No Laughing Matter

November 15, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Comedy, Culture, Entertainment, Media, Popular Culture, TV | Leave a Comment 

“A little song, a little dance, a little seltzer down your pants.”

The philosophy of Chuckles  the Clown.

Comedy writer David Lloyd died last week at his home in Beverly Hills; he was 75.  A fitting epitaph was provided by Cheers co-creator Les Charles (for whom Lloyd wrote many episodes):  ”I do think he was the preeminent writer of television comedy.  If you consider how long his career was and how much he wrote for such really popular shows, he’s got to have been responsible for a record number of laughs in this world.”

Many of those laughs were concentrated in the seventh episode of the sixth season of the Mary Tyler Moore Show: “Chuckles Bites the Dust.”  In this script, the rarely seen Chuckles —host of a kid’s show at WJM, the Minneapolis TV station at which the series was set— meets a sudden and tragic end.

As Grand Marshal of the annual circus parade, he dresses as one of his many beloved characters Peter Peanut.  Station manager Lou Grant (Ed Asner) informs the shocked newsroom that, in this goober incarnation, Chuckles was shelled by a rogue elephant.

Here, from the show’s script, is that memorable moment:

               Lou enters, genuinely stricken.

                                     LOU
                              (Mutters)
                         Oh my! Oh, dear...!

                                     MARY
                         Mr. Grant...?

                                     LOU
                              (Really shaken)
                         Something terrible has happened.

                                     MURRAY
                              (Sober)
                         What is it, Lou?

                                     LOU
                         Someone we all know is dead.

                                     MARY
                         What! Mr. Grant--who?

                                     LOU
                              (Getting control)
                         No... I won't tell you about it now...
                         I don't want to upset you...

                                     MARY
                              (Frantic)
                         Mr. Grant!!...

                                     LOU
                         Where's Ted? I gotta tell Ted...

                                     MURRAY
                         He's on the air, Lou. What happened?
                         Who died? Tell us!

                                     LOU
                              (Still dazed)
                         Chuckles. Chuckles the Clown is dead.
                         It was a freak accident. He went to
                         the parade dressed as Peter Peanut...
                         and a rogue elephant tried to shell
                         him.

               They are both stunned.

For many years “Chuckles Bites the Dust” stood at the top of TV Guide’s list of the Top 100 Episodes of All Time.  (It has now been edged down to Number Three by Seinfeld’s 1992 “The Contest” and The Sopranos’ 1999 “College” episodes.)

Here’s TV Guide’s citation:

3. THE MARY TYLER MOORE SHOW
“Chuckles Bites the Dust” 10/25/1975
Take one unlucky peanut-clad clown, a rogue elephant, an irreverent newsroom, an Emmy-winning script and a virtuoso performance by one of TV’s greatest comedians, and you get one of the biggest laugh-out-loud sitcom episodes ever. When kiddie-show host Chuckles the Clown has his tragic culinary misadventure, it’s catnip to the WJM-TV crew—except for a disapproving Mary Richards. The comic payoff comes with Mary’s unsuccessful attempts to stifle her snickers during a eulogy celebrating Chuckles’ alter egos Mr. Fee-Fi-Fo and Auntie Yoo-Hoo. The pièce de genius: When the minister gives Mary permission to laugh, she begins to bawl. Amazingly, not everyone was on board, recalls star Mary Tyler Moore. The series’ usual director opted out of the episode “because he thought it was not in good taste,” says Moore. CBS also had misgivings about the show’s tone, she says, “but we knew it was something special. It’s not just about laughing at the funeral, but also the tensions and talking about it in the newsroom. It really is a uniquely funny episode.”

Here are links to the first, and second parts of “Chuckles Bites the Dust.”  And here is the final segment (which is even funnier if you watch the set up).   The audio is slightly out of sync but the laughs still arrive on time.

       Organ music stops and Reverend Burke steps to the lectern.

                                     BURKE
                         My friends... "Any man's death
                         diminishes me, because I am involved
                         in mankind. Therefore, ask not for
                         whom the bell tolls--it tolls for
                         thee."

                                     TED
                              (Sotto: scandalized)
                         Hey, Lou, he stole your poem!

                                     BURKE
                         Chuckles the Clown gave pleasure to
                         millions. The characters he created
                         will be remembered by children and
                         adults alike: Peter Peanut, Mr. Fee-
                         Fi-Fo, Billy Banana, and my particular
                         favorite, Aunt Yoo-Hoo.

               Mary stifles a laugh.

                                     BURKE
                         And not just for the laughter they
                         provided--there was always some deeper
                         meaning to whatever Chuckles did.
                         Remember Mr. Fee-Fi-Fo's little catch
                         phrase, remember how when his arch
                         rival Senor Caboom would hit him
                         with the giant cucumber and knock
                         him down? Mr. Fee-Fi-Fo would always
                         pick himself up, dust himself off
                         and say, "I hurt my foo-foo."

               Mary again stifles a laugh. The others in the row glare at
               her.

                                     BURKE
                         Life's a lot like that. From time to
                         time we all fall down and hurt our
                         foo-foo's.

               Mary again stifles a laugh. Other people turn to look at
               her.

                                     BURKE
                         If only we could all deal with it as
                         simple and bravely and honestly as
                         Mr. Fee-Fi-Fo. And what did Chuckles
                         ask in return? Not much--in his own
                         words--"A little song, a little dance,
                         a little seltzer down your pants."

               Mary has great difficulty in stifling herself here. Many
               people turn to look at her.

                                     BURKE
                              (Looking right at
                              Mary)
                         Excuse me, young lady... yes you...
                         would you stand up please?

               Mary, with no alternative, stands up.

                                     BURKE
                         You feel like laughing, don't you?
                         Don't try to stop yourself. Go ahead,
                         laugh out loud. Don't you see? Nothing
                         could have made Chuckles happier. He
                         lived to make people laugh. He found
                         tears offensive, deeply offensive.
                         He hated to see people cry. Go ahead,
                         my dear--laugh.

               As Mary bursts into tears, we:

                                                                   FADE OUT

                                      END OF ACT TWO

Bruce Weber in The New York Times and Dennis McLellan in the Los Angeles Times offered excellent obituaries. One of David Lloyd’s sons, Christopher, is co-creator of Modern Family —- the superb sitcom which, along with FlashForward, will save the 2009 season from the trash heap of TV history.

CNN Leaves It There

October 13, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under American Politics, Comedy, News media | 3 Comments 

The revolution manqué has started to devour its own children.  But in a world where so much time is spent automatically bashing Fox News, it’s bracing to see at least some spillover skepticism aimed in CNN’s direction.  Of course the target here is fatuity not ideology.

Laughing Matters

October 13, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Barack Obama, Comedy | Leave a Comment 

Laughing Matters

October 11, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Afpak, Barack Obama, Comedy, History, Humor, Obama administration | 2 Comments 

On Thursday the Daily Show turned its attention to the news about Afghanistan.  Jon Stewart’s deconstruction of Speaker Pelosi’s body language is inspired.  And the profile of General McChrystal —”he’s as strong as a grizzly bear and better at catching salmon; his mother was a yeti and his father a ‘68 Camaro”— covers some serious ground.

And this week’s issue of Time features a Fun with Photoshop Gallery of “Obama’s Other Awards” (in addition to his Heisman Trophy already noted here) — including an MTV Music Video Award, a Pulitzer Prize, an Oscar, and a Cy Young Award:

Laughing Matters

October 11, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under American Politics, Barack Obama, Comedy, Obama administration | Leave a Comment 

Last night’s cold open. Less edgy, less risky and, perhaps not coincidentally, less funny:

Laughing Matters

October 5, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under American Politics, Barack Obama, Comedy | Leave a Comment 

Saturday Night Live’s cold open did not go unnoticed on the Sunday morning talk shows — providing the basis of this week’s discussion about whether  and/or how much the bloom is off the rose.

Like Darrell Hammond with Bill Clinton and Will Ferrell with W —and last season’s controversy to the contrary— Fred Armisen has now planted his flag on this particular POTUS.

Reason To Believe

September 26, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Comedy, Entertainment, Humor, Internet, Lifestyle, Sports | Leave a Comment 

Dude Perfect is a collective of six roommates at Texas A+M who have developed what you might call a G-rated family-friendly frat boy version of Jackass.

In their expanding cottage industry, there are no visible tattoos, and nothing is stapled to anything else.  But they manage to retain  a sufficient quota of don’t-try-this-at-home stone craziness to keep the parents worried and the kids engaged.

The question on some of the more than 3 million minds that have viewed the group’s videos —including “the world’s longest basketball shot”—  is whether these dudes are, well, maybe just a tad too perfect.  And the dudes consider it the greatest compliment that their doings are so derring that people aren’t sure they can believe their own eyes.

Here’s the view from the third deck of Kyle Field at College Station:

And here’s the feat viewed from the field:

Based on their other videos, there’s no reason to believe that this one is doctored. (Nor, of course, is there any reason to believe that this one didn’t follow seventeen thousand four hundred and seventy-nine prior unsuccessful attempts at this particular stunt — and what difference would that make if this one is legit?)

The name derives from the moment when Sean, setting up the camera on the railing of Tyler’s backyard deck,  looked thorough the lens and saw his buddy in the center of the frame. “Dude perfect” was his response and the rest is history.

On their impressive website, they introduce themselves this way:

Ultimately, Dude Perfect is a group of college guys that follows Jesus. We didn’t plan on this type of interest in our videos and we’re incredibly grateful. We want to use this platform for something bigger than us.

Right now, that something bigger is the sponsorship of children in Africa through the organization Compassion International.

They started out betting lunches on trick shots in the backyard.  Eventually (“after quite a few free lunches went the bearded guy’s direction”) they decided to make a video and upload it to YouTube.  In the last several months, they’ve broken out with appearances on Good Morning, America (whose computer analysts couldn’t guarantee that the videos are unedited but couldn’t find any edits or figure out how any might have been made) and in Sports Illustrated.

Although they each have definite personalities that emerge in the videos, the ID caption on their website photo reads: “from left to right: this guy, that guy, the bearded one, the tall guy, the next tallest guy, the guy who looks just like the other guy.”

