David Letterman made the right business decision last night, although not necessarily the correct one, when the $30-million-a-year TV host exposed an alleged extortion attempt in front of astonished and immediately sympathetic viewers on his TV show. A person tried to blackmail Letterman — he says — because he screwed female staffers.

Several good screwings deserved another, the alleged extortionist (who supposedly threatened to write a screenplay) must have thought, if the story's true.

Letterman didn't do what could have been the correct thing: Pay the money. The guy does, after all, make at least that $30 million a year — even more than the Yankees' Alex Rodriguez, and Letterman's much more lovable.

On the other hand, once you pay a blackmailer, the extortion may never stop. Just ask Michael Jackson — if you pry him off little boys wherever he is now.

Instead, Letterman did the smart thing. The only possibly bad decision Letterman made was to have sex with staffers, any one of whom could have written a tell-all, unless he arranged a nondisclosure agreement, which he probably didn't. That's what you get when you foul your own nest instead of going elsewhere for your poontang.

In a business sense, Letterman handled it brilliantly. Fucking employees (unless they're fellow execs) is standard business practice, whether or not sex is involved. But this was the smartest bailout in at least the past year, and Letterman did it himself, with no boost from taxpayers. He used the alleged extortion attempt as a shtick on his show last night. He wound up admitting that he fucked staffers. He garnered really high ratings during a sweep period, making his bosses deliriously happy because their franchise is also intact. He told his audience: "I want to reiterate how terrifying this moment was . . . was I going to get a tap on the shoulder? I am motivated by nothing but guilt." And he earned admiring headlines, like "Letterman creates brilliant hour of TV from woes."

Beautiful. Bill Clinton should have done the same thing, instead of lying about having sex with "that woman."

Which brings us to this question: Sexual harassment? We know that people like to fuck celebrities — who doesn't? However, did Letterman get over on his staffers with his staff by extorting them (however subtly or directly) with better jobs or pay raises? Dunno yet. But it's a laugh that he described the situation as "creepy." Extortion, if that's what this was, is sleazy, for sure. But creepy? Usually not, unless it's life-or-death.

In Clinton's case, you could justifiably say that Monica Lewinsky extorted him (however subtly or directly with her whiny "love" notes to him), or that he paid her off by getting her good jobs. (Remember when he sent her to pal Vernon Jordan?) Clinton would up essentially "paying" her and he still wound up in a mess.

In both the Letterman and Clinton cases, they feared bad publicity. But Letterman, instead of covering it up and suffering a thousand cuts administered a painful slice at a time by reporters scrambling after rumors and by his coming off as mean-spirited and defensive, let it all gush out, and the bloody mess quickly clotted. It turned to gold for him and CBS and it won't even leave an ugly scar. [Note: In an earlier version of this item, I mistakenly typed "NBC," but I meant "CBS" -- honest I did.]

Businesses usually hire high-price spinmeisters to cover up scandal or try to put a good face on it. But no cover-up by Letterman. Unless Letterman can be shown to have blatantly coerced his female staffers into bringing him to orgasm, any subsequent pestering by the press will likely never now be mean-spirited (if it is, that will backfire on the press). If some of his fuck-buddy women now seek publicity and money by writing exposes, they're likely to garner less of both because it's old news. Unlike Gary Hart, Letterman didn't self-righteously sneer at reporters and challenge them to uncover "monkey business." Instead, Letterman scrambled up to the highest branch and turned it into an entertaining goof. Now that is an alpha male.