Shark jumped, better shows spawned: the “fake news” situation (Part 2 of two)

While the three major networks continue to program their late-night talk shows in the same lazy, overly predictable fashion — one part Johnny Carson promo-chats, one part bad SNL (read: anything from the mid-Eighties onward), and one part Jimmy Kimmel “building a show out of viral videos” — the cable networks have been trying to alter the formula for success in the late evening hours. E! had a hit with Chelsea Lately, and HBO has made Real Time with Bill Maher a Friday night ritual for many viewers.

Comedy Central has the best late-night comedy-talk franchise with its “fake news” duo of shows. I won't dwell on the recent decision by Jon Stewart to quit The Daily Show. Once before on this blog I discussed my feelings about him, and they haven't really changed much. I might be the only person not on the right side of the political spectrum who will publicly proclaim that I'm not heartbroken he's leaving. The shark, it jumped for me during the writer's strike several years back when I saw how limited Jon's comic repertoire is.

Granted, familiarity will breed contempt with almost any comedian. A friend of mine uses the expression “seen the dress...” when referring to Stewart and Colbert (he's left of center politically as well), and it's true that anyone appearing several times a week is going to run out of ideas and fall back on funny faces or voices. Two things that have distinguished The Daily Show, though, are the program's well-edited montages of hypocrisy on the 24-7 news channels, and their correspondents, many of whom have come from the groups that are shut out in the late-night talk “wars” (where you've gotta be white, middle-aged, straight, and male, and that's just about it....).

I noted my feelings about Colbert's comedy character in the first part of this blog entry, but following his lead there have been two other “spin-off” series from The Daily Show. One is good, the other great.

The good but still uncertain commodity is The Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore. I've been watching it somewhat steadily since it went on, and it is a very pleasant program that works best if you think of it as a news panel show that happens to have a humorous component. Wilmore is a very engaging presence, and the show has been filling a void by having panels of women, people of color, and other communities that you will only see on the 24-7 news programs when their communities are undergoing a tragedy of some kind.

The show begins with a monologue made up of jokes about the news, then the panel, and then, for some wildly misguided reason, nearly every single show I've seen has ended with a segment called “Keeping it 100,” in which Larry asks an either/or question, the kind of thing people will quiz each other with when they're bored at work or at a bar.

It's a very simple comic idea, and the constant repetition of it (perhaps in an effort to carve out an SNL-style fan-favorite segment?) is puzzling. Is there no other notion the writers can think of to close the show with? Presumably, as the weeks move on, they will ditch this segment or just use it once every so often instead of on every episode.

Wilmore is talented enough that having him tied down to one piece of material is ridiculous. [UPDATE: Since I started writing this piece, Larry has presented varied “either/or” question bits to end the show, but tonight's episode, in which he discussed the Ferguson, MO, police force and gave up the “would you rather...?” segment entirely, was quite good.]

The other show that qualifies in a way as a Daily Show “spin-off” is the wonderful “Last Week Tonight with John Oliver” on HBO. As a second banana to Stewart on TDS, Oliver did both brilliantly funny segments and goofy ones where he dressed up in silly costumes. Last Week offers extremely intelligent comedy and, more importantly (don't be scared!), there is an educational aspect to the show, as Oliver and his writers are tackling very serious issues in a satirical fashion – real facts are dispensed with jokes as punctuation (yes, this is possible on American TV!).

The first wonderful thing about Last Week is that the most grating aspects of The Daily Show formula are gone: no audience cheering the host's name; no private jokes for the studio audience; no interviews with movie stars pitching their latest film, or authors who get a nice plug but only six minutes to quickly describe their book; random cursing is indeed allowed on HBO, so it *makes sense* on Last Week. (I've never understood cursing that is going to be bleeped – we're supposed to laugh at the absence of a word?)

It's also important that the show is a weekly one — in this regard (despite the title) it's not a true accounting of what happened in the preceding week, nor is it pretending to be. The topics are more generic, but are very important ones that are part of today's social and political scene. The notion of a “daily” comedy news program is problematic from the get-go, in that The Daily Show has gone away for weeks on end, with no Internet updates whatsoever (Oliver and his team are indeed supplying new content during the “off season” — it really is the only way to maintain momentum and continuity).