Larry Gelbart, 1928-2009

September 11, 2009 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under Comedy, Entertainment, Humor, In Memoriam | Leave a Comment 

As I write, either on TV Land or the Hallmark Channel, the inevitable strains of Johnny Mandel’s “Suicide Is Painless” are beginning, the chopper is coming down, and the men and women of the 4077th are getting ready for another session of OR drama and off-hours hijinks. Sooner or later Cpl. Klinger will be showing up in his heels and skirt, dog tags clinking around his neck in lieu of pearls. (There’s plenty of M*A*S*H* trivia on Wikipedia so I’ll just limit myself to mentioning that Jamie Farr, who played Klinger, really served in the Army in Korea, albeit a few years after the end of the war in 1953, and that the dog tags he wore when stationed there were the very same ones that were seen on all eleven seasons of the show and, of course, in today’s reruns.)

The difference is that tonight, Larry Gelbart, the main creator of M*A*S*H* the series, will not be around. He died in Los Angeles this morning at the age of 81.

Gelbart had a long and successful career in most of the branches of entertainment that involve comedy. He got his start working on Danny Thomas’s radio show, moved on to television when he worked on Caesar’s Hour (the followup to Your Show Of Shows), co-wrote the book for the hit Broadway show A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum, and wrote the screenplays for Oh, God and Tootsie. He always had a knack for the offhand, rib-tickling line. (My favorite is from Forum, when Zero Mostel, as a slave sometime in the first century A.D, examines a bottle of wine and hesitantly remarks: “1 was a good year, right?” This was cut during the show’s out-of-town tryouts because it was thought some theatergoers might think it blasphemous, but restored in the film.)

But it was a trip to Korea with Bob Hope, when the latter was entertaining the troops for Christmas, that gave Gelbart the background he needed over two decades later to make a success of the project that came his way in 1971: the adaptation of Robert Altman’s antiwar comedy M*A*S*H* as a television series. The show premiered in September 1972, while the Vietnam War was still going on. During its first season, it got only middling ratings, but its network, CBS, decided to stick with it. During the summer of 1973, viewers looking for something to watch besides Watergate coverage.started to tune into the reruns, and by the fall of that year, as the fortunes of President Nixon declined, those of M*A*S*H* steadily rose, until it entered the top 10, then top 5, of the ratings, and never left.

Over the next decade, the show became, as they say, an institution. Gelbart was its mainstay during its first four seasons (back in the days when Wayne Rogers was Trapper John, before that Hunnicutt guy showed up); he wrote nearly every episode of the series during that time. He smoothed the abrasive edges of the characters as they appeared in the Altman film, and the outlines of all the supporting characters – Father Mulcahy, Klinger, Radar, Maj. Burns, and “Hot Lips” Houlihan – did not change much from the way in which he (and the cast members) delineated them. His “Hawkeye” Pierce was more Grouchoesque and less annoyingly earnest than was the case after Alan Alda wrested more control of the series following Gelbart’s departure.

Well, I see that, like many people of my generation, at the drop of a pin I can launch into as complete an analysis of early M*A*S*H* as the next person – and I only used to watch every other episode of the show in those days, since I was finishing high school and starting college. But my point is that anyone who was around back then can attest that the show was a big, big part of American life – both during its original run and through the remainder of the 1980s.

James Poniewozik at Time.com lovingly recalls how he found common ground with his blue-collar father (a cross between Archie Bunker and Hank Hill, by his account, who also “grip[ed} at Richard Nixon on the TV news during Watergate”) when they watched M*A*S*H* together. As Poniewozik says, the show was anti-war in tone throughout its run, but it was not anti-soldier.  Like innumerable shows before it, it poked fun at pomposity and hypocrisy among officers (both as personified 24-7 by Frank Burns and periodically by visiting generals). But for all his perplexity, McLean Stevenson as Col. Blake was a decent, warm man doing the best for his unit that he could, and Harry Morgan as Col. Potter, of course, embodied the best of the American officer corps – firm, yet always thoughtful and understanding.

Regular TNN readers will remember the occasional discussion here last year of the role that the movie Bonnie And Clyde plays in Rick Perlstein’s Nixonland, in which he presents it as emblematic of the mood of rebellion in the late 1960s.  As he works on his new book, which takes the story of American life from RN’s re-election in November 1972 until the triumph of Ronald Reagan eight years later, he might want to take a look at the way in which M*A*S*H* helped to inspire better understanding of the American military during the 1970s, and helped to bring about reconciliation after the traumas of the Vietnam era. A quarter-century after the final episode of the show aired, that finale still has the highest Nielsen rating on record – 125 million people tuned in for it, more than for any Super Bowl or even any American Idol finale. And Larry Gelbart was the indispensable man in that story.

I Just Flew In From District Court, And Boy….

August 20, 2009 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under American Politics, Comedy, Hillary Clinton | Leave a Comment 

From 1993 until 2001, few figures were more prominent among the critics of the Administration then in charge than Larry Klayman, the founder of Judicial Watch, who, during those years, launched eighteen civil suits against the Clinton White House, and was often to be found on Fox News during its early years, speaking of litigation to come.

After the 42nd President and his spouse moved to Westchester County, however, less was heard from the Florida-based attorney. He made some waves early in 2003 when, perhaps in the spirit of bipartisanship, he joined the Sierra Club in a suit against Vice President Cheney, seeking the release of documents concerning energy policy. But soon afterward he left the organization he’d founded to launch an unsuccessful campaign for the Senate in Florida. In the six years since, he’s turned up in the news occasionally – in 2006 when he sued Judicial Watch charging mismanagement on the part of his successors, and earlier this year when it was reported that his new book, having been lost in the shuffle at HarperCollins after the departure of Judith Regan who’d acquired it, was to be issued by a smaller Florida press.

But this morning’s Washington Times reports that Klayman has just undertaken an entirely new career – as a stand-up comedian, currently performing at the Funky Buddha Lounge in Boca Raton. The competition in this field in South Florida is pretty stiff – ranging from veterans of the circuit like Dave Attell and Greg Giraldo to, well, really old comics like Jack Carter and London Lee. But it is true that Mort Sahl is seen in West Palm Beach and St. Petersburg and Orlando less often since he started doing things like teaching at Claremont McKenna College. So there seems to be an opening for Klayman to try his hand at political humor.

The lawyer-turned-humorist informed the Times’s Jennifer Harper that he thinks of his new enterprise as being in the tradition of his 1990s work: “I have not given up as ‘freedom fighter, but with the Obama/Clinton crowd in power it’s better to laugh than cry. Besides, the Clintons always tried to portray my lawsuits as a joke.” He promises to take his act to LA and New York if things go well in Florida. Wonder if there’s a chance that he’ll show up at the next Comedy Central Roast.

Laughing Matters

July 31, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under American Politics, Barack Obama, Comedy, Humor | Leave a Comment 

So here I am, having just judged the Daily Show as having jumped the shark by substituting predictable polemic for snarky satire, posting yet another Daily Show clip for your comedy delectation.

So what’s up with that?  Was I hasty?  Did I jump…the gun? Or was I even —just possibly—possibly maybe— wrong?

In a word: No.

But, that said, here’s last night’s clever Moment of Zen:

Laughing Matters

July 30, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Comedy, Humor, International Affairs, News media | Leave a Comment 

As last night’s clunkily polemical opening segment demonstrated, the Daily Show has, indeed, jumped the shark.

But John Oliver’s piece was based on a very clever premise:

And the interview with John Bolton was text book TV:

Laughing Matters

July 28, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under American Politics, Comedy, Humor | Leave a Comment 

The bad news is that both the Daily Show and the Colbert Report have, over the last few months, decisively jumped the shark.  Maybe they changed writers; or maybe the old writers just ran out of snark and irony and steam, and decided that polemics were as funny as (and infinitely easier to write than) satire.

The good news is that even a broken clock is occasionally right.  So here is a Daily Show bumper crop from yesterday’s edition.  The first is Jon Stewart’s riff on Sarah Palin’s curious gubernatorial swan song; the second is his extended interview with Weekly Standard Editor Bill Kristol.

Magic Number Or Misery For The Democrats?

June 30, 2009 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under American Politics, Comedy, Congress | 2 Comments 

This morning the Minnesota Supreme Court handed down its decision in favor of Al Franken in his eight-month battle with incumbent Senator Norm Coleman over the narrow margin of the election to determine the occupant of Minnesota’s seat in Capitol Hill’s upper chamber. Soon after, Coleman announced that, instead of taking his battle to the level of the Federal courts, he would concede defeat, leaving the way open for the onetime Stuart Smalley to take his seat.

(Richard A. Baker, the Historian of the Senate, was quoted as saying that Franken’s swearing-in would mark the first time a professional comedian had ever become a Senator. It’s hard to read that statement with a straight face. For example, for two terms in the 1950s and the 1960s one of our Southern states was represented by a very amiable gentleman, now deceased, who did not make much of a legislative mark, but was renowned in some circles for his habit of throwing empty bourbon bottles out of the window of his quarters in the Senate Office Building after consuming their contents. If Rick Perlstein can guess who that was, he gets a free steak dinner from me.)

On the surface, Franken’s victory looks like the ultimate triumph for the Democrats. Thanks to Arlen Specter’s defection from the Republican side of the aisle they now hold 60 seats, the supposed filibuster-proof majority. But Franken’s arrival, as no doubt many Democratic senators – perhaps even one as obtuse as Harry Reid – are aware, constitutes a mixed blessing at best.

As I said once or twice at TNN earlier this year, Franken’s career has been spent doing and saying things more or less antithetical to the usual background of a United States Senator. For well over thirty years he made his living being provocative and, not infrequently, insulting. The snide, snarky remark is sure to come more readily to his lips than genial words of consensus. Once he goes on C-Span and opens his mouth – and, indeed, he will be one of the Senators handling the Supreme Court confirmation hearings of Judge Sonia Sotomayor – he is sure, sooner or later, to come up with utterances that will provide prime fodder for Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and all their colleagues in the worlds of talk radio and cable TV commentary. Before long, even our Vice President might seem the model of thoughtfulness and discretion.

So a major task facing the Democrats, if they want to improve their numbers come 2010 rather than lose seats, will be to find some way to muzzle old Al at the right moments – before the watchword across the media becomes: “….and doggone it, people don’t like him.”

Moonwalking With Steve Martin

June 27, 2009 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Comedy, In Memoriam | 2 Comments 

At the New Yorker, actor and comedian Steve Martin writes a humorous and affectionate tribute to the late Michael Jackson:

As a dancer, Michael Jackson was great. He was like Fred Astaire. This video, a parody of the “Billie Jean” video, was done for “The New Show,” which was a prime-time NBC program that Lorne Michaels did in 1983-1984, when he wasn’t producing “Saturday Night Live.” This was the opening—it was the first piece on the first episode of the show. Michael Jackson had recently done what I consider to be his life-changing performance on the Grammy Awards, where he did the Moonwalk and threw his hat offstage. He was just brilliant. Then the “Billie Jean” video came out. And this was a parody of that.

