I turned on the Late Show on Friday night -- these days, I often watch the first half hour just to catch
Great Moments in Presidential Speeches.
Instead, to my surprise, I witnessed a memorable and quite serious television moment: David Letterman asking Mary Cheney a lot of very tough questions about the contradictions between her own life and her work for the Bush-Cheney campaign. Watch it for yourself.
Dave doesn't do these kind of serious, political interviews very often, and I've never seen him give a guest the third degree like he did this time. By the time they broke for a commercial, the tension was thick enough to cut with a knife.
To my knowledge, no other interviewer has ever questioned Mary Cheney this relentlessly about her work for a flagrantly anti-gay political campaign. I don't know exactly what motivated Letterman to push her so hard -- personal politics, gay friends and relatives, or just a hatred of hypocrisy -- but I'm glad he did it.