Also, Stewart, Colbert, and now Wilmore, are often wildly out-of-synch with that day's politics – witness the recent night when *the* story of the evening was the State of the Union speech, which of course hadn't yet occurred when Stewart and Wilmore taped their shows. Thus the shows are constantly playing catch-up and having to ignore the only political events people are caring about on the nights they air (on the recent State of the Union evening, Wilmore's show offered a full episode about the Bill Cosby allegations).

The most important decision made by Oliver and co. was to avoid the latest “blow-ups” and instead cover issues that the average viewer is unaware of. The concept is outlined in fine (and funny) detail, while the phrase encapsulating it — for instance, “native advertising” or the slice of legalese that is “civil forfeiture” — is repeatedly used so that we can wrap our minds around the concept. 

Last Week can thus lay claim to being arguably the smartest political humor show on the air in the U.S. It’s not a surprise that Oliver is at the helm of the show, since he is a fan of the best that British humor has had to offer in the last decade and a half — in interviews he has cited his favorite standups to be Stewart Lee, Dylan Moran, and his friend Daniel Kitson (whom he evokes each time he gets into a “bam!” turnabout moment). He attended Cambridge with future comedy stars Richard Ayoade (The IT Crowd, The Double) and David Mitchell (Peep Show).

Oliver has hosted a podcast with political humorist Andy Zaltzman called “The Bugle” for years now (done with Oliver in NY and Zaltzman in London), and, among his other early credits, was a contributing writer for 2004: The Stupid Version, a special created by the sharpest TV comedy producer in England, Armando Iannucci. I also have it on good authority that he is a diehard fan of the original “fake news” shows created by the visionary Chris Morris.

Thus far, the gold standard for humorous news and media commentary has been the year-end and weekly “Wipe” shows on the BBC hosted by former TV critic turned social commentator Charlie Brooker. Brooker's programs are brilliant dissections of the 24/7 news channels, minus the whooping and hollering (and vaudevillian dick jokes) of The Daily Show. 

Last Week is very different from Brooker's programs, but it shares with them a concern for the way in which news is reported and the public is deceived – or, as in the case of a lot of the topics treated on Last Week, are unaware that these phenomena exist in the first place. The Daily Show is smart- and wise-assed, while Brooker's “Wipe” series and Last Week offer the kind of intelligent, adult news and media dissection that needs to be done on a wider basis but seems only to occur in a humorous context.

Oliver is no longer a comedy sidekick dressing up as Peter Pan or a chimney sweep. He is on premium cable and thus doesn't have to worry about time limitations — perhaps the single most important aspect of the show is that the main segments on Last Week sometimes run as long as 16-17 minutes, something that isn't possible on commercial TV. Jokes are dished out every few minutes, but time is taken to discuss the very serious ramifications of what is being talked about.

The program also comes from a left perspective and is not as Democratic Party-centric as The Daily Show. Last Week has been taking the high ground since it came on, and its newly begun second season has thus far operated on the same high plane.

One of the best jokes in a segment about the use of drones was taken from a “cute” remark that President Obama made warning the Jonas Brothers music group that if they approached his daughters he would use “predator drones... you will never see it comin'!” Seeing the president joke about how deadly the drones are does, of course, remind us that we deal death from the sky, and our Nobel Peace Prize-winning Prez thinks it's okay to joke about it. A similarly pointed segment about the wealth gap in America noted how Americans continue to vote against their own best interests, in the delusional belief that they will some day be very rich and can benefit from the tax breaks that now cripple this country.

The last valuable thing Last Week does is to often conclude segments by offering e-mail addresses or Twitter hashtags that could be used to communicate to the parties responsible for a given problem (as in the case of net neutrality or student debt), or simply to spread the word about the issues being discussed. This is not done with tongue in cheek – the show's attempts to involve the viewer puts it leagues ahead of Bill Maher's Real Time, which simply preaches to the choir and lets an abrasive host tell us what is “right” and “wrong.” (I'm in political and most certainly atheistic agreement with Maher, but goddamn if that guy ain't an arrogant bastard.) 

