Letterman sends singer DiFranco packing

Singer Ani DiFranco was booted off CBS’s Late Show with David Letterman after she refused to substitute a more “upbeat” song for one dealing with “white flight” to the suburbs, the Washington Post reported Thursday. DiFranco’s manager, Scot Fisher, said that the show’s producers had asked DiFranco to perform the song “Heartbreak Even” rather than “Subdivision” but that she refused. A spokesman for the program told the Post. “We did not reject the song on the basis of its lyrical content. Rather, we felt the option originally suggested by her representatives was preferable musically.” But Fisher told the newspaper: “The Letterman people took it upon themselves to cancel a booking because … Ani DiFranco wanted to sing a song about racism in America.” Meanwhile, producers for NBC’s Late Night with Conan O’Brien issued a statement saying that a joke delivered by Sarah Silverman in which she used the term “chinks” to refer to Chinese people “was clearly inappropriate and the fact that it was not edited by Standards and Practices was a mistake.” The statement came in response to a protest by the Media Action Network for Asian Americans.