I’m not sure whose idea it was; it might have been Lorne’s. Pat Birch choreographed it. The hard move was that little leg twist that he did. You really have to throw your leg. I did it a thousand times in about three days. And a couple of weeks later I noticed—er, I have a pain here. The pain lasted about two years, then it went away on its own.

Here is Martin’s priceless attempt:

The Amazing Colossal Presidency

June 19, 2009 by David R. Stokes | Filed Under American Politics, Book Review, Comedy, History, Obama administration, Political Philosophy, Presidents, U.S. History | 2 Comments 

In April of 1979, a week or so after the nuclear-near-disaster at Three Mile Island near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, Saturday Night Live did a sketch featuring Dan Akroyd as President Jimmy Carter. Playing on the idea that Carter had a background in engineering and nuclear physics, Akroyd insisted on visiting a place called cryptically, “Two Mile Island,” and his character was exposed to contaminated water.

Rosalyn Carter: Where is Jimmy? I have a right to see him!
Ross Denton: Mrs. Carter, the president is receiving special treatment right now.
Rosalyn Carter: What kind of special treatment? Why can’t I see him?
Ross Denton: Mrs. Carter, this is Dr. Edna Casey. Perhaps she can explain better than I what has happened to the president.
Dr. Edna Casey: Mrs. Carter, your husband was exposed to massive doses of radiation. Now this has affected the entire cell structure of his body and greatly accelerated the growth process.
Rosalyn Carter: Well, what does that mean?
Dr. Edna Casey: It means, Mrs. Carter, your husband, President Carter, has become THE AMAZING COLOSSAL PRESIDENT.
Rosalyn Carter: Well how big is he?
Dr. Edna Casey: Well Mrs. Carter, it’s difficult to comprehend just how big he is but to give you some idea, we’ve asked comedian Rodney Dangerfield to come along today to help explain it to you. Rodney?
Ross Denton: Rodney, can you please tell us, how big is the president?
Rodney Dangerfield: Oh, he’s a big guy – I’ll tell you that – he’s a big guy. I tell you he’s so big, I saw him sitting in the George Washington Bridge dangling his feet in the water! He’s a big guy!

It was a funny bit. But it’s not so funny to see life imitate art these days.

The founding fathers and framers of the constitution were very concerned about vesting too much energy in the American chief executive. In his book, The Cult Of The Presidency: America’s Dangerous Devotion To Executive Power, Gene Healy reminds us that many these days see it as “the president’s job to protect us from harm, to ‘grow the economy,’ to spread democracy and American ideals abroad, and even to heal spiritual malaise.” In fact, this job description is completely foreign to what was created back in the day. “If the public expects the president to deal with all national problems, physical or spiritual,” he writes, “then the president will seek – or seize – the power necessary to handle that responsibility.”

In other words, an amazing colossal presidency.

So, how did we go from what the constitution meant to where we are now? The trouble began around the turn of the 20th century and the Progressive movement. And it was very much an equal opportunity problem – with Democrats and Republicans to blame.

A careful look at the presidencies of Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson yields abundant clues about how we got here. TR was a Republican and a strenuous occupant of the White House – and in many ways, admirably so. He is seen by many today as a hero, though it is likely that his personal qualities inspire people more than his actual policies or approach to the presidency itself. He was a man of courage and confidence. His post-presidential speech about “The Man In The Arena” is one of my favorites.

Mr. Roosevelt, however – all his wonderful traits notwithstanding – dramatically expanded the role of the presidency and with it the expectations of Americans. Then later, Woodrow Wilson picked up where Teddy left off and transformed the office into one that became, in fact, an amazing colossal presidency. And it wasn’t a good thing.

The day after his election in November of 1912, Wilson told his party chairman: “Before we proceed, I want it understood that I owe you nothing. Remember that God ordained that I should be the next President of the United States.” I think he may have showered in contaminated water that very morning. He was, after all, from Jersey.

Wilson had written a book back in 1908 entitled Constitutional Government. In it, he talked about his views of the presidency: “The President is at liberty, both in law, and conscience, to be as big a man as he can.” His administration was living proof of this. This so-called “Progressive” man was a civil liberties wrecking crew, though revered by most Democrats today as a hero – even a saint. The nation under Wilson, and at the end of The Great War, was as close to totalitarianism as it had ever been. An editorial in The New Republic on November 16, 1918, gives a snapshot of what the country looked like, and this periodical clearly saw all of it as great:

The whole issue hinges on social control. For forty years we have been widening the sphere of this control, subordinating the individual to the group and the group to society. Without such control, vastly magnified, we should not have been able to carry on the war. We conscripted lives, property, and services; we took over railroads, telegraphs and other economic instruments. We fixed wages, prices, the quantity of coal, power, labor or transportation a man might command, and the quantity of food we might consume. All this we did on the narrowest of legal bases, for no one dared question our power.

It did happen here – thanks to an amazing colossal presidency.

In between Teddy and Woody came William Howard Taft. Now largely dismissed by historians as a presidential failure, what it is missed is how much of a voice of reason he was. Roosevelt’s handpicked successor ratified by the voters in 1908, Taft and TR eventually had a falling out and conducted a party-dividing battle for the 1912 Republican nomination. Taft won that race, but Teddy decided to run as a third-party candidate that November, effectively conceding the overall election to Mr. Wilson.

It was humiliating for Taft and while in the political wilderness he wrote a book about the presidency entitled, Our Chief Magistrate and His Powers. What he had to say back then needs to be read, and read again by Americans today, in this new age of the amazing colossal presidency:

Ascribing an undefined residuum of power to the President is an unsafe doctrine and…it might lead under emergencies to results of an arbitrary character, doing irremediable injustice to private right. The mainspring of such a view is that the executive is charged with responsibility for the welfare of all the people in a general way, that he is to play the part of a universal Providence and set all things right, and that anything that in his judgment will help the people he ought to do, unless he is expressly forbidden not to do it. The wide field of action that this would give to the executive, one can hardly limit.

Warren Harding appointed William Howard Taft as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court in 1921, the only job he ever really wanted. Harding also undid much of the damage Mr. Wilson had done to the economy, not to mention liberty itself.

Sure, Harding had his share of personal problems. And Taft was not too great on the campaign trail. But compared to some of the amazing colossal presidents we have had, I think the men who served before and after Wilson look better than the man in the middle, and even in some ways, though it’s hard to admit, than the man in the arena.

Laughing Matters

June 12, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Comedy, International Affairs, Iraq War | Leave a Comment 

On Wednesday night’s broadcast of the Colbert Report from Camp Victory in Baghdad, Steven Colbert interviewed  Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Barham Saleh.  The Deputy PM’s academic training was in the UK; he spent some time in Washington as spokesman for the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan.  He rolls with the Report’s quirky flow, nicely touches all the bases, and makes a strong impression.

Comedy Isn’t Pretty — And Often Not Even Funny

June 12, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under American Politics, Comedy, Entertainment, Sarah Palin | 6 Comments 

After five years of working for and with David Letterman at Late Night, my respect and affection for him are pretty darn close to unbounded.

But, of course, that doesn’t mean that I think everything he does is OK — much less that every joke he tells is funny.

A recent unfortunate —and uncharacteristic— case in point is the small run —in the opening monologue and the Top Ten List— of marginally tasteless and arguably unfunny of material about Sarah Palin on Monday night’s show.

The hook was the Governor’s highly-publicized whirlwind trip to New York that had received saturation news coverage over the preceding weekend.

On Sunday’s itinerary was a family outing to the new Yankee Stadium with Rudy and Judith Giuliani.  And that’s where the trouble started.

Then, as you look at it, insult was added to injury a couple of minutes later with Number Two on the Top Ten List from the Home Office in Wahoo, Nebraska.

TOP TEN HIGHLIGHTS OF SARAH PALIN’S TRIP TO NEW YORK

10. Visited New York landmarks she normally only sees from Alaska.

9. Laughed at all the crazy-looking foreigners entering the U.N.

8. Made moose jerky on Rachael Ray

7. Keyed Tina Fey’s car

6.  After a wink and a nod, ended up with a kilo of crack

5.  Made coat out of New York City rat pelts

4.  Sat in for Kelly Ripa. Regis couldn’t tell the difference.

3. Finally met one of those Jewish people Mel Gibson’s always talking about.

2. Bought makeup at Blomingdale’s to update her “slutty flight attendant” look

1. Especially enjoyed not appearing on Letterman

I know at first hand and from considerable personal experience and observation that Dave is —despite his ostensibly prickly personality and self-proclaimed dumb guy persona— a highly intelligent, thoughtful, considerate, and sensitive fellow.

None of the jokes in question are very funny —with the exception of Numbers Ten and Six it has to be one of the lamest Top Ten lists in a long while— but that’s the law of averages, not the law of unintended consequences.  And I can assure you that the notion that he intentionally set out to insult or demean a pre-teen is, simply, off the table.  (The technicality is that the Palin daughter present at the ball game turned out to be 14 year old Willow rather than 18 year old single mom Bristol.)

To the extent that there may have been any operating principle behind what happened, I suspect it’s hiding in plain sight in the Number One Highlight of Sarah Palin’s Trip to New York: “Especially enjoyed not appearing on Letterman.”

There has been bad blood —entirely and gratuitously McCain (and by indirection McCain-Palin) generated— between the 2008 GOP presidential ticket and The Late Show with David Letterman.  Even after Senator McCain admitted screwing up and tried to set things right, he failed to deliver on a promised joint appearance  with his running mate.

To most people these events might seem like tempests in teapots.  But having been there and done that I know how seriously Dave takes his show and treats his audience.  Besides, he comes from a time and a place where, if you make a promise, you’re expected to keep it.

What would otherwise have been a minor blip noted only by those with highly sensitive blip monitors, has been turned into a brouhaha bordering on a cause celebre by the Palins — who have effectively charged Dave with pedophilia.  Whether this was done in a misguided attempt to make a point or in order to further an agenda will be the subject of debate for some time.

I think they made a mistake in not accepting Dave’s apology and moving on.  Partly because I think it would have been the right thing to do; and partly for the reasons put forward by Margaret Carlson on today’s Daily Beast:

…picking a fight with a trained comedian, refusing to accept his apology and continuing to battle after the white flag is shown reveals a complete lack of political sophistication.

