Letterman's Post-9/11 Monologue

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This may not be available for long before it's pulled down, but here's the night David Letterman proved himself to be the greatest broadcaster in the history of late night talk shows. It's the opening of his show from Monday, September 17, 2001 -- six days after Al Qaeda's attacks on the US brought down the World Trade Center.

Because of the visuals of that morning, as I wrote at the time, the story belonged to television. For the previous week, almost all regular TV programming was suspended for non-stop coverage of the horror and its aftermath. On the radio, we were doing our best to handle the story, too, mostly by letting people tell their personal stories. The day after the attacks, I interviewed my brother Seth (who worked six blocks from the Twin Towers) about what he'd been through that morning, including watching a 20-story-high gray ball of smoke and debris roll up the street from Ground Zero towards his office window. You can listen to our conversation here.

Everyone wondered when the time would be right to go back to doing anything resembling fun, particularly the shows based in New York City. Letterman was the first to decide it was time, and he opened that night not in his usual monologue position, but behind his desk. He then proceeded to wing it through eight riveting minutes, beginning with "If we are going to continue to do shows I just need to hear myself talk for a couple of minutes and so that’s what I’m going to do here." You could hear the quiver in his voice and his own uncertainty about what had happened and what he was supposed to do (at least once he choked back tears), but it was remarkable to watch at the time. It still is.

Following Letterman's lead, other shows that broadcast from New York (Jon Stewart's "Daily Show," Conan O'Brien's "Late Night") and Jay Leno's Burbank-based "Tonight Show" soon returned, too. Each host had their own remarks, but none of them were as raw and envigorating as Letterman's.

Considering how he's disappeared from the national scene almost entirely, it's odd to hear Letterman's effusive praise of Mayor Rudy Giuliani for his leadership post-9/11. I'm also reminded of how the cataclysmic events of that Tuesday morning 11 years ago created a bond between Americans unlike any since Armstrong and Aldrin set foot on the moon more than three decades earlier -- a bond that didn't last nearly as long as we needed it, and which has all but been forgotten today.

One final note: CBS and Letterman's production company have never rerun this show, nor allowed it to be posted online, so I'm guessing that Google Video will quickly be forced to take this copy down -- so watch it now, while you can.