Last Week started off in an interesting fashion in spring of 2014 by not pandering and doing easy material about U.S. politics, but instead presenting an in-depth segment about the very significant election campaign going on in India at that moment. (Note: This upload is slightly sped up, as you'll notice from the audio; it is, however, the only occurrence of the full segment on YT.)

Another early segment that was brilliantly constructed found Oliver exploring the death penalty issue, while promising that he'd end the segment with a cute-animal video from YouTube. In this way, he would “reward” the viewers who'd watch the intelligent segment – for me, though, the show was making a sharp, funny statement about how Americans require sugar-coating for every fuckin' thing that they watch:

A similar moment in a great segment on nuclear weapons highlighted the biggest problem surrounding a similar issue: that the American public doesn't give a shit about truly dire parts of modern politics (they're evidently too busy dreaming of being rich....).

When Jon Stewart announced his decision to quite The Daily Show, the biggest concern became who will succeed him as host. John Oliver has been mentioned as a top candidate, but I hope he doesn't do it. It certainly pays a shitload of money — Stewart has been earning more than both Letterman and Leno — but it's LCD stuff (not Lorne Michaels brain-damaged LCD, but LCD nonetheless), and Oliver has graduated into creating his own niche of intelligent, in-depth political humor (without the Maher-like arrogance).

It would be a shame if John went from the kind of high-minded, sharp comedy that Last Week Tonight represents and returned to dispensing dick jokes and dressing up like Peter Pan or a chimney sweep.
*****

You can keep up with Last Week Tonight in a totally legal fashion even if you don't have HBO (full disclosure: I don't subscribe to HBO), since the producers of the show have allowed the lengthy segments to be officially posted on YouTube a day or so after they air on HBO.

Fans of British comedy have also been posting the shorter segments to YT, so you can see this incisive piece on how China is trying to erase the memory of Tiananmen Square, this funny segment on Greece's slick finance minister, and a bit that I could not resist including here: a segment noting that wretched rich arrogant bastard Mike Bloomberg has been buying up new “.nyc” URLs that mock him (like fuckbloomberg.nyc). Oliver and his staff came up with insulting URLs that “Mayor Mike” the billionaire forgot to purchase.

The longer piece are the meat of the program, though, so let me spotlight four excellent segments. First, one on “native advertising,” in which the notion of advertisements disguised to look like news (both online and in magazines and newspapers) is examined and mocked at length. I enjoyed this not only as someone who very much agrees with the point that Oliver is making, but as a viewer who never, ever enjoyed Stephen Colbert's “tongue-in-cheek” promotions of real products on the Report (a snarky series of real commercials isn't satire, it's just commerce):

A superb segment on “payday loans” — the predatory lending chains (championed on infomercials) that charge up to 500% (!) interest. This particular segment was the one where I realized that Last Week Tonight wasn't cutting any corners and is a *really* intelligent show that also happens to be very funny. This isn't “fake news” at all, it's very real and very scary in its specifics, but the jokes are all solid as well:

Another excellent full-length segment, this time about “civil forfeiture,” the process by which the police can seize your property — everything from your money or possessions to your car or house — if they feel it has a link to a crime (or, as is outlined in this piece, they simply need the cash or wanted it in the first place). The show stakes out new territory with pieces like this:

To show that the second season of Last Week is thus far just as good, here's a segment that examines how, while smoking has plummeted in the U.S., the tobacco companies have grown in power in third world countries, making cig-junkies out of entire populations. This piece ends with another LWT “campaign” — this one a bit sillier than the others, but the message is very laudable:

And just because this struck me the right way (read: I fuckin' loved it), here's a piece on how the slow death of Radio Shack has been mocked by the media. The chain is perceived as a ridiculous reminder of the past, but Oliver and co. remind us how important the store was to us in years past (and I got news for ya: I have built the Funhouse TV show on a foundation of Radio Shack cords!). Bravo for this kinda satiric sarcasm:

