Yesterday, David Letterman revealed on-air that he was the victim of an extortion plot by a former CBS News employee who was threatening to reveal some rather embarrassing details about him by publishing them in a screenplay unless he paid 2 million dollars. Apparently, Letterman had affairs with female employees on his show and this guy thought he could extort some money from him. Letterman did the right thing by taking things to the authorities. They arrested dirtbag Robert J. “Joe” Halderman on Friday and put him behind bars where he belongs. Here’s what’s interesting, rather than keeping things under wraps after the guys plot was foiled, Letterman decided to confess his wrongdoings on national television!

There are some serious implications to having office affairs, but even more so with your subordinates. I’m not going to go into that. What I want to focus on is transparency. When Bill Clinton had an affair with Monica Lewinski in the 90s, no one was able to capitalize on the scandal better than Letterman, who was still  making jokes about the affair in 2001. Maybe Letterman learned form Clinton’s mistakes, but I think his decision to come clean even after the blackmailer was arrested really comes as a result of the type of world we live in NOW.  Whereas Clinton felt that he could lie about his affair and keep his wrongdoings secret, Letterman (and Mark Sanford) realized that access to information and dissemination via social media like blogs, social bookmarking, and social networks make the spread of this information almost inevitable and difficult to cover up, so coming clean was probably the best choice. When people said “honesty is the best policy”, they were just lying. However, transparency is making this a reality. Access to information is making it difficult to lie.