DAVID LETTERMAN - FORMER FEMALE LETTERMAN WRITER SPEAKS OUT

FORMER FEMALE LETTERMAN WRITER SPEAKS OUT

A former female writer on David Letterman's talk show (when it aired on NBC) has claimed that not only was the talk show host having sexual relationships with female staffers at the time (1988) but that other "high-level male employees" were as well. In an article appearing in the online edition of Vanity Fair, the writer, Nell Scovell, claims that the female employees who were having affairs with the male higher-ups permitted them to "wield power disproportionate to their job titles" and created "a hostile work environment" for those who did not. Scovell said that such "sexual politics" played a major part in her decision to quit the show after five months. Scovell claims that no female writer currently works on the Letterman show -- and that none works on The Jay Leno Show or the Tonight show either. Scovell, who created the Sabrina, the Teenage Witch series and has written for Murphy Brown, Monk , and NCIS , complains that male domination of writing staffs continues "partly because the shows often rely on current (white male) writers to recommend their funny (white male) friends to be future (white male) writers."

28/10/2009