The gravest, most corrosive sin of leadership is hypocrisy, the outward trumpeting of one’s high-moral principles, even as one secretly violates those principles every day. I was reminded of this as I watched David Letterman’s pathetic efforts to recover from revelations that he had numerous affairs with members of his own staff.

Let’s keep in mind that Letterman has made his career making light of the misfortunes of others. Let’s keep in mind that this is a man who rarely has missed an opportunity to skewer the powerful for their peccadilloes. Let’s keep in mind that he has risen to fame on a platform of holier-than-thou humor.
 

To understand just how hipocritical this man is, take a look at his roast of Governor Mark Sanford of South Carolina on his June 24, 2009 show, after it was revealed that Sanford traveled to Argentina to have an affair with a woman he had known as a friend for my than 20 years.
 

Watched today, Letterman unmitigated gall is breath-taking. “As always, it’s less the infraction, than the judgment surrounding it,” Letterman opines. “I feel bad for his family, I feel bad for him and the turmoil for the people of South Carolina, but just say that you need to go to South America to take care of business … Just say I’m going to be at a board of trade meeting, I’m going to be down there looking at some silos (ha, ha, ha).”
 

Shifting to disgraced former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer’s woes, Letterman suggests that Spitzer’s real sin was being stupid enough to get caught, “For example Eliot Spitzer enjoyed dating prostitutes,” he says. “And rather than just use the Governor’s petty cash he would put it on his gold card… and OK now all of a sudden you have an interstate transit record and that’s how they hunted him down.”
 

Continuing what we now know to be a case study in hipocrisy, Letterman makes Sanford the target of his nightly top-10 list, “Governor Mark Sanford Excuses”:
 

10. Did I say hiking, I meant cheating.
9. I had to do something after the devastating news about Jon and Kate.
8. I learned everything I know from Governor Spitzer.
7. Let’s talk about more important issues like the Nestle Toll House cookie recall.
6. I learned everything I know from Governor McGreevy.
 

Pausing, Letterman injects some choice thoughts about McGreevy’s perfidity saying, “What is it about Governors for god’s sake? Here was a guy who was happily married and had kids and then he’s in the middle of his second or third term and he starts dating his limo driver.”
 

Yes, Mr. Letterman what is it that makes people in power do such stupid, hurtful, self-destructive things?
 

Then he finished his list:
 

5. It’s Ahmadinejad’s fault
4. If you met my wife, you’d be fleeing the country too, am I right fellas? (Letterman: “That’s not fair, I’m sure she’s a lovely woman, ha ha.”)
3. Putting together my audition tape for then “Amazing Grace.”
2. If you run a state and decide to leave the country for a week, since when do you have to tell someone?
1. It wasn’t me, it was my hilarious alter ego Bruno.
 
The segment ends with a cut to Bachman-Turner Overdrive’s “Takin Care of Business.”
 

Have you no sense of decency Mr. Letterman? Clearly not, because if you did, you would be taking care of the real business of your life – your wife who has been “horribly hurt” – and not engaging in this pathetic public spectacle.
 

And those of you out there who care at all about leadership and accountability? You should change the channel.