Schmaltz in "new" show-biz: the "inartful" Stewart-Colbert rally (part two), and the Maddow-Stewart interview

NOTE: I wrote this piece a week ago, but decided not to post the second half of it since the story was still “developing.” Last Friday Rachel Maddow delivered the single most eloquent rebuttal to Jon Stewart and company's method of equating right-wing extremism in the media (read: Fox News) with left-wing “extremism” (read: MSNBC and certain activists in public settings). The result was Stewart reacting to Rachel’s editorial on The Daily Show and then appearing as a guest on her show for a full hour tonight. I include my reflections on the Maddow-Stewart interview below, after the piece I initially wrote.

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The next step in tying the “new” show business in with the “old” was taken at the Stewart/Colbert rally. Yes, there hasn’t been anything like it in American history — an exceedingly well-attended mock rally, endowed with a "real message," run by two comedians (one in character, one not) that actually qualified as a mildly political variety show done on location in Washington, D.C. — sort of a “Capitol Steps” show held on the capitol steps.

The event began as a swipe at the Glen Beck rally, which sounded like a great idea, but as it grew in proportion and journalists began to speculate on the “message” of restoring sanity, it was clear that something was slightly “off." Ordinarily rallies and protests are held to convey strong political messages — here was one that was asking everyone to just calm down and stop being so strident. The fact that the sentiment that goes along with that goal — again, “let me go back to bed,” the first-person variant of Bill Hicks’ “go back to bed, America!” — was just fine with everybody, since basically everyone is disappointed with the country the way it is (but the message of the rally, “let’s all be reasonable,” seemed to oddly parallel President Obama’s never-ending courting of the Republicans, who want nothing whatsoever to do with him — curious, huh?). And yet there is still a blind, unswerving patriotism in this country that causes the lunkheads among us (and Colbert audience members — but they’re “cheering ironically,” mind ya….) to shout out “U-S-A, NUMBER ONE!” when most of those cheering haven’t ever visited anywhere else in the world.

So, we have a rally that registers as not much more than a promotional stunt for two TV comedy shows, and yet journalists and attendees started taking it seriously as some sort of statement, although the politics behind that statement were murky, and almost dangerously naïve. I hope it was fun for the attendees — those I’ve spoken to or corresponded with said they had a great time, but couldn’t clearly see or hear the show.

Let’s talk about the comedy that was on display, though, since I want to return to my thesis that today’s cutting-edge comics will quickly reach back to the schmaltz and hokum of the past (with a dollop of snark on top); that hokum being best embodied by Bob Hope’s specials, barely watchable then, but now a source of camp and kitsch fascination for nostalgia buffs like myself (but, again, let me stress, they had the corniest comedy writing in existence — they were bad entertainment!).

The godawful “Chris Rock/Tracy Morgan do Simon and Garfunkel” bit that embodied the Bob Hope corniness of the “Night of Too Many Stars” had its equivalent at the “Rally to Restore Sanity” in a lengthy musical bit. For those who didn’t see the bit, it found Yusuf Islam, the former Cat Stevens, doing his anthemic “Peace Train,” only to be interrupted by Stephen Colbert, who brought out Ozzy Obsourne to perform “Crazy Train.” Jon Stewart became the proponent of Yusuf/Cat, and Stephen continued to want to hear Ozzy — until finally the whole issue was solved by having the O’Jays come out and sing “Love Train.”

Besides the fact that all three songs appeal primarily to people my age or older (not much acknowledgment of the youth demo in this “reasonable” political mock-movement), the bit is very much of a piece with sketches on the old Hope specials. It was friendly, cute, innocuous, and had nothing common with the satire that has made up the best of the Stewart and Colbert TV series (the laser-sharp montages showing politicians contradicting themselves on Stewart; “the Word” segments on Colbert).