Letterman apologized at unprecedented length for a comment about Palin’s recent trip to New York. There was, he said, “One awkward moment for Sarah Palin at the Yankee, during the seventh inning stretch, her daughter was knocked up by Alex Rodriguez.” To which the Palins shot back: “Laughter incited by sexually perverted comments made by a 62-year-old male celebrity aimed at a 14-year-old girl is… disgusting.”

Who said anything about a 14-year-old girl? Not Letterman. That would be… the Palins. It turns out it was Willow, not Bristol, who went to the baseball game. But who knew that until the Palins brought this “disgusting” comment so painful to their younger daughter to the attention of the 300 million people not tuned into David Letterman?

Letterman’s joke was indeed tasteless—he even owed A-Rod an apology. But I doubt there was another soul in the world who didn’t understand the joke to be about the older Palin daughter, who lapped Jamie Lynn Spears as the most famous pregnant teen in the world once she was trotted out at the Republican National Convention in August. Not that Bristol should have been left at home in the dark, but if you want a “zone of privacy” around your daughter, do you have her appear on stage with her then-fiancée hinting at prospects of a White House wedding waving to the crowd like Charles and Diana of the Klondike?

The Gray Folks At The Gray Lady

June 11, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Comedy, Internet, News media | Leave a Comment 

The poobahs at One Times Square were understandably wary when the Daily Show’s Jason Jones came a-calling.

But even taking that into account they seem every bit as bland, bleached, and beached, as their daily product.

Laughing Matters

June 9, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Barack Obama, Comedy, Iraq War | Leave a Comment 

This week the Colbert Report is broadcasting from one of Saddam Hussein’s palaces in Baghdad.  Last night’s first show is worth watching.  

A highlight is the interview with General Ray Odierno, the Commanding General of the Multi-National Force–Iraq, and the amusing (and skillfully executed and edited) turn it takes.

The More Things Change….

June 5, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Comedy, Technology | Leave a Comment 

Catching Up

June 3, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under American Politics, Comedy, Supreme Court | Leave a Comment 

 

Both the Daily Show and the Colbert Report were on vacation during the Memorial Day week, so they had to bring their viewers up to date on the major story they missed.

Here’s Stewart:
 

And Colbert:

colbertnation.com

 

Laughing Matters

May 24, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under American Politics, Bush Administration, Comedy | Leave a Comment 

According to the old saying, many a true word is spoken in jest. 

In many cases, only some true words are spoken in jest.

In all cases, jest is a matter of taste and few jests are really all that funny.

In the case of SNL’s cold open last night, some words were true, most jests fell flat, and the whole thing was delivered without any particular spirit, conviction, or sense of timing, while being badly read off cue cards.

Laughing Matters

May 10, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Comedy, Nixon Administration | Leave a Comment 

The President’s decision to adjourn his weekly White House luncheon with the Vice President to Ray’s Hell Burger across the Potomac in Arlington, was reported and deconstructed with an intensity that finally struck even the media as a bit much.

Here’s the Daily Show’s take on it:

Of course RN and HAK wouldn’t have had to leave the White House to enjoy a tasty Mexican lunch. One of the least heralded accomplishments of the Nixon Administration was the introduction of Mexican food (and, as the sole exception to the otherwise teetotal rule, Coors beer) every Wednesday in the White House Mess.

Hate Speech

May 10, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Comedy, News media, Obama administration | 1 Comment 

President Obama spoke to the White House Correspondents’ Association annual dinner last night at the Washington Hilton.  He performed —without the teleprompter he made a joke about not using— with his usual aplomb.

Some of his jokes were very good; many were pretty good.  A few were surprisingly acerbic (and those were the ones he cracked himself up with, whatever that may mean).

This year’s after dinner act was Wanda Sykes.  Ms. Sykes is a comedian and actress who made a strong impression with her bracingly attitudinal cameos on Curb Your Enthusiasm.  Her standup is, not to put too fine a point on it, raunchy and racial.  One would have thought that she was an unlikely choice for the WHCA gig, which requires a sense of propriety and and at least a modicum of decorum; and one would have been right.

Ms. Sykes is an accomplished performer with an engaging manner.  And she started out well.  Lese majeste, particularly in the presence of majeste that knows how to roll with its flow, can be refreshing.  But then she said this:

You’ve had your fair share of critics. … Rush Limbaugh said he hopes this administration fails. … He just wants the country to fail. To me, that’s treason. He’s not saying anything different than what Osama bin Laden is saying. You might want to look into this, sir, because I think Rush Limbaugh was the 20th hijacker. But he was just so strung out on OxyContin he missed his flight. … Rush Limbaugh, I hope the country fails, I hope his kidneys fail, how about that? He needs a good waterboarding, that’s what he needs.

The President, who had clearly enjoyed some of her earlier digs, suddenly sported a rictus smile.

The Sunday talk shows have been all over the Obama jokes.  But —with the exception of Jon King’s increasingly impressive State Of The Union— there’s been nary a mention of Ms. Sykes’ hate speech spoken in the presence of the President, the First Lady, congressional leaders and all those moral arbiters in the media.  Remember the career-threatening outrage that met Don Imus’ 1996 WHCA gig — when he dared to base a couple of lame jokes on the fact that POTUS was a horndog?  Let’s see if anybody holds Ms. Sykes’ feet to that same fire.  But let’s not  hold our breaths.

You can see the President’s remarks here; Ms. Sykes’ sorry performance here.

Laughing Matters

April 14, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Comedy, International Affairs, Obama administration | Leave a Comment 

Old news, I know, but here’s Jon Stewart’s take on the President’s recent European trip — not without its amusing moments (the take, not the trip) most of which unfold as the piece progresses (and it doesn’t get started until :55 in).

And, for literal-minded TNN readers, here is Jon Stewart’s preferred “Come to me, son of Jor-El! Kneel before Zod!” moment. 

Laughing Matters

April 8, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under American Politics, Comedy, Congress | Leave a Comment 

Those who do not learn from history are condemned to repeat it.  (Not to mention having to hear Santayana’s cliche endlessly misquoted.)

Ignoring his Florida colleague Robert Wexler’s example, New York congressman Dan Maffei got suckered by Stephen Colbert.  Of course Congressman Wexler is still comfortably ensconced on Capitol Hill.   And Mr. Maffei won his very visible seat (the first Democrat to do so since 1981) by a comfortable 13% margin, so what harm can be done by having a bit of fun?  (The interview begins around 2:05.)

 

Michael Steele Takes His Talk On The Wild Side

March 16, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under American Politics, Comedy, Republican Party | Leave a Comment 

On today’s Daily Beast, Mark McKinnon says stop the madness of the current wave of calls for Tim Geithner and Michael Steele to resign after only a few weeks in their respective offices.

The reason Mr. Geithner is under fire is because of his —to put it mildly— so far unspectacular and uninspiring performance at Treasury.  What Secretary Geithner omits, Chairman Steele commits, and his offense (aside from Chairmaning while Republican) is precisely how spectacular his attempt to inspire turned out to be.

It wasn’t so much his desire to attract younger voters —and particularly young blacks and hispanics— by  applying Republican principles to “urban-suburban hip-hop settings” that caused the problem.  That necessity is pretty generally acknowledged.  Rather, it was his announcement of his decision to run an “off the hook” PR campaign to attract these new voters that raised some eyebrows, some hackles, and some questions.

Michael Steele (Johns Hopkins, Georgetown Law)  is a sophisticated attorney who worked for a downtown DC white shoe law firm.  After experience in London and Tokyo he set up his own international consulting group.  He served as Maryland’s Lieutenant Governor under Bob Ehrlich.  Hitherto neither his public statements nor his obiter dicta reflected anything other than his biography-to-date.

But as soon as he was elected GOP Chairman, he appeared to start channeling some inner Biggie Steele.  When asked in a TV interview about his plans, he said, “Oh yeah, I’m always open to everything, baby, absolutely.”  His considered opinion was that  ”Bobby Jindal is doing a friggin awesome job,” and, with his finger firmly on the current Mumbai-beat of popular culture, he sent ”Some slum love out to my buddy Gov.”

Was this kind of talk really  inappropriate or just really surprising coming from the Chairman of the RNC?  Whichever, Mr. Steele said that he planned to “surprise everyone” with his update of the party’s image — and he certainly achieved that goal.

His reaction to all the criticism is in character with his new attitude: “Stuff it.”

Perhaps the Chairman’s rationale is that, as long as they spell your name right, any publicity is good publicity.    If that’s the case he might even have been amused by Kenan Thompson on Saturday Night Live —

— and perhaps less so by the crew at LandlineTV.

Whether the Steele brouhaha is anything more than just the predictable (and not undeserved) fun being had with a clumsily launched campaign remains to be seen.

One current rumor, which surfaced today in Mike Allen’s “Playbook” on Politico is that  “The next RNC chairman will be Norm Coleman, after he loses his recount fight and big donors see Michael Steele’s March numbers.”

Laughing Matters

March 10, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Comedy, International Affairs, Obama administration | Leave a Comment 

Absolutely the  last word —at least for the time being— on the administration’s frightfully bad show during Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s visit, and the Secretary of State’s Russian Reset Button goofski (getting the translation wrong was unfortunate but understandable; but someone in Foggy Bottom should have known about Putin’s father having been killed by a red button):

Laughing Matters

March 9, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Barack Obama, Comedy, Obama administration | Leave a Comment 

A short clip from Will Forte’s Tim Geithner cold open of Saturday Night Live received wide play on the Sunday talk shows.  The resemblance between the comedian and the Secretary doesn’t achieve Palin/Fey levels (and it’s based largely, but not entirely, on hair and makeup), but it’s pretty good.

Whether Forte is successfully mimicking his target’s voice is hard to tell.   The Secretary’s few and elusive public performances have mainly been of the “more follows” variety.

Here’s the complete clip:

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The show’s host was Dwayne Johnson — the former WWF wrestler turned action actor known as The Rock.  He’s an engaging personality and turned in a more polished and thought-through performance in a variety of sketches than many of the film and TV stars who have taken that high profile gig.

 

A President’s Proud Legacy

March 7, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Comedy, News media | Leave a Comment 

On NPR’s weekly comedy —at least they claim it’s comedy— news-based quiz show Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me, the final segment is a round robin of the panelists making humorous predictions about the future.

Today’s edition featured WaPo’s Roxanne Roberts making this prediction about this week’s topic: What will be the next scandal to rock reality TV?

