong with them.”

Paul had outlined his wish to reduce government spending, prompting Letterman to retort: “What would be so wrong then in terms of leaving the public sector alone and reducing tax benefits for the wealthy and large corporations? Why couldn't you make up your money that way?” (Audio: MP3 clip)

Searching for an upside to the WikiLeaks release of secret documents, Late Show host David Letterman on Wednesday night pointed to how such disclosures could have possibly prevented the 9/11 attacks since former President George Bush had disregarded “for months and months and months” the warning “that bin Laden and al-Qaeda were interested in hijacking planes and flying them into buildings,” but not even Rachel Maddow, his far-left guest from MSNBC, bought his spin. Letterman contended:

There is the viewpoint if WikiLeaks had been in business prior to the attack of 9/11 and we knew that George Bush had looked at a document suggesting that bin Laden and al-Qaeda were interested in hijacking planes and flying them into buildings – which largely went disregarded for months and months and months until long after the attack. If we had known that, via something like WikiLeaks, we perhaps could have acted a little more alertly.

In fact, the Presidential Daily Brief to which Letterman referred, the one titled “Bin Ladin Determined To Strike in US,” was presented to Bush on August 6, barely five weeks before 9/11, not “months and months and months” in advance.

As the long holiday weekend comes to an end, catching up with a humorous, seemingly spontaneous, moment on the last fresh Late Show before Thanksgiving. David Letterman is a big believer in cataclysmic predictions about global warming, but on Wednesday’s program his mom, Dorothy, rejected his proposition that global warming was to blame for some unseasonably warm days in Indianapolis -- prompting her disappointed son to shake his head in disapproval.

Dorothy, better known as “Dave’s mom,” appears annually from her kitchen in suburban Indianapolis to let her son guess the types of pies she’s baked for Thanksgiving. This year, the 89-year-old remarked “it's been unseasonably warm,” leading her son to assert “that's that climate change. It's the global warming. You know that, mom? Do you believe in the climate change, in the global warming?”

To which, Dorothy Letterman innocently responded: “Not really.”  (MP3 audio clip)

CBS "Late Show" host David Letterman bashed the Fox News Channel in his Top Ten list Tuesday (partial transcript after the break):

Top Ten Signs There's Trouble at FOX News

Earning applause from the audience inside Manhattan's Ed Sullivan Theater for Wednesday's Late Show, Donald Trump gave David Letterman his take on placing a new mosque near Ground Zero: “I think it's very insensitive to build it there. I think it's not appropriate, a I think it's insensitive and it shouldn't be built there.” Letterman frowned, prompting Trump to point out to the audience: “I don't know if he agrees.”

Letterman eventually asked “what about the notion” of when the “pilgrims came over...looking for religious expression? And as far as I've always known, that's a fundamental building block of what makes this country great.” Trump agreed, but “it's caused such a storm that the people doing it would make so much good will” if they moved it to a different location.

When Trump repeated his point, to more applause, about how “it's very insensitive to build it there and I think they should go someplace else,” a befuddled Letterman wondered: “Describe for me what insensitivity is manifested if it's built there?” And Letterman fretted: “Does this suggest that we are in fact officially at war with Muslims?”

To which, Trump observed: “Well, somebody knocked down the World Trade Center.”

David Letterman for at least the second time in eight days mocked Barack Obama for spending so much time on R&R

During his "Late Show" opening monologue, the host quipped, "The President's been busy, he redecorated the Oval Office and then he took another two week vacation." 

Moments later, Letterman talked about Obama's address to the nation the previous day before presenting a video of the speech. 

As you'll see from this doctored clip, the President wasn't wearing attire at all suitable for the occasion (video follows with commentary):

David Letterman on Tuesday took quite a swipe at Barack Obama.

During the opening monologue of CBS's "Late Show," the host asked the audience, "You know who else is on vacation?"

Letterman answered, "President Barack Obama. And this is his, since he's been in office, this is his sixth vacation."

Then came the marvelous and surprising punch line (video follows with transcript and commentary, file photo): 

Appearing on the Late Show on Monday night to plug his Friday night Dateline on the 5th anniversary of Katrina, NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams bizarrely asserted “we're still enjoying the fruits really of the Clinton economy,” claimed Tea Party activists who say “we want our country back” want it back “from the Trilateral Commission” and ridiculed their presumed hypocrisy as he insisted “you see a lot of signs, ‘Federal Government Out of My Social Security,’ ‘Federal Government Out of My Medicare and Medicaid.’ But for the federal government, of course, those programs would not exist.”

Plus, he passed along how “I'm hearing a few people say” that President Barack Obama won’t run for re-election because he “wants to somehow transcend the presidency,” citing a British columnist who contends he was “never supposed to be an ordinary President.” Williams considered the possibility Obama could be as consequential as Jimmy Carter or Bill Clinton: “Jimmy Carter converted the post-presidency, redesigned the idea of an ex-President. Solving diseases and bad elections around the world. Bill Clinton with the Clinton Global Initiative trying to do the same thing.”