It was, in short, pretty mild stuff that yielded only one surprise. That surprise occurred when Colbert interrupted Yusuf/Cat’s song and the audience booed him — and then realized it was Stephen doing the thing they disapproved of, and the boos stopped immediately (it was as if a noise of condemnation just suddenly disappeared).

At that point, it became pretty evident yet again that Americans need to love their wrong-headed comic characters, and that under no circumstances is the character to appear “villainous” or unpleasant — he or she must be cute and cuddly! The “Archie Bunker effect,” as I’ve called it, rules American comedy, and Colbert’s character is a perfect example. Consider this for a moment: what remains the single best moment for the character and Colbert himself as a comic performer? His genius turn in character before the Washington Correspondents’ Dinner several years back, with then-President Bush in attendance. There he was, not getting laughs, in “enemy territory,” and he stayed in the character, much like a “heel” wrestler or punk rocker would, taking his lumps and delivering the single best monologue of his career.

It would admittedly be hard to find as unsympathetic an audience for him as was found there, but provocative comedy, and certainly genuine political satire, needs that kind of friction to make it successful (and brilliant), and not just cute, cuddly mainstream entertainment (which admittedly will make you lots of money if your name is Ferrell or Sandler, but you’re not doing good work, you’re making absolute LCD crap comedy). Granted, a good portion of the American public might not be able to comprehend the notion of a character who can be booed and still laughed at (although that notion seems to work well enough in every wrestling arena in the country), but it’s contingent on the creators of comedy to sorta step out there on the edge, and not just surrender to “creeping Bob Hope-ism.” It’s just so much easier to chant ironically “U-S-A, NUMBER ONE!”

And I am aware that Colbert openly evoked Hope when he entertained the troops in the Middle East (golf club over the shoulder, big radio-style microphone). It was a wonderfully gracious gesture to entertain troops imbroiled in a totally futile political gesture intended to solidify America's hold over Middle East oil, but on an entertainment level, those live shows were schmaltz pure and simple, the sort of toothless “comedy” that I was sorta hoping had been eradicated by the smarter, sharper political humor that developed post-Lenny/National Lampoon/Carlin/Pryor/Klein/Hicks (and of course has been reduced to the impersonation-and-nothing-more formula by the rancid corpse that is SNL).

Colbert’s single best evocation of the past was indeed his tongue-in-cheek Xmas special, which was extra-good precisely because there was no audience to cheer it on — the jokes either worked or they didn’t, no “guide” for the home viewer was necessary (we’re adults, we can handle it — in fact, HBO and FX comedies have proven it’s possible).

Back to the rally: never has a politically-themed gathering been a “call to IN-action,” but that’s what this event was. The fact that the right-wing belief system is more emphatic, violent, and leans on emotion and opinion rather than facts, whereas left-wingers have to be (as my Marxist teacher at H.S. taught me years ago) literally steeped in factual information to be able to defend their positions, didn’t factor into the rally's hazy philosophy of "reasonableness" first and foremost.

Proving that Lefties are more susceptible to nudges than the Right, two days after the rally, Keith Olbermann suspended his “Worst Persons in the World” segment, in order to make an effort to be more “reasonable.” Keith seems genuinely thrilled to be mentioned on The Daily Show (and in fact makes segments from The Daily Show and SNL into news “stories”). Keith seems offended when they critique him, yet he hasn’t been on the Stewart show once as a guest in the years I’ve been watching him. On the other hand, Jon had a super-chummy (and lengthy) chat with Chris Wallace in the week after the rally, and has had on O’Reilly repeatedly to hawk his books (and appeared on the “Factor” as a guest). I may not be alone in finding it kinda cringe-inducing hearing Jon do the gigglelaugh at the Fox hosts’ bon mots.

As the close of the rally Stewart made a heartfelt speech as himself. The fact that this serious speech followed frivolous sketches made little sense (making it seem in certain ways like those “Final Thoughts” that Jerry Springer shares with his audience), but Jon’s tone did, yet again, bring the enlightened nostalgia buff back to the schmaltz of the variety show era — or the moments at the ends of Borscht Belt acts where a brassy comic like Buddy Hackettt or Jack Carter would suddenly turn serious and sing “Sunrise, Sunset.” The performer I was put in mind of was Red Skelton (who used to, in his final years, talk proudly and endlessly about the American flag in his live act, after playing “Clem Kadiddlehopper”). As I listened to Jon talk sincerely about how proud he was of America, I kept thinking that the event was going to end with him saying, “goodnight... and gawd bless!!!”