Bill Clinton withdraws from the new season of The Bachelor saying he didn’t realize marriage made him ineligible for the show.

The audience roared laughter before it broke into applause.  On NPR.  Not EIB.  NPR.

Jimmy Fallon’s McCain Joke: T’ain’t Funny McGee

March 4, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under American Politics, Comedy, Entertainment | Leave a Comment 

Jimmy Fallon’s second show last night was no more comfortable or focused than its predecessor.  His nervous and ponderous first night interview with Robert DeNiro was understandable and excusable.  (It’s the devil’s bargain to book the biggest talk show name knowing in advance that, in talk show terms, he’s a stone dud.)  But a talk show is a daunting undertaking and it will take some time before —and if— Late Night with Jimmy Fallon finally starts to settle down and feel at home.

But there is no excuse for closing his monologue with an unaccountably and gratuitously ungracious joke:

Meghan McCain, John McCain’s daughter, says she’s tired of constantly dating guys who are obsessed with how great her father is.
Fortunately for her she already dated all three of them.

While Ms. McCain’s unfortunate most recent attempt to extend her fifteen minutes of reflected fame lacked decorum —and was, therefore, fair game for comment— it was harmless enough.  So I wonder who thought it would be funny to trash her father — and why no wiser head prevailed before the “joke” reached the flashcards.

News Flash: Republicans Not Funny

March 3, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Comedy | Leave a Comment 

Now that George W. Bush (remember him?) has gone (and has anyone ever been so gone so fast?), and has been replaced by someone who is even more popular than Jesus, Gandhi, and Martin Luther King, late night comedy is floundering.

One of the problems, clearly, is that, absent Mr. Bush, Republicans aren’t rib ticklers.

Take Saturday Night Live. Please. But seriously, the show, which is now in its three hundred and sixty-seventh year on the air, has entered one of its extended doldrums.

A couple of weeks ago they excavated Dan Ackroyd to make a guest appearance as Minority Leader John Boehner (a somewhat Nixonian John Boehner, but that’s the problem with type casting).  It’s hard to imagine a more embarrassingly unfunny, underealized, under written, under rehearsed, and amateurishly executed six (count ‘em, six — and, trust me, by the end you will be counting every second of them)  minutes of post-prime time air.  It’s one thing for Darrell Hammond to be too busy to learn his lines; but it’s quite another thing for him to read them so badly.

Last night, on the debut of Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, we learned that Bobby Jindal isn’t any funnier than John Boehner. It’s way too early to assess —much less to write post mortems for— NBC’s new offering in the 12.30 PM Late Night slot that was made venerable by the tenancy of Late Night with David Letterman and has only just been vacated by Late Night with Conan O’Brien.

But this topical piece about the controversy raised over Governor Jindal’s response to the President’s Not Ready For State Of The Union speech last week doesn’t bode well.  And, aside from the fact that it isn’t funny, am I alone in thinking that Jack McBrayer doesn’t sound anything like Bobby Jindal, but sounds exactly like Al Gore?

No Child Left Behind A La Simpson (Via Hulu)

March 2, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Comedy | Leave a Comment 

When The Going Gets Weird On The Late Show

February 12, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Comedy, Entertainment | 1 Comment 

Joaquin Phoenix’s appearance on last night’s Late Show is being widely deconstructed on the internet and the radio.  It’s true that he hasn’t hitherto been known as a pillar of dependability or stability —his past history and his recent decision to forswear acting to pursue a rap career have been widely reported— but these several minutes would seem to take weirdness to entirely new levels.

It was on my watch —in fact, early on my watch— that perhaps the quintessentially weird Letterman moment occurred: Crispin Glover’s July 1987 visit to Late Night.  In that case, the guest was certifiably —and proudly— strange; and the pre-interview had not been without its surreal moments.  But then he showed up at the studio in a heightened state of excitement that almost matched his wig,  Even so, he was sufficiently coherent and professionally present for me to tell Dave and the producer that there was no need to scrap the segment.

It all began OK, but a few minutes in my life was flashing before my eyes; it continued to do so until Dave brought things to an end by walking off the set.  As I went up and led Crispin back to his dressing room and then to the elevators, he seemed genuinely confused about what had happened, and why.  (I was still on the job when, two years later, Crispin Glover revisited Late Night for an undeniably weird but otherwise more conventional appearance.)

So what about last night’s Phoenix gig?  Was it real?  Or was the actor doing a Borat-like shtick?  (He is, apparently, involved in some kind of reality movie project.)

On one side is the fact that if he had been similarly uncommunicative and incoherent during the mandatory pre-interview there is no way he would have been booked.  But there are degrees of things, and he has never been known for being chatty.  On the other side is the fact that, while Dave is not beyond playing along with a bit, it’s unlikely that he would be part of such an extended fabrication — especially if it were in aid of a guest’s independent project.

Then there is the degree and kind of Dave’s reaction.  The only thing that makes him mad is when a guest disrespects the gig by not —as he described it— “coming to play.”  (Gum chewing was another thing that got his goat.)  Dave would be helpful and patient and tolerant, and —where leggy supermodels and clueless one hit actresses were involved— even gallant, if the guest were trying but failing.  His anger, which would manifest itself as increasingly remote contempt, was reserved for people who showed up and didn’t participate (hence the stinging power of his remark “I’m sorry you couldn’t be here tonight”).

So the jury —at least here on the Western Shore— is out but definitely leaning toward a verdict of legitimacy.   But decide for yourself — here, depending on your point of view, is either a superb piece of performance art or an out and out train wreck:

The Blago Road Show Plays The Late Show

February 4, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under American Politics, Comedy | Leave a Comment 

Impeached Governor Rod Blagojevich appeared last night on The Late Show with David Letterman.  Dave brought his best chop-busting A game, as indicated by their opening exchange:

Dave: “Why exactly are you here, honest to God? 

Blago:  ”Well, you know, I’ve been wanting to be on your show in the worst way for the longest time.”

Dave: “Well, you’re on in the worst way, believe me.” 

It was a long and basically very serious interview that filled most of the first half of the show.  You can see the opening segment here.

And in the second segment (which includes the by now ritual but still no less odious Nixon comparison), Dave fulfills my prediction that he would boldly go where no man has gone before and ask exactly what’s up with the hair.

The third segment (with its discussion of the arrest, Patrick Fitzgerald, and fathers-in-law) will undoubtedly have its admirers. But I think the most interesting one was the last:

You have to admit this Blago dude is damned good.  He actually ends up getting a smattering of applause from the audience and a modicum of respect from Dave.  Either he’s stone innocent or he’s in a kind of denial compared to which OJ is a paradigm of transparency.

Bill Hicks’ Legendary Letterman Set Aired At Last

February 2, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Comedy, Culture, Entertainment, Media | Leave a Comment 

What turned out to be Bill Hicks’ final appearance on CBS’ The Late Show with David Letterman was finally broadcast on Friday night, sixteen years after it was cut from the show.

I met Bill shortly after I joined NBC’s Late Night with David Letterman in the summer of 1987. He had been banned from the show a couple of years earlier for PWI — performing while intoxicated.   I was unaware of this backstory when I saw him at a club and was bowled over by his presence and his talent.

He had completely dried out and I vouched for him and he returned and became a friend of the show, regularly appearing several times each year.

My job was to decide whether a comic had enough material to fill a five minute segment, and then to help hone it into a set that would both fit into the context of Dave’s show and come in right on time.  Some comedians resented it, and I knew they were thinking “he sounds exactly like Nixon” when I told them that I understood how they felt.  (It wasn’t coincidental that Saturday Night Live’s “politically incorrect private investigator” was called Frank Gannon P.I.P.I.)

But I had no doubts about my ability to do my job because it didn’t take a comedian —much less a rocket scientist— to figure out that the sense and sensibility of Dave’s network show was different in every way from the freewheeling club atmosphere in which the comedians developed and performed their sets.  A TV set was tightly timed: at the pre-show production meeting I would have to tell the producer and director the set’s last word —the out cue— in advance.  The ideal Late Night five minute set included two or three runs of jokes on separate topics building to a big joke at the end.

Bill understood the necessary (or as he put it, necessarily evil) function I performed and enjoyed the irony of working with a man whose qualifications for the job of comedy arbiter consisted of studying history in grad school and working for Richard Nixon for seven years.  So we hit it off and hung out whenever he was in town working on a set.  He was amused when one of the introductions I wrote for Dave described his comedy as “relentless.”

At one point cameras from CBS’ 48 Hours examined the process by  following us around from club to club and then into the studio for the broadcast. The months of ribbing that followed from Dave and the Late Night crew, added to the fact that neither NBC nor CBS would reimburse me for the town car the cameraman required to film from the front seat, put paid to my interest in any further on camera work.

I left Late Night on 14 February 1992.  After his last show on my watch, Bill gave me a picture book of dinosaurs with the inscription “From one dinosaur to another.”

Later that summer Dave decamped to CBS.  On 1 October 1993 Bill was scheduled to do his first set on the Late Show; it would be his twelfth appearance with Dave but his first on the CBS show broadcast at the earlier, 11.30, hour.

His set was pre-approved in the usual way by my successor and delivered successfully at the Ed Sullivan Theater. But when Bill got back to his hotel, he received a call from Robert Morton, the show’s producer, informing him that, on consideration, the set was considered inappropriate and would have to be cut. He assured him that he would be invited back to do a different set. Bill called me, but aside from expressing sympathy there was nothing I could do.

What none of us knew was that Bill knew there wouldn’t be another time.  He had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, and he died five months later, fifteen years ago this month, less than two months into his thirty-second year, on 26 February 1994.

In the last few years before he died, Bill had developed a large and growing cult following, particularly in the UK where they took his outlaw persona literally, and where he filled theaters with his one man shows (as you can see in the heavily produced BBC filmed version of one of his West End extravaganzas).

John Lahr, the New Yorker’s drama critic, was an early and ardent Hicksian. After the Late Show fiasco, Bill wrote him a 39-page letter, and Mr. Lahr incorporated this apologia pro vita sua into an earlier New Yorker profile to make an insightful and indignant and moving chapter in his book Light Fantastic.

Which brings us back to Friday night.

Bill’s mother appeared with Dave in an introductory segment that was about equal parts poignant and uncomfortable.  Dave apologized and eulogized, and Mary Hicks offered acceptance but not absolution.  In fact, although Dave rightly, and characteristically, accepted responsibility for cutting the set, the question was almost certainly first raised by the CBS Standards and Practices rep assigned to the show and the show’s producer.   If the five minute segment was the reality with which the comedians had to cope, the Standards and Practices constraints were the producers’ cross to bear.  

