Word: letterman
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Zoglin, who counts himself a "huge fan," has been following Letterman for more than a decade -- tuning in nearly every night since Late Night first aired in 1982. Zoglin arrived at TIME the next year, after four years as TV critic at the Atlanta Constitution. Since then he has watched TV for us with a couch potato's endurance and a sharp but fair-minded critic's eye, writing hundreds of savvy, tightly crafted reviews and features -- as well as cover stories on such subjects as Bill Cosby, Diane Sawyer, Arsenio Hall and Murphy Brown...
This week's cover held a special appeal for Zoglin, who always regretted that he didn't get to review the Letterman show for TIME. As if to make up for that missed opportunity, he did much of the reporting himself -- interviewing Letterman's two executive producers, several of his writers, some of his old friends from the comedy-club days, his diminutive band leader, and the gap- toothed host himself at his new venue in the freshly renovated Ed Sullivan Theater...
...Letterman is a tough celebrity to crack," says Zoglin. "He's complicated, enigmatic and sincerely uncomfortable tooting his own horn. He's got a girlfriend he desperately tries to keep from the public. He likes his private life private...
...huge billboard, Jay Leno's battering-ram jaw juts out over Broadway. AMERICA IS STANDING UP FOR JAY, the sign says. Maybe NBC hopes the nation's insomniacs will take a loyalty oath to keep watching the Tonight Show, and repel alien threats from David Letterman on CBS and Chevy Chase on Fox. So who's standing up for these guys? Bosnia...
...cool comes from the host: Harvard Lampoon ex-president, writer-producer for television's best show (The Simpsons), scion of a tony Boston family (he could do my-father-the-doctor, my-mother-the-lawyer jokes, but won't). And, now, the star of Late Night after David Letterman. "I'd be an arrogant fool if I didn't get nervous," O'Brien says. "What calms me, I guess, is that there are a million things I can't do but I have a core belief in myself that this is something...