That sort of variety show fare makes for fascinating viewing a few decades on, as a time piece and a curio of an era now gone. As contemporary political satire, to paraphrase an old Jack Paar book title, its saber is bent.

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EPILOGUE: The Stewart appearance on Maddow was informative and enlightening, in terms of seeing the relative seriousness and knowledge both broadcasters bring to the table. Maddow is a razor-sharp commentator who has facts at her command, and is one of the brightest hosts on television at this moment. Jon Stewart is a standup comedian, a talented one, and an amiable host. He ain’t Norman Mailer, Gore Vidal, or Marshall McLuhan — I personally don’t believe he has any profundities to convey to us, although he is a very pleasant comedic host. And, in his hour with Rachel, as in the serious moments during the rally, it did indeed seem like he now fully believes his own press and feels qualified to speak out on political issues and the media.

And since this blog frequently discusses Godard and his conceptual take on cinema, including the power of montage, I really have to take exception to the very lame defense Jon has offered, to the effect that his show and rally had an “inartful” presentation of the left-right equation. Apparently he can’t/won’t acknowledge the power of montage (Eisenstein's Film Form is on the way, Jon!), which is one of the key joys of his show. Montages do put equal signs between the images and sounds. It can’t be ignored, and to claim the messages of the Daily Show and rally montages were muddled is to acknowledge unwittingly that there’s no clear agenda behind the comedy. To be an effective political satirist, you have to paint heroes and villains — and then if one of the insulted parties says, “hey, you made me out to be the bad guy,” you can’t claim “inartful” editing. Especially when your show is immaculately edited.

The final part of the interview where Jon discussed humor was actually the only effective part of the conversation since, again, I would only turn to Jon for opinions on humor, not his personal take on politics or media. Interestingly, though, he informed Rachel that the “tea bag” label used by the Left to describe the tea party movement was “funny for a day” — this came, oddly, from a comedian who frequently punches his lines up with Adam Sandler-style high voices and dropping the f-bomb (not forgetting the “wiseguy” Jersey voice). We’re not talking Will Rogers, Mort Sahl, Groucho Marx, Steve Allen, or Bill Hicks (in fact Jon revealed his own comic model to be Jerry Seinfeld — anodyne observational comedy as the model for a political-satire show?); we’re talking a very amiable TV comic with an extremely talented writing staff and immaculate video editors.

The Rachel-Jon interview was extremely friendly (yes, it was truly "reasonable"), and provided further evidence that Maddow is a class act. As for Jon, it seems that his feelings are hurt that his rally has been subjected to some criticism. If the rally had indeed had any political message other than a call to inaction, I think I could’ve sympathized with him.

Schmaltz in the "new" show-biz: Stewart and Colbert live (part one)

I think and write a lot about the comedians of yesteryear, and have often talked on the Funhouse TV show and in this blog about watching variety shows in the Sixties/Seventies — the idea of all those stars interacting on one stage used to make my little head explode, but now when I rewatch the shows from that era, all I can think about is the mixture of “old” and “new” acts that made those programs semi-surreal and very entertaining (and, let’s be a little serious here, often just terrible — that’s what makes the fun moments more fun). Time can make things that were awful seem more palatable.

Before I attempt to discuss the Stewart/Colbert rally and the “Night of Too Many Stars” broadcast, let me first say I regularly watch and do enjoy The Daily Show and Colbert’s program. I find the latter to be a bit edgier (and more confounding, in terms of audience reaction — more on this later), but both shows are, on the whole, quite funny.