The set, with its unrelenting language and undercurrent of violence, delivered with Bill’s characteristic intensity, was undeniably disturbing.  Whoever made the decision, it was, in terms of the realities of the times,  certainly an arguable —and, arguably, the right— one to make.

The first shock watching this old footage was seeing how uncharacteristically healthy Bill looked.  The man always described as pasty and pudgy was now lean and trim.  The irony was painful.

On the page the jokes had seemed edgy but unexceptional. But in performance, with Bill’s charisma and intensity added, the whole became greater than the sum of its parts, and I could understand why it made the Standards and Practices already supersensitive needle flip into the red.

Bill begins by joking about hunting and killing Billy Ray Cyrus, Michael Bolton, Marky Mark and others; then he does some gay and lesbian material before attacking pro-lifers; he segues into some of his old smoking jokes and ends with a rant about Easter and people who wear crosses.

Even today, with all the changes the intervening years have seen, this is still a set that would still be challenging in terms of broadcast network standards.  It would probably be passed, but there would surely be some discussion.

The mistake was the preapproval that led Bill to perform with the expectation that the set would air.  But mistakes get made, and if Bill had lived, he would have taken the Mulligan, and the unhappy experience would have become fodder for later rants instead of the tragic legend at the end of his career.

If you seek Bill’s legacy — just look around.  His influence can be seen and felt and heard anywhere good comedy and craftsmanlike comedians are to be found.

Cynthia True’s biography —American Scream— tells Bill’s story.  And John Lahr edited Bill’s routines and writings in Love All the People. But the best sources are Bill’s own several CDs and DVDs.

Laughing Matters

February 1, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under American Politics, Barack Obama, Comedy, Obama administration | Leave a Comment 

Here’s last night’s Saturday Night Live cold open.  It starts amusing and gets funny.

By the time SNL was on the air, President Obama was already back at the White House, having successfully accomplished the mission of addressing his first Alfalfa Club audience —- and, according to the available accounts, making them laugh.

“Obama rocks the Alfalfa Club” is Politico’s headline. And Mike Allen indicates the Prexy’s opener was boffo:

How big is Barack Obama right now?

Even the well-heeled, well-tailored and well-connected members of the Alfalfa Club all but tripped over their patent leather shoes and floor-length gowns to get a moment Saturday night with the man who happens to be both the new president and the world’s most buzzed-about living figure.

Think ambassadors, Supreme Court justices, media magnates, the Bush family and Henry Kissinger. To put it in Obama—er Lincoln—terms, it’s a soiree of the elite, by the elite and for the elite. Star-struck they’re not.

Yet in a breach of protocol at an event where protocol is everything, a long line of club members and guests formed to shake Obama’s hand before he spoke. Titans of journalism (Donald Graham), politics ( Jane Harman) and business (Henry Kravis and Michael Dell) all paid homage.

Even Fred Malek, a longtime GOP fundraiser and John McCain’s campaign co-chairman, and Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin made sure to make their way over to greet the president.  

Such a scene is out of character at the Alfafa, but then for a club originally founded to celebrate the birthday of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee, the mere presence of a black president made for a different kind of evening.

“If he were here with us tonight, the general would be 202 years old,” Obama mused in his speech, confronting the unlikely moment. “And very confused.

The White House even issued a sample of the Presidential routine:

I am seriously glad to be here tonight at the annual Alfalfa dinner. I know that many you are aware that this dinner began almost one hundred years ago as a way to celebrate the birthday of General Robert E. Lee. If he were here with us tonight, the General would be 202 years old. And very confused.

Now, this hasn’t been reported yet, but it was actually Rahm’s idea to do the swearing-in ceremony again. Of course, for Rahm, every day is a swearing-in ceremony.

But don’t believe what you read. Rahm Emanuel is a real sweetheart.

No, it’s true. Every week the guy takes a little time away to give back to the community. Just last week he was at a local school, teaching profanity to poor children.

But these are the kind of negotiations you have to deal with as President. In just the first few weeks, I’ve had to engage in some of the toughest diplomacy of my life. And that was just to keep my Blackberry. I finally agreed to limit the number of people who could email me. It’s a very exclusive list. How exclusive?

Everyone look at the person sitting on your left. Now look at the person sitting on your right. None of you have my email address.

Mauling Paul Blart Misses The Point

January 28, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Comedy, Entertainment, Lifestyle, Movies | Leave a Comment 

In today’s WAPO Hank Steuver stylishly reflects —”America Asks: But Is It Blart?“— on the unexpected success of Paul Blart: Mall Cop.  PB:MC is the latest product of Adam Sandler’s Happy Madison empire.

The critics either dismissed it or drubbed it; and the people love it.  What’s up with that?

There are many reasons for the phenomenon —including the number of screens, the fact that it’s a PG-13 family flick, etc.— but Steuver digs deeper to discover why, in just ten days, PB:MC made more than  Slumdog Millionaire and Milk combined.

The movie takes place in a mall where there’s still a Sharper Image and plenty of happy Black Friday consumers. In Paul Blart’s world (the film was shot on location in two Massachusetts malls), there is no Great Recession, and the mall is still vital, important — a noble center of communal life. People are still spending. “Paul Blart: Mall Cop” also has a knowing underpinning of snark about the mall: Our hero falls in love with a woman who sells hair extensions at a kiosk called “Unbe-Weave-able.” The employees hang out at a chain restaurant and sing karaoke.

At times the movie almost takes on a documentary hue, a social study, a portrait of who we are. But not too much. It’s a recession movie. It’s what Laurel & Hardy did in the 1930s. Come in, America, and forget. It requires all the thought of a “Tom and Jerry” cartoon, but like a “Tom and Jerry” cartoon there is more to see, if you squint, if you think. Explaining it is like explaining dada.

Critics snubbed it, if they reviewed it at all. The Washington Post, like many others, relegated a review of “Paul Blart: Mall Cop” to a brief 314 words on Page 32 of the Weekend section, in which the critic who saw it, and loathed it, said she would recommend watching “Paul Blart: Mall Cop” only on cable TV — if and only if the viewer was lying sick and could not physically reach the remote control. (In other words, “Paul Blart: Mall Cop” is a film for the comatose.)

Here you have the essential divide between art and commerce. Living in a country that makes “Paul Blart” the top movie two weeks in a row is like realizing how many people think crotchless lingerie is sexy, that stretch Hummers are appropriate things to have when you’re feeling special. Taste is fraught.

“Paul Blart: Mall Cop” goes away the minute you walk out and breathe fresh air. What was it about? What’s the takeaway? We would type “America, go see ‘Paul Blart’ ” here, but guess what? America already has, and for whatever reason, loved it, without shame.

Promises To Keep

January 15, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under American Politics, Barack Obama, Comedy, Obama administration | 1 Comment 

Here’s a clip from the recent past.  Why, then, does it seem so long ago?

Frost/Other People

January 11, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Comedy, Frost/Nixon | Leave a Comment 

Last night SNL turned its attention to F/N and came up with a mildly amusing F/OP.   One definite pleasure is watching Darrell Hammond’s Langella’s Nixon.  

Echoes Of The Seventies

January 8, 2009 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under Comedy, Entertainment, Frost/Nixon, In Memoriam, Music, Perfect Songs, Presidents, Richard Nixon | Leave a Comment 

Since Monday when he modestly expressed his appreciation of being named the winner in Minnesota’s Senate race by that state’s Canvassing Board, Al Franken has remained in Minnesota, pending the result of litigation over the result, and has scarcely been heard from.  To compensate for this uncharacteristic silence, I present a somewhat timely transcript of an old Saturday Night Live sketch from 1976 – a takeoff on the original Frost/Nixon interviews with Eric Idle as the future Sir David and, of course, Dan Aykroyd as RN.  Since Franken and his then-partner Tom Davis worked on most of the show’s political material at the time, and since this was a followup to their infamous “Final Days” sketch on SNL, it seems a safe bet that they wrote most of this, though the opening is clearly an update of Idle’s “Timmy Williams” takeoff on Frost from Monty Python.

That said, as I recall this sketch from the one time I viewed it when it was first aired nearly 33 years ago, it was pretty thin stuff, and the transcript seems to confirm this.  Franken and Davis may have written “The Final Days” under the influence of LSD, as they have long claimed, but this seems to be the product of a couple of pots of Postum.  If Franken’s Senate stuff (assuming he ever makes it to his seat) is on a par with this, the Democrats may not have to worry about his utterances being dissected by Limbaugh and Hannity.  One line is rather funny – Aykroyd/Nixon responding to Idle/Frost’s greeting with “It’s really nice to be here, Johnny,” which still worked 30 years later when Will Ferrell, playing Robert Goulet, said it to Conan O’Brien – but other than that, the whole thing is anticlimactic.

One interesting thing about this show is that Idle clearly had a hand in choosing the musical guests – Alan Price and Neil Innes, neither of them artists with much of an American following.  It’s been a very long time since SNL executive producer Lorne Michaels allowed a guest host to have anything to do with the show’s music.  In his book about the series Tom Shales mentions an occasion in the 1990s when Alec Baldwin, before one of his frequent appearances, suggested to Michaels that Rosemary Clooney perform, which suggestion was politely but summarily dismissed.

Two days ago I posted about the death of Stooges guitarist Ron Asheton at the age of 60.  Yesterday, the free-form FM station WFMU in New Jersey paid tribute to his memory with a three-hour show devoted to just one of his songs – that is to say, each and every one of the almost 30 takes of “Loose,” the second track on the Stooges’s phenomenal 1970 album Fun House. The music itself takes up less than half of the three hours; the rest involves WFMU air personality Kenny G (no relation to the saxophonist, it’s safe to say) and various guests discussing the late musician’s life and work.  I have to admit I got through half of the show before I had to take a break.  But I have the feeling I’ll listen to the other half sometime.  Neither I nor my wife Rene can get enough of a 23-year-old Iggy Pop screaming and yowling while his cohorts (Ron, his drummer brother Scott, and bassist Dave Alexander) raise spectacular sonic pandemonium behind him.  (In 2000 Mix magazine published an article about the Fun House sessions that makes useful reading when listening to this, though it erroneously states that the band’s sax player Steve Mackay is deceased.)

