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David Letterman: Paris Hilton

A transcript of Letterman's remarks, Thursday, November 20, 2003.

If I seem a little off, I'm telling you, I'm just sick to my stomach about something that happened today. I want to tell you something, ladies and gentlemen: show business can be a cruel and horrible way to make a living. It's ugly, it's full of weasels – evildoers, full of evildoers – backstabbers; naysayers; turncoats; and other words that don't come to mind right now. Quizlings.

Here's the deal. This woman, this lovely Paris Hilton, who's a beautiful girl – she's, I think, 20 or 22 years old – and she has a brand new show I believe on Fox called Welcome to Paris. I don't know what it's called. And, anyway, she was – and for years and years here in New York City, we've all been reading about the fun that Paris and her sister, Nikki Hilton, have. They go out on the town, and – if you ask them – they say we do two things with our lives: we're either getting ready to go to a party, or we're at a party. And that's what they do. They're fun gals. We love fun gals. Fun gals make the world go 'round. It's as simple as that, and it's as old as dirt.

So, we were going to have the lovely Paris Hilton on the show – next week – and we were all very excited because she's a lovely woman and we just wanted to talk to her about being fun and having fun in New York City. Now, in the meantime, it turns out that there are some videotapes made of her and a boyfriend enjoying sexual activities. And I've seen the videotapes, and I think she couldn't seem more personable, to me. A lovely woman, actually. And so we were all kind of making jokes about it – I was making jokes about it – and then we received a call! From, like, her goon manager or her goon publicist or whatever. Some goon connected with Paris Hilton. And he threatened me. He said, "If you don't stop making those jokes about Paris Hilton, she won't do the show." And I just laughed. I said, "Oh, come on. It's just sex. Everybody enjoys sex." Who hasn't made a fun romp video sexual videotape? I mean... Well, guess what? Guess who has the last laugh? The goon pulled her off the show. She won't be on the show.

Now, I want to tell you something. Here's the mistake. It's not my fault; it certainly is not the fault of the lovely Ms. Paris Hilton, she's entirely innocent in this. And, as much as this kills me to say this, it's not even the goon's fault who pulled her off the show. Because normally I'd be all over this beady-eyed little weasel – and I know who he is, he's just a goon. He couldn't be a bigger thug. He should be behind bars. But it's not even his fault. You know whose fault it is? It's the boyfriend's fault who leaked these videotapes of himself and the lovely Paris Hilton enjoying sexual activities. It's his fault. He's the idiot. He's the bum. I've been through this myself; if you get a girl to say, "Okay, go ahead, turn on the camera," then you have a responsibility as a gentleman to make sure those videotapes are destroyed. They should be destroyed!

So, all I want to say to Paris is: you're being led down the wrong path. This goon, this thug, this neanderthal, this mouth-breathing drooler, this knuckle-dragging moron, is making a huge mistake. You come on this show – by god, we'll make you a hero. We'll absolutely make you a hero. We'll talk about anything you want to talk about . We'll talk – if you have pets, we'll talk about your pets. If you want to talk about the sexual videotapes, fine; if you don't, that's fine with me, too. We all know that it's not your fault. It's your idiot boyfriend's fault. That's the problem. We'll set the record straight. It'll be a love-fest. And she'll be here, and she'll have so much fun that she'll want to come back o'er and o'er again.

A lot of people, they think that they're going to come on this show and I'm going to chase them around the theatre with a hammer. But that just doesn't happen. The smartest thing you can do is come on, and we just go right on and prove that the sun comes up tomorrow – and maybe do a song – and then you go home.

But no, that ain't the way it's gonna happen. But I'm still holding out this much hope that she'll actually be on the show. I hope so, because for some reason she's now started to mean so much more to me.

onebee