New York ? David Letterman has milked plenty of sex scandals for laughs. But it remains to be seen whether the CBS comic’s admission Thursday that he had sexual liaisons with female employees while he was involved with his now-wife, the mother of his five-year-old son, will fade away with a few late-night punch lines.

While Letterman focused on his role as the victim of a would-be extortionist who demanded $2 million to keep the details of his affairs secret, the episode sparked impassioned discussion Friday about sex in the workplace and hypocrisy.

After years of mocking other public figures for their sexual indiscretions, Letterman, 62, is now facing scrutiny for behavior that is verboten in many workplaces. Conservative critics, in particular, expressed disgust with the comedian, whose frequent potshots at former GOP vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin — including a crude joke he made in June about one of her daughters — have infuriated many on the right.

“There is irony here,” commentator Michelle Malkin said on the Fox News morning show “Fox & Friends.” “It’s hard not to have a smidge of schadenfreude for somebody who’s shown contempt for women in public, in his monologues continuously and repeatedly, especially over the campaign, and how he’s treated Sarah Palin and her family.”

Effect on ratings

The episode comes as Letterman is enjoying newfound momentum in the late night television ratings race. With Conan O’Brien now hosting NBC’s “Tonight Show,” the CBS comic surged past his rival during the first week of the season, attracting an average of 5 million total viewers, up 28 percent compared with the same period last year. “Tonight Show” plunged 49 percent, to 2.4 million viewers. Preliminary ratings for Thursday’s show were up 22 percent over his average for the year.

Analysts said they don’t expect the revelations about his personal behavior to prompt many viewers to abandon him.

“Dave’s true audience is cynical,” said Kathy Sharpe, chief executive of the New York-based marketing company Sharpe Partners. “They may be a little disappointed, like, ‘Dave, how can you be so dumb?’ … But they’ll still watch.”

In fact, by confronting the matter himself on the air, Letterman may have largely contained the damage, said John Rash, a TV programming analyst for the Minneapolis-based ad company Campbell Mithun.

“It makes him an even more compelling character,” he said. “Despite the circumstances, it actually humanizes him, which is different than his often-icy image.”

Extortion attempt

Indeed, most of the focus Friday remained on bizarre actions by the alleged extortionist, Robert Joel Halderman, a veteran producer at the CBS newsmagazine “48 Hours Mystery,” who left Letterman a letter and a proposed screenplay in the back seat of his car early the morning of Sept. 9, threatening to write a movie exposing the comic’s affairs. After attempting to cash a fake check for $2 million given to him by Letterman’s attorney, Halderman was arrested Thursday afternoon outside the CBS News offices on West 57th Street. He pleaded not guilty Friday to one count of attempted grand larceny in the first degree, a crime punishable by up to 5 to 15 years in prison. He has been suspended from CBS.

Public admission

Still, many were taken aback by the casual tone Letterman used to describe his sexual relationships with female employees. While saying that he felt “menaced” by Halderman during an extraordinary 10-minute-long segment on Thursday’s show, the comic did not express any contrition for cheating on his wife, Regina Lasko, who he dated for 23 years before their marriage in March.

“I have had sex with women who worked on this show,” he told the audience matter-of-factly. “And would it be embarrassing if it were made public? Perhaps it would. Especially for the women.”

Erin Matson, action vice president for the National Organization for Women, called Letterman’s jocularity offensive.

“That plays into same old sex stereotypes that men can do whatever but women should be ashamed of their sexuality,” she said. “We’re just disgusted that all these Hollywood men think they can do whatever they want.”

A spokesman for Worldwide Pants, Letterman’s production company, said the company’s sexual harassment policy does not prohibit sexual relationships between managers and employees.

“We have a written policy in our employee manual that covers harassment,” the spokesman said in a statement. “It is circulated to every employee every year. Dave is not in violation of our policy, and no one has ever raised a complaint against him.”

The spokesman declined to comment on how many women Letterman was involved with or the time span of the relationships.

Letterman may not have offered a politician’s apology for his behavior, but he handled the matter right out of a political playbook, said Dan Schnur, director of University of Southern California’s Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics and a veteran political strategist. “By bringing up the information himself rather than letting it come out from other sources and being forced to react to it, he did a lot to protect himself.”