I’ve noticed that older pop culture is kept at arm’s length on both shows — and then, used only as a punchline that can then be commented upon by Stewart (it’s usually Jon who does this), noting that the audience is too young for the reference. Those millions of us watching at home don’t really care what’s happening in the studio audience, but that activity is indeed the focus of these programs; I’ve attended a Colbert taping, and yes, they want you to “scream” — in the manner of Pee-Wee Herman — “real loud!” I like these shows, but comedy that is screamed for? That can easily turn into Dane Cook or the “Diceman.” Gimme laughter every time….

So the past is the past, and it has no place on these two programs, right? Well, not really. Both “The Night of Too Many Stars” and the recent rally TV show (which was the rally itself, and the rally was merely the variety show — as the Singing Detective would say, am I right or am I right?) both seemed to me to not only be the modern equivalents of old Bob Hope specials, but actually were structured comedically in the manner of those old shows. Sure, the hosts and guests delivered their jokes with the degree of snark/sillines that has come to symbolize what Stewart and Colbert do best. But both programs definitely felt like the Sixties all over again — not in the “we can change the world!” sense, but more the American leisure-culture “let me go back to bed” mindset (or, in the Nineties translation, “here we are now, entertain us”).

“The Night of Too Many Stars” raised money for a wonderful cause, and anyone reading this blog knows what the model for a TV show raising money for charity is: the Jerry Lewis telethon. The “Night” show cut between segments shot live at the Beacon Theater featuring a specific pool of talent (which is made up primarily of “comic actors who make really abysmal movies for the multiplex”) and (theoretically) live studio segments with a variety of “name” performers pretending to answer phones.

The Beacon segments had a self-congratulatory tone indicating that you were watching cutting-edge comedy; telethon viewers will recognize this attitude from the Lewis tagline, “You miss a little, you miss a lot!” That cutting-edge included the closing routine/sketch/whateveritwas, wherein Tracey Morgan and Chris Rock (a brilliantly funny standup) did a bit where they sang badly as Simon and Garfunkel and were interrupted by the meanest singer/songwriter in the biz (oops, I forgot Lou Reed is still alive), Paul Simon, who then performed a Snoop Doggy Dogg rap. It was, to coin, a phrase, fucking awful:



All I can compare this awkwardly awful bit of comedy to is the moment where George Burns and Jack Benny came out as hippies on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour in ’67 or ’68. The “old meets the new” is at its most sublime as a concept when it is unintentionally funny; when it is scripted, it is just plain terrible. The Morgan/Rock bit was straight out of — you guessed it — a Bob Hope special. And let me clarify for those who are too young to know: the Smother Brothers’ show was always fun, but really only hit its stride in its third season, when the Smothers hired an amazing team of comedy writers. Bob Hope’s specials (random related image above) were pretty much uniformly hokey, schmaltzy, and “old” in their outlook.

I did not see every minute of the “Night” special (life is too short), but the big portion I did see had the same structure as the Jerry telethon: a bank of phones, “please call in now… we need your pledge!”; enlightening video documentaries about the charity itself and care facilities; and goofy stunts performed in both the Beacon and phone-bank segments to raise money. (Jerry Lewis swore he’d take off his pants if a certain amount was hit one year, and so he did; Will Arnett had his “dress” torn off by sexygirl correspondent Olivia Munn).

I’m sure the notion of the team creating the special was to spoof telethons in the phone-banks segments (a la the brilliant SCTV and the very first sketch spoofing the Lewis telethon, done by Steve Allen in the late Sixties), but when they cut to the real video documentary footage, I came to the conclusion that there really is only one way of raising money for a charity on TV, at least if you’re going to try and reach the broadest possible cross-section of the American public (which wouldn’t recognize subtlety if you labeled it as such). The answer is schmaltz, and Jerry’s been doing it now for 45 years straight — and Stewart and the guests on “Too Many Stars” were doing it, too. There may have been a veneer of hipness and “we’re just spoofing telethons,” but it was still Jerry-style all the way, and there was something very familiar about something that was presenting itself as cutting-edge.

A mediation on the “Rally to Restore Sanity” and its similarity to (take a guess) a Bob Hope special will come in part two….