Goodbye SNL ‘75-’95; Hello Matthew 5:5

January 5, 2009 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under American Politics, Comedy, Congress, Democratic Party, Election 2008 | Leave a Comment 

“This victory is incredibly humbling…”

- opening words of Playboy contributor Al Franken’s statement upon being certified the victor in the US Senate race in Minnesota by that state’s Canvassing Board.

My Christmas Gift For My TNN Readers

December 23, 2008 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Comedy, Holidays | Leave a Comment 

I had intended to surprise each of my TNN readers with a gift that would be sitting in your driveway on Christmas morning.  

Unfortunately the logistics turned out to be a nightmare of international shipping schedules, import regulations, and customs inspectors who insisted on doing things by the book.  The whole process wasn’t helped by what turned out to be my less than fluent Italian. Apparently being able to order antipasto doesn’t translate, no pun intended, to being able to order heavy machinery.

So, instead, here is my Christmas gift —of comparable value if not price— to each and every one of you.

(Spoiler alert — until you have already opened the above gift link, better not to read on.)

Yes, it’s what you really wanted all along — The Office’s Christmas show.

It’s brought to you by what could turn out to be the best gift of all (unless, of course, you already know about it):  hulu.com.

Hulu.com is truly the better mousetrap to whose door the world is already beating a path.  Hulu allows you to watch, on demand on your computer, and with minimal commercial interruption, most of the major TV shows and a growing roster of movies.

You might say that what Father Taylor is to Kindle, yours truly is to hulu.com — an objective enthusiast.

So — enjoy The Office over the holidays and explore hulu.com throughout the New Year.

F/N: The Perfect Flick For Nixmas

December 18, 2008 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Comedy, Frost/Nixon | Leave a Comment 

Last week the marketing offensive for F/N finally embraced The Colbert Report.  Host Steven Colbert had originally thought the movie was about RN teaming up with Jack Frost to save Christmas. He was disabused of this notion by his guest Kevin Bacon, who plays RN’s White House Military Aide and San Clemente Chief of Staff Jack Brennan in the film.

Amidst all the snarkiness is, I think, an interesting insight into the current state of play regarding RN’s reputation, his mind, and his legislative legacy.  If nothing else, the relatively restrained responsiveness of the young audience to many of the jokes indicates that, except for the committed and/or the interested, the late 1960s and early 1970s are about as ancient history as the 1860s and ’70s.

Ron Howard On The Daily Show

December 5, 2008 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under Comedy, Election 2008, Entertainment, Frost/Nixon, Movies, Presidents, Richard Nixon | Leave a Comment 

Last night, Frost/Nixon director Ron Howard appeared on The Daily Show for the customary six-and-a-half-minute interview.  He spoke about how nearly everyone he met when he was researching the film felt obliged to do a really awful Nixon impression, and, to illustrate the point, did one himself. Before you watch it, be warned: Ron is not wearing his baseball cap and is directly facing the camera, so the effect is not what it would be if this were an old Happy Days episode with Richie getting a laugh out of the gang at Arnold’s, but instead makes one wonder if the director might follow up his new film by resuming acting to star in a remake of Silent Honor directed by David Cronenberg.

(Speaking of Nixon impressions, in the interview to which John Taylor linked here some days ago, Frost/Nixon’s Frank Langella mentioned that before the decision was made to have him repeat his acclaimed stage performance as RN on celluoid, Jack Nicholson, Warren Beatty, and Kevin Spacey had wanted to do the role, as had already been noted in a number of articles when the film was in its early stages.  But Langella also stated that Dan Aykroyd had gunned for the part as well.  The idea of old Dan repeating his popular Saturday Night Life portrayal of thirty years ago as high drama instead of comedy thoroughly boggles the mind.)

Also noteworthy is Jon Stewart’s praise of Howard’s online Obama endorsement starring himself, Andy Griffith and Henry Winkler, which I discussed in a post here in October.  Stewart told Ron that he was a “kingmaker,” and though the director modestly demurred, I think there might be something to this. As I said in the previous post, for Howard to get as revered a figure as Andy Griffith to appear in the spot was quite a coup, even though the concluding dialogue with the Fonz diminished its overall effectiveness to some degree.

The clip got an enormous number of views, and it may well have helped put the President-elect over the top in states such as North Carolina, Virginia, and Indiana, where The Andy Griffith Show is very much a bedrock cultural reference point to this day.   And it may also have helped in Florida, which, by virtue of having the largest population of retirees in the nation, thereby has the largest population of residents who watch Matlock whenever it’s on.   Ergo, it seems a pretty solid bet that Ron will spend at least one night in the Lincoln Bedroom in the next four years.  Won’t that be something to tell the folks back in Mayberry?

The Not So Fresh Prince

November 13, 2008 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Comedy, Entertainment | Leave a Comment 

It strikes me that everything one needs to know about what’s wrong with Prince Charles —why he just hasn’t quite measured up— is conveyed in the official portrait commemorating his 60th birthday today. It was taken by photographer Philip Burnand, a royal favorite, during a photo session last last February at Clarence House, the Prince’s London residence.

He has all the trappings; that’s plain to see. And he is nothing if not committed to the several issues —such as organic agriculture and urban architecture— with which he has become increasingly associated over the last few decades. And there is no doubt that he works long and hard carrying out his official duties. The Prince’s Trust, which he founded in 1976, has become a model of philanthropic success and transparency. He is serious but he somehow seems to lack some element of what it takes to be taken seriously — which is doubly sad because that seems to be what he wants the most.

In fact, the equivocal message sent by his portrait, with its distinctive posture, has a pedigree. It is based on a 19th century portrait —by James Tissot— of Frederick Gustavus Burnaby. Capt. Burnaby was an officer in the Household Cavalry, a celebrated adventurer, a bestselling author, and, reputedly, the strongest man in the British Army (according to legend he once carried a pony under one arm).

But, as The Times adds:

The Prince could hardly have chosen a more colourful character for his inspiration. Educated at Harrow and Oswestry School and in Germany, 6ft 4in Burnaby entered the Royal Horse Guards in 1859 only to find himself frustrated by the lack of active service. Instead, he made the first solo balloon crossing of the English Channel, undertook a 3,000-mile horseback journey across the Russian steppe in winter (the subject of one of his bestselling books), travelled with General Gordon in the Sudan and, as a correspondent for The Times, accompanied the Carlist forces across Spain in 1874 during the Third Carlist War.

So: a damned interesting dude, sort of a Flashman but without the sex, and a man “…frustrated by the lack of active service…” Impressive and accomplished, but hardly a royal exemplar. To have a picture taken in this pose in this get up for private use would be amusing; to have a picture taken in this pose wearing a suit would be an appealing informal snap. But to release this one as the official birthday portrait is a passive-aggressive cry for help.

To be sure, the poor Prince, trapped in his cage —which, far from being gilded, is 24 carat— anxiously awaiting the moment he must dread, is more to be respected than censured.

And the measure of his mettle was tested one night last week when he attended the comedy concert that was part of his official birthday celebrations. The evening was called “We Are Most Amused” (a play on a diary entry made by Queen Victoria, the Prince’s great-great-great-grandmother) and the venue was the New Wimbledon theater.

Perhaps the Prince was lured there on false pretenses — as one of the comedians said, when he heard he was going to a big event at Wimbledon he may have thought of something else entirely.

The gig was headlined by Robin Williams. Much was made of the fact that this was his first major appearance in London since the time he was in Mork and Mindy twenty-seven years ago. In other words, when he was still funny.

These days his manic shtick has worn mighty thin and his material on this night was even thinner. He opened the show by greeting the Prince: “Yo, yo Wales – House of Windsor, keeping it real.” That was about the last of his remarks specifically suited to the event.

He joked about imagining Sarah Palin appearing topless on television and saying, “How do you like my northern slopes now, boys?”

Lacking even the respect to be timely, he joked about President Clinton: “Bill was so unlucky. He found the only Jewish girl who couldn’t get a stain out.”

“Obama,” he said, “is an old Kenyan word for ‘Kennedy’.” With President Bush’s defeat, he assured the audience, “America’s officially out of rehab,” and he added that “Bush can’t go on a speaking tour — that’s a given.”

Joan Rivers kept up this high standard by joking about age. “I hate old people and old people that are proud. ‘I’m 97 years old,’ they say. And you smell.” She said that sex is better when you are older because “we don’t have to change our sheets, the nurses do it for us”

John Clease, who was also on the bill, noted that Joan Rivers was one of the few American women with whom he hadn’t slept.

British comedy was also represented. Bill Bailey has been around for some time and is usually high up on lists of the best comedy acts in Britain. He works with an electric keyboard and incorporates music and sound effects into some of his routines.

The BBC reported that:

At one point Prince Charles nearly fell off his chair as Bailey imagined, on his keyboard, how the Belarussian national anthem might sound.

Here is the routine that all but had a 60 year old man (and the heir to the throne of England) rolling on the floor:

The Iranian comedian Omid Djalili drew laughs from xenophobic rants and ethnic stereotypes; at least he is actually funny:

And the piece de resistance was a “Birthday Blues” composed (in twenty minutes backstage) and performed by Robin Williams and Bill Baley:

Robin Williams and Bill Bailey sang “Birthday Blues,” a twelve-bar blues song improvised backstage…which depicted the Prince looking miserable while sitting in bed with the Duchess of Cornwall. The reason for his bad temper, they sang, was that “Your mother’s got two birthdays/ And you’ve only got one”.

They also imagined the Duke of Edinburgh speaking to his son about the Queen’s decision not to abdicate. “One day you’re going to rule the world/ But you have to hang around/ Because your mother’s not going anywhere/ She ain’t gonna give up that crown.” They also joked that “the one thing that ain’t on the money is that you ain’t even on the money”.

I have no problem with lese majeste —in fact I’m all for it— but this juvenile self-indulgence never even approaches that level.

The poor Prince. Let’s all wish him a very happy birthday.

UPDATE 11/16/08:

In today’s Telegraph there’s this article — which (a) if it’s true and (b) if he succeeds in doing it, will accomplish what all the anti-monarchists have failed at: the end of the British monarchy.

The Prince will break with the tradition which has seen monarchs, including the Queen, remain publicly silent on matters of national and international importance.

His friend and biographer Jonathan Dimbleby said: “There are now discreet moves afoot to redefine the future role of the sovereign so that it would allow King Charles III to speak out on matters of national and international importance in ways that at the moment would be unthinkable.”

The Queen has always ensured that her personal views are only voiced in private to the prime minister of the day and the privy council.

Mr Dimbleby said: “To breach this convention, however cautiously, would represent a seismic shift in the role of the sovereign. He told The Sunday Times it “has the potential to be constitutionally and politically explosive.”

