So, What's the Late Night with David Letterman Appeal All About?

So what's the appeal of David Letterman? And just what makes late night talk show hosts such an indelible part of Media Americana? The answer, as is so often the case, lies in man's prehistoric past.

At some point in man's evolution, the development of specialized centers of the brain allowed linguistics to take shape and form. Formerly a creature of grunts, howls and shrieks, the sudden emergence of discrete, complex specialized sounds formed by the tongue, mouth and teeth evolved into the precursor of language. No more was early man on the same level as other species of wild animal. This early simple precursor of language allowed complex ideas to be relayed and stored into memory. Instead of simple notions as "we need to find food", illustrated through grunts and hand gestures, early language allowed notions such as "we need food, and the gazelle are coming back this spring and we need to make weapons to kill them." instead.

As evolution went by and by, the more sophisticated, creative linguists in any given tribal society became more adept at relaying complex ideas via more and more complex sounds. These lucky few individuals were naturally more successful at meeting the challenges of nature, and passed on their verbal and intellectual skills via teaching and genetics in turn. This startling leap in evolution certainly occurred incredibly fast, as competing tribes developed their own unique set of sounds to describe the natural world, and hence developed their own unique language in process. Intelligence feeds linguistics, and linguistics feed intelligence.

Just as today, certain tribal members were more gifted than others in intelligence, and hence linguistics. Almost certainly, those creative, lucky few who possessed the ability to play with words, create new ideas and link them to associated sounds, widened the breadth and depth of the tribes local language, and were most certainly revered, and perhaps even feared. After all, the more words and subsequent definitions a tribe has at its disposal, the more they can accomplish to better their condition. Instead of a brutal, clenched fist dominant male taking natural command of a tribe, as in the case of apes and early hominids, the intellectual word-crafter became the new symbol of authority and alpha-power. It is this reason the we follow those who are perceived as effective orators today.

Look at the success of the world's most effective speakers, from Jesus Christ, Winston Churchill, Benjamin Franklin and Nathan Hale on the cooperative, enlightened side of man's thinking, to Adolph Hitler, Stalin and Osama Ben Laden on the instigating, myopic tribalistic side. Subject material aside, no one can deny that these powerful speakers had or have the unique ability to influence millions to their bidding via the spoken word. This is a direct result of this evolutionary prescribed 'magnetic attraction' we have to great linguists. We simply cannot resist them. It is burned into us by our very design.

So where does David Letterman fit in?

David Letterman and his brethren, Johnny Carson, Jay Lenno et. al., are merely borrowing on this innate human need to follow and lend attention to those who exhibit a mastery of the spoken word. Late night talk show hosts specialize in the emotion called humor, as humor is an invaluable coping tool for relieving life's seemingly insurmountable daily stresses and tribulations.

Furthermore, modern technology has transformed late night hosts into Iconic figures in their own quasi-religious right. Slick TV packaging and production, originating in the 1950's, and at its nexus today, creates an even more captivating audience appeal, indeed. Just as early man sat transfixed around a roaring fire to hear hunting tales from the tribes master story teller, today we sit transfixed around glowing televisions to hear tales from their modern day equivalents. Different talk show hosts, like their Stone Age equivalents, appeal to different mind sets and local tribes. Oprah, Judge Judy, Jerry Springer and even fictitious animated characters such as Peter Griffin and Hank Hill have their own diligent followings, the tools of mass media placing them in positions of prominence and influence. If a roaring night time fire set the stage for great prehistoric oratory, a glowing image on a gas filled television tube sets the stage for today. Seizing oratory is seizing oratory, regardless of medium.

So what does this mean, and where will it lead us?

As events unfold today, the day of great, monophonic orators could very well be at end, simply because competing forms of media, primarily via the Internet, offer a greater variety of viewpoints than were available before. The high point of talk show hosts was certainly the 1950's through the 1980's, as TV was one of very few forms of mass media, radio and newspaper being the obvious others.

Of course this is a good thing, right?

The more diffuse and varied mass media is, the less influential it is. If individuals are offered a vast choice of viewpoint, the chances of earth shattering socio-political movements along the lines of Nazism and radical fundamentalist religion taking hold are also greatly diminished as well. The more choices you give someone, the less likely they are to polarize around a single concept, right? At least in theory, anyway. But yet, our fatal attraction to powerful speakers persists even today, especially evident in the form of Radical Islam, Neo-Nazi movements and third world dictatorships, all typically centered around the hub of a powerful central speaker, such as Castro, Ben Laden, David Duke, etc.

Thus the great media battle inside of us all rages on.

As the world turns, we battle our primitive, beckoning past, compelling us to follow the apparent powerful, literary endowed speaker, sometimes oblivious to the message they may hold, and what fate these latest popular spoken words have in store for us, often at direct odds with an emerging sense of intellectual self dependence, commanding one to break free of hive mentality, and make judgments solely based on our clinical observations, and not our heated emotions. For better or for worse, it often seems that the greater mass of mankind seems more comfortable sitting about a TV or a roaring fire, led to laughter, tears, anger and elated heights and depths of emotion by the Great Late Night Pied Piper of Letterman, whomever he or she may be.