Written by: apolloj23
10/4/2009 9:41 PM

First, I want to thank everyone for the feedback last week.  I now know from personal experience that the content the contributors to this site produce can be quite labor intensive and only feels "worth it", if you guys are reading it.  Feedback is a great way to do that...even if its a "Hey, liked your post" kind of comment...its makes all the difference.  Thanks again.

This week appeared to be a rather slow news cycle regarding outlandish behavior in sports, however, there was still plenty of potential "douche canoes" out there to fill the void.  It seems that as humans, we do one thing very well, and that is screw up.  Some just do it more often then others.  While others do it more spectacularly than others.  The nominees this week are making an absolute mess of their 15 minutes of fame.

This weeks "douche canoe" nominees are:

Jon Gosselin of "Jon & Kate Plus 8" fame. Both he and Kate could have won this award a thousand times over already.  It appears that this week Jon took an unauthorized withdraw of $200,000 from the estranged couples joint bank account, leaving just $1,000 behind.  Need another Ed Hardy shirt Jon?

Roman Polanski, Academy Award winning director of "The Pianist", is back in the news again.  Polanski is currently fighting extradition back to U.S. after being arrested on his 32 year old warrant for rape.  Roman...you should have stayed in France with your "Peeanist".

Afghanistan.  Now, you may be wondering how could a country be nominated for this award.  Well, after a ten year attempt by the Soviets and now seven years by the U.S., it seems that they just can't get it together over there.  Lets go folks...join us in the 21st century here.  If you weren't making such a mess of things, your 15 minutes would have been up long ago.

And this week's winner is:

Robert "Joe" (Shouldn't it be "Bob"?) Halderman

"Joe" is the CBS television producer who has taken it upon himself to attempt to blackmail long time late night TV host, David Letterman.  In a bizarre and somewhat cathartic dialogue on his show, Letterman revealed to the world that he was the victim of blackmail scheme which would reveal the "terrible things" that Letterman has done.  The "terrible things" included having sexual relationship with women that worked on his show.  The strange part came when in a moment of absolute honesty, Letterman admitted to the relationship(s) in his usual self-deprecating tone.

While you may not like Letterman's comedy or may not respect his relationship choices, you have to admit that his willingness to be so open about this issue is rather refreshing.  Most of the time celebrities deflect blame (Jon Gosselin), run (Roman Polanski) or literally shoot themselves in the foot (Afghanistan).  But in this case, Dave owned up to the story and in what was essentially an office romance (or a maybe couple romances over the years), there seems to be a lot of exposure to this story. So, why is that?  Halderman and his "douche canoe" behavior.

Halderman, who has been charged with first-degree attempted grand larceny, used his relationship with one of Letterman's former girlfriends, to secure vital and personal information from her diary to use in the blackmail scheme.  It was also the method in which Halderman carried out the scheme that is so interesting.  He threatened to write a screenplay, in which would lay out the details of Letterman's relationship(s).  Really, "douche canoe"?  A screenplay?  Oh, don't hurt us with a screenplay!  I wonder if Ray Lewis ever threatened someone with a screenplay.  "Don't come over the middle, Keyshawn, or I will lay you out with a screenplay!"

In any event, blackmailing someone has to be about the most cowardly method of attempting to ruin someones life.  Besides that, how dumb must you be to actually think you can get away with something so bizarre. I'm sure more details of this "sextortion", as some are calling it, will be revealed in the coming days. Weird story, weird dude.

Robert "Joe" Halderman, "douche canoe" of the week!

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