The Prince’s official spokesman denied any knowledge of discussions about his role as king.

The 10th Mark Twain Laureate

November 11, 2008 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Comedy, Humor, In Memoriam | Leave a Comment 

George Carlin was awarded the Kennedy Center’s tenth annual Mark Twain Prize for American Humor last night — the first, alas, to be awarded posthumously.  Happily, he was informed of the honor a few days before his death last June (which was noted here).

George Carlin was a classic standup, an accomplished actor, and a successful author.  His career spanned more than fifty years and included twenty-two albums and three New York Times bestsellers.  He was the first-ever host of Saturday Night Live; he appeared on The Tonight Show more than 130 times.

George Carlin railed against the “bloodless, lifeless” language of the late 20th century — and he brought rigorous logic, raw intensity, and a gimlet eye to its deconstruction.  (“If crime fighters fight crime and fire fighters fight fire, what do freedom fighters fight?”)

 

The Unbearable Emptiness Of The Morning After

November 6, 2008 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Comedy, Election 2008 | Leave a Comment 

Here’s a comedic butterfly that is —like many before it— broken on the wheel of The Onion’s inability to quit while it’s ahead and just move on.  Maybe moveon.org could actually accomplish something useful by turning its attention to that problem.

Once it has made you laugh, it’s only going to be more —a tad too much more— of the same, so feel free to make the edit yourself:

Election Night 2008: Jon Stewart’s Survey

November 6, 2008 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Comedy, Election 2008 | Leave a Comment 

Jon Stewart’s survey of election night events opened yesterday’s Daily Show.  

It was pretty much a six minute tour de force in which Mr. Stewart:

• underestimated the creativity and originality of RN’s rap album;
• nailed (yet again) George W. Bush’s creepy weirdness;
• called out some creepy weirdness that, alas, unlike Mr. Bush, won’t also be going away in 74 days: CNN’s hologramania;
• mocked Oprah’s ludicrously self-indulgent determination to bask in glory even if it’s reflected;
• exposed, at last, the truth of the Obama-Ayers relationship;
• and he deserves major kudos for resisting the temptation to end with yet another easy Nixon joke — in favor of making with a rather unkind (but very funny) ageist joke.

Prankin’ Palin

November 2, 2008 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Comedy, Election 2008 | Leave a Comment 

All the talk today is about Senator McCain’s appearance last night on SNL.  And no doubt that gig had its moments.  But Team McCain was involved in another comedy breakthrough this weekend that was as funny as it was inadvertent.

In fact, it was totally juvenile, slightly vulgar and generally reprehensible — in other words, just my cup of tea.  I am taking great delight in Friday’s pranking of Governor Palin by “The Masked Avengers” (that’s Les Justiciers Masques in Canadian), the Montreal radio comedy duo (CKOI-FM – 96.9) whose previous phone pranks have ensnared the likes of Queen Elizabeth, Bill Gates, Tiger Woods, Bono, and Britney Spears. 

The young iconoclast DJs usually work in French and their jokey-thick French Canadian accents were part of the fun when they assumed the identity of Canada’s new Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper and called French President Jacques Chirac  —their first head of state.  

They engaged President Chirac in a long chat (which included mentioning their co-host Richard Z. Sirois as the new Canadian ambassador to France) before revealing the joke.  Chirac laughed and recovered elegantly.  ”In any case,” he said, “know that my friendship for Canada and the new conservative government is a real friendship and without reserve.”

As the Palin prank call begins we get to eavesdrop on an example of world class phone one-upmanship. The Governor’s aide is told that the phone is being passed to the President, so she hands her phone to her boss.  But the Governor’s big presidential-level “Hello” is greeted with the deflating response: “Just hold on for President Sarkozy, one moment.”

We overhear this exchange between Governor and aide:

Palin: Oh, it’s not him yet, Bexie. 

Bexie:  Oh, I always do that.

Palin:  I’ll just have people hand it to me right when it’s…..

As the call proceeds, “Sarkozy” mentions his “special American adviser” Johnny Hallyday (the ’60s rock star), the “Prime Minister of Canada” Steph Carse (a singer who is sort of a Canadian Michael Buble — wait a minute, Michael Buble is Canadian), and the ubiquitous Sirois as the “Prime Minister of Quebec”.  

When they discuss Joe the Plumber, “Sarkozy” says they have a similar figure in France called “de rouge a’levres sur un cochon” — “lipstick on a pig”.

On the subject of hunting, “Sarkozy” slips some more fast French (is there any other kind) into the conversation —”Exactly, we could try go hunting by helicopter like you did. I never did that. Like we say in French, on pourrait tuer des bebe phoques aussi“— which translates “we can also kill the baby seals.”

A: You know I see you as a president one day, too.

P: Maybe in eight years.

A: Well, I hope for you. You know, we have a lot in common because personally one of my favorite activities is to hunt, too.

P: Oh, very good. We should go hunting together.

A: Exactly, we could try go hunting by helicopter like you did. I never did that. Like we say in French, on pourrait tuer des bebe phoques, aussi.

P: Well, I think we could have a lot of fun together while we’re getting work done. We can kill two birds with one stone that way.

A: I just love killing those animals. Mmm, mmm, take away life, that is so fun. I’d really love to go, so long as we don’t bring along Vice-President Cheney.

P: No, I’ll be a careful shot, yes.

A: Yes, you know we have a lot in common also, because except from my house I can see Belgium. That’s kind of less interesting than you.

P: Well, see, we’re right next door to different countries that we all need to be working with, yes.

All of this moves very fast and the Governor takes it in stride and handles it well —as one would deal with a call from a well-wishing world leader one has never met— but I think I detect some hesitation when “Sarkozy” talks about enjoying the Hustler documentary “Naylin’ Palin”.

All things considered, Governor Palin demonstrates charm and aplomb, up to and including the denouement.  At the end she just hands off the phone to an aide.  (As for the aide responsible for putting the call through, it’s probably just as well that campaigns don’t travel with guillotines.) 

 

Here’s the transcript as printed in the The Globe and Mail:

Sarah Palin: This is Sarah.

Masked Avengers: Ah, yeah, Gov. Palin.

Palin: Hello.

Avengers: Just hold on for President Sarkozy, one moment.

P: Oh, it’s not him yet, they’re saying. I always do that.

A: Yes, hello, Mrs. Governor.

P: Hello, this is Sarah, how are you?

A: Fine, and you? This is Nicolas Sarkozy speaking, how are you?

P: Oh, it’s so good to hear you. Thank you for calling us.

A: Oh, it’s a pleasure.

P: Thank you sir, we have such great respect for you, John McCain and I. We love you and thank you for taking a few minutes to talk to me.

A: I follow your campaigns closely with my special American adviser Johnny Hallyday, you know?

P: Yes, good.

A: Excellent. Are you confident?

P: Very confident and we’re thankful that polls are showing that the race is tightening and…

A: Well I know very well that the campaign can be exhausting. How do you feel right now, my dear?

P: I feel so good. I feel like we’re in a marathon and at the very end of the marathon you get your second wind and you plow to the finish.

A: You see, I got elected in France because I’m real and you seem to be someone who’s real, as well.

P: Yes, yeah. Nico, we so appreciate this opportunity.

A: You know I see you as a president one day, too.

P: Maybe in eight years.

A: Well, I hope for you. You know, we have a lot in common because personally one of my favourite activities is to hunt, too.

P: Oh, very good. We should go hunting together.

A: Exactly, we could try go hunting by helicopter like you did. I never did that. Like we say in French, on pourrait tuer des bebe phoques, aussi.

P: Well, I think we could have a lot of fun together while we’re getting work done. We can kill two birds with one stone that way.

A: I just love killing those animals. Mmm, mmm, take away life, that is so fun. I’d really love to go, so long as we don’t bring along Vice-President Cheney.

P: No, I’ll be a careful shot, yes.

A: Yes, you know we have a lot in common also, because except from my house I can see Belgium. That’s kind of less interesting than you.

P: Well, see, we’re right next door to different countries that we all need to be working with, yes.

A: Some people said in the last days and I thought that was mean that you weren’t experienced enough in foreign relations and you know that’s completely false. That’s the thing that I said to my great friend, the prime minister of Canada Stef Carse.

P: Well, he’s doing fine, too, and yeah, when you come into a position underestimated it gives you an opportunity to prove the pundits and the critics wrong. You work that much harder.

A: I was wondering because you are so next to him, one of my good friends, the prime minister of Quebec, Mr. Richard Z. Sirois, have you met him recently? Did he come to one of your rallies?

P: I haven’t seen him at one of the rallies but it’s been great working with the Canadian officials. I know as governor we have a great co-operative effort there as we work on all of our resource-development projects. You know, I look forward to working with you and getting to meet you personally and your beautiful wife. Oh my goodness, you’ve added a lot of energy to your country with that beautiful family of yours.

A: Thank you very much. You know my wife Carla would love to meet you, even though you know she was a bit jealous that I was supposed to speak to you today.

P: Well, give her a big hug for me.

A: You know my wife is a popular singer and a former top model and she’s so hot in bed. She even wrote a song for you.

P: Oh my goodness, I didn’t know that.

A: Yes, in French it’s called de rouge a levre sur un cochon, or if you prefer in English, Joe the Plumber…it’s his life, Joe the Plumber.

P: Maybe she understands some of the unfair criticism but I bet you she is such a hard worker, too, and she realizes you just plow through that criticism.

A: I just want to be sure. That phenomenon Joe the Plumber. That’s not your husband, right?

P: That’s not my husband but he’s a normal American who just works hard and doesn’t want government to take his money.

A: Yes, yes, I understand we have the equivalent of Joe the Plumber in France. It’s called Marcel, the guy with bread under his armpit.

P: Right, that’s what it’s all about, the middle class and government needing to work for them. You’re a very good example for us here.

A: I see a bit about NBC, even Fox News wasn’t an ally as much as usual.

P: Yeah, that’s what we’re up against.

A: Gov. Palin, I love the documentary they made on your life. You know Hustler’s Nailin’ Paylin?

P: Ohh, good, thank you, yes.

A: That was really edgy.

P: Well, good.

A: I really loved you and I must say something also, governor, you’ve been pranked by the Masked Avengers. We are two comedians from Montreal.

P: Ohhh, have we been pranked? And what radio station is this?

A: CKOI in Montreal.

P: In Montreal? Tell me the radio station call letters.

A: CK…hello?

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