Per the Hastert story in the news and other blackmail attempts that have occurred over time. In doper’s real life experience with blackmail or payoffs to keep quiet do people paid to shut up and go away actually honor that arrangement in most cases or do they almost always come back to the table looking for more?
It seems that if they ever kept quiet, we wouldn’t know about it.
Astro, you’ve been on this board almost as long as I have. Who exactly do you think posts here?:eek:
Kunilou: undoubtedly you live a sheltered life but some of us can remember as young children being blackmailed by siblings or acquaintances who threatened to tell our parents or teachers about certain situations…
Strangest blackmail attempt I ever heard of was the David Letterman case…
Hello David(who was single at the time of the sex) unless you pay us, we’re going to go to the media and reveal you had sex with a woman.
:eek::eek:…oh wait huh, uh ok man you do that.
Does the media really pay attention to any random nut claiming to have had sex with a notable person? I’m guessing Bruce had hard evidence(heh heh) of the coitus.
Otherwise hell man I’ll email a couple celebs right now and demand money or I will reveal our torrid love affair.
Letterman wasn’t married at the time but he was in a serious long term relationship with Regina Lasko when he had sex with other women.
I guess I was looking at it from the career destruction potential which was nil. But good point.
There’s a bit more to it than that. The girl Letterman was banging was one of his interns and she was also the live-in girlfriend of the guy who tried to blackmail him. Also they were carrying on their affair in the house (and bed) of the would-be blackmailer. So the guy had plenty of reason to be pissed.
IIRC from discussions around here at the time, the would-be blackmailer would have been in the clear if he’d written up a script in the form of a movie and had his attorney offer Letterman and/or his attorneys first stab at purchasing the rights to it. Once Letterman had found out there was nothing he could do legally to stop the guy, he’s probably have paid up just to keep his own live-in girlfriend from finding out about it. He also would have had assurance that there’d be no more attempts to wring more money out of him because once he’d bought the rights that would have been the end of it.
Letterman is an ass and always has been. I wish the guy who tried to blackmail him would have consulted a lawyer first and gone about it the right way because IMO Letterman owed him that much for fucking up his relationship and home life.
It’s been said before in various forms–there are only two SURE ways of dealing with blackmail. (1) Reveal the secret yourself in a time and manner of your own choosing. (2) Kill the blackmailer.
According to The North American Association of Professional Blackmailers, ( Motto = ‘Play Fair’’ ), any member is required to make it clear in the beginning whether this is One-Off or Recurring-For-Lifetime, and to definitely stick to whatever arrangement is made with the client.
As their ‘About Us’ says: ‘Without trust between traders, how can the public respect us ? Our word must be our bond.’ — 'Only by offering fairness, courtesy and equality to all we deal with, following best industry practice, avoiding conflicts of interest, and committing through life to improve our skill-set and professional qualifications can we continue to offer the very best service possible.’
A courtesan named Harriette Wilson threatened to publish the story of her liaison with the Duke of Wellington unless he paid her to supress it. Wellington famously replied, “Publish and be damned.”
She published, the book was a best seller, and she earned more money than she could have extorted from the cash-strapped duke.
Sorry, but you’re letting your dislike of Letterman the celebrity cloud your opinion. That affair was entirely the chick’s choice. If Letterman had know these other things he’d have never gone along with it. He had no dog in the fight between her and her boyfriend. And even if the guy had done what you said, there is no chance in hell that Dave would have paid him off. He’d have done exactly the same thing he wound up doing, calling the authorities. That guys elaborate scheme was not from a ‘lover scorned’, it was from a greedy, opportunistic criminal.
Also, in regards to some of the above posts, Lasko wasn’t just Dave’s live-in girlfriend at the time. Although they didn’t get married until 2009 their son was born in 2003, so she was basically his common-law wife.
No, the timeline appears to be off for this to be a case of the boyfriend being pissed his girlfriend was cheating on him. The affair had apparently occurred some years prior to the blackmail. What apparently prompted the blackmail attempt was that Letterman had married Regina Lasko in March 2009 and Joe Halderman and Stephanie Birkitt broke up in September. Halderman then made his blackmail threat in October.
So it appears that Halderman may have decided that Letterman was now more vulnerable to blackmail and that he no longer had any reason to protect Birkitt’s reputation.
Admittedly, an alternative scenario is that Halderman had been unaware of the affair until September and it was his discover of it that led to the breakup and subsequent blackmail attempt.
If you think about it, blackmail only works as a series of ongoing payments.
“Pay me XXX, and I won’t reveal dirty secret YYY for the rest of this month”.
“ok”.
As long as the potential income gained from having YYY not revealed for the rest of the month, it’s worth it to the individual being blackmailed to keep paying.
If this politician was making tons of money as a lobbyist or something, money he would lose if it were revealed he was a really bad gym teacher, then it would be worth it to keep paying.
The 3.5 mil total isn’t the important bit, it’s that the payments were ongoing.
Of course, I wonder what proof there was. I mean, what possible proof could there be 50 years later? A few yellowing paper receipts aren’t really proof of anything and easily faked. It would be pretty difficult to conceal a video camera in that era, given that reels of film were needed, etc.
It almost sounds like there isn’t any proof. Just “I’ll tell everyone you were an abusive gym teacher and everyone will be outraged, despite there being no proof whatsoever”.
(2a) Unless you are in Los Angeles, because Columbo.
All that comes to mind is Morgan Freeman’s drawled, “Good luuuck!”
I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of blackmailers were too close to the situation to want to hang around, grab and fade being the way to go. I suspect we’d hear the least about this group.
Obviously it takes two to tango and the intern was certainly culpable too, although in some quarters for a boss to be banging an intern raises power and advantage-taking concerns. Still, the affair had been going on for some time and I doubt Letterman was ignorant of the fact she was living with her boyfriend in the house where he was having sex with her.
I don’t think so. If he’d known the payment would be a one time thing and it would have kept the fact he was having sex with one of his interns from the public and from his live-in (or as you say, common-law wife), I think the odds are pretty good he’d have coughed up the dough. It’s not like Letterman is a man of high integrity - remember he was cheating in his own relationship and also hers.
This has always been my take on it. Either that, or she threw it in his face out of spite during the breakup and he therefore blamed Letterman for their breakup.
Yeah. With seven siblings, I had a lot of this going on when I was a kid. We were all pretty fair about it though; once the blackmail was paid, it was forgotten.
Until we started dating and brought a date home for that dinner with the family thing.