Metro

Odd touch of class in this whole sorry mess

IT may have been the first time in history that a man apologized for not naming the women he’d slept with on and off the job.

Yes, folks, David Letterman indicated in his never-ending almost-mea culpa last night that he was sorry that he’d been vague about which women on his staff he had had sex with because not naming names apparently hurt other staffers.

Dear God! Talk about a real Catch 22, 23 and 24!

But that’s what it’s come to in this Dr. Phil/Oprah world, where everyone is hurt by everything — including not being named for having sex with the boss because maybe that means you did have sex with the boss.

Or something.

Even Letterman said, “Next week I go on Oprah and sob,” a reference to his on-again/off-again feud with the queen of celebrity apology and closure, which has become the only way to really say you’re sorry in this country anymore.

Anyway, after running onto the set to huge applause, and making jokes about hate mail, Letterman mentioned how chilly it was inside his house over the weekend.

What? His wife didn’t know he was fooling around before they got married? How did she end up married to him — by e-mail?

He also said that this is the first time it was someone other than his relatives shaking him down.

Then he made a point of interrupting his own jokes about Bill Clinton and Eliot Spitzer before getting to the punch lines.

Then came the meat in the meal: “It did not occur to me last week when I was discussing having sex with women on the show” that they’d be hounded by the press.

“So I would just like to set the record straight. No, I’m not having sex with these women,” à la Bill Clinton’s infamous quote. He continued, “Those episodes are in the past. So my apologies to them for being browbeaten and humiliated . . . I’m terribly sorry that I put the staff in that position. Inadvertently, I just wasn’t thinking ahead.”

Well, thinking ahead hasn’t been his long suit for years, or he would have maybe asked friends to fix him up instead of trolling the office for sex partners. Famous people should just learn that once they become famous, they have to give up sex or face the consequences — extortion, shame and/or marriage, which we can now call the Letterman triangle of shame.

Dave finished his mea-culpa monologue by apologizing again to Sarah Palin.

Maybe they can go moose hunting together — or, failing that, cry together on Oprah.

All in all, Letterman handled the exposure of his overactive libido with more class than all the politicians, preachers and perverts we’ve had to put up with over the last decade.

Good for him, good for us. Now, can we get on with the show?