Now that Conan O'Brien has been let out of his contract with NBC -- with a nice farewell package of $33 million to him and $11 million to his staff -- perhaps our long national nightmare will end. Oh the humanity of it all. Two unattractive, unfunny men were fighting over who would be allowed to continue to make The Tonight Show a shadow of its Johnny Carson-era self. What team were you on? Who cares?
The fact is neither Conan or Jay Leno are hosts of the caliber of Johnny. Jay's humor is insipid and trite, Conan's mean spirited and overwrought. NBC's real mistake was many years ago, when they could have installed David Letterman as Carson's worthy successor. He has the same Midwestern roots and sensibilities as Carson, can be both edgy and yet not lose mass appeal.
Instead NBC went with Leno, for the same reason that most TV sitcoms go with a laugh track. It's easy for the audience. You spoon feed them a predictable formula of set up, pay off, laughter, with the laughter already provided just in case the pay off had none. There is no originality, no spontaneity, no wit. But Leno had one thing Conan doesn't -- he's nonthreatening.
Conan may be funnier (he did write for The Simpsons after all), but his humor has a dark, angry edge and he seems to be daring you to laugh, rather than inviting. He was not the person you'd want to curl up with as you drift off to sleep. Leno may not be original or talented, but he doesn't make you squirm. Conan liked to push that envelope and see how far he could go to make the viewer feel more than a wee bit uncomfortable. He was asked to tone it down for the 11:35 slot and he didn't. And so he must go.
So bland wins out over scary, really nothing new. The real news is there are good talk shows out there, not only Letterman's but Craig Ferguson and Jimmy Kimmel. Ferguson and Kimmel have far better shows than either of the last two Tonight Show incarnations. Check them out, and if you want to watch the Tonight Show? Go buy a boxed set of the Carson years. Now that was funny.
Thursday, January 21, 2010
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
Democrats Lose Super Majority, Kennedy's Seat Goes Red
"In short, in Scott Brown we have an irresponsible, homophobic, racist, reactionary, ex-nude model, teabagging supporter of violence against woman and against politicians with whom he disagrees. In any other time in our history, this man would have been laughed off the stage as an unqualified and a disaster in the making by the most conservative of conservatives. Instead, the commonwealth of Massachusetts is close to sending this bad joke to the Senate of the United States."
So said Keith Olbermann on the eve of the Massachusetts special election to fill the seat occupied by liberal Democrat Teddy Kennedy for the past 46 years. If anything demonstrates the public's rejection of the Obama "progressive" policies, it is the fact that Republican Scott Brown, the man described so colorfully by Keith Olbermann, was able to overcome a 30 point deficit, the Democrats political lock on the Commonwealth, and a last minute push by the president to win Kennedy's senate seat.
There have been three major elections since Obama was sworn in, and the Republicans have won all three. In Virginia, New Jersey, and now Massachusetts, the Democrat party is hearing loud and clear that they misread the meaning behind Obama's election. The public was mad at George Bush. He had allowed federal spending to increase as if he were a liberal, he looked inept during the aftermath of Katrina and was nowhere near winning the two wars he had started. Obama was a repudiation of Bush. It was not a mandate for a socialist agenda. Yet that is what we got -- and rather quickly.
Obama's entire first year was spent alternately attacking the rich and embracing the Muslim world. That is not what the public wanted or expected, hence the immediate backlash. Spending all his efforts in the last half of the year to push through a health bill that promoted class warfare rather than focus on any real solutions that had bipartisan agreement showed his true intentions. And they have nothing to do with moderation. His is a far left agenda built on the belief that the people deserve to be taxed and the government deserves to spend as much as possible. It is the arrogance of the left that believes they are best equipped to decide who is entitled to how much.
Scott Brown won -- despite being in the minority party and, yes, in spite of his nude photo from 18 years ago -- because the people of Massachusetts saw what the national Democrat party agenda was and repudiated it. They do not want to be taxed to death just so that the Congress can dole out their money as they see fit. They do not want to support a party that would close Gitmo and bring those who want to destroy us here to benefit from our justice system. They do not want to support an administration that is redefining the Imperial Presidency or a Congress that makes secret deals and pay offs just to ram through legislation that the people oppose.
The voters have spoken again and will have a chance to be heard come this November when many more seats will go from blue to red.
So said Keith Olbermann on the eve of the Massachusetts special election to fill the seat occupied by liberal Democrat Teddy Kennedy for the past 46 years. If anything demonstrates the public's rejection of the Obama "progressive" policies, it is the fact that Republican Scott Brown, the man described so colorfully by Keith Olbermann, was able to overcome a 30 point deficit, the Democrats political lock on the Commonwealth, and a last minute push by the president to win Kennedy's senate seat.
There have been three major elections since Obama was sworn in, and the Republicans have won all three. In Virginia, New Jersey, and now Massachusetts, the Democrat party is hearing loud and clear that they misread the meaning behind Obama's election. The public was mad at George Bush. He had allowed federal spending to increase as if he were a liberal, he looked inept during the aftermath of Katrina and was nowhere near winning the two wars he had started. Obama was a repudiation of Bush. It was not a mandate for a socialist agenda. Yet that is what we got -- and rather quickly.
Obama's entire first year was spent alternately attacking the rich and embracing the Muslim world. That is not what the public wanted or expected, hence the immediate backlash. Spending all his efforts in the last half of the year to push through a health bill that promoted class warfare rather than focus on any real solutions that had bipartisan agreement showed his true intentions. And they have nothing to do with moderation. His is a far left agenda built on the belief that the people deserve to be taxed and the government deserves to spend as much as possible. It is the arrogance of the left that believes they are best equipped to decide who is entitled to how much.
Scott Brown won -- despite being in the minority party and, yes, in spite of his nude photo from 18 years ago -- because the people of Massachusetts saw what the national Democrat party agenda was and repudiated it. They do not want to be taxed to death just so that the Congress can dole out their money as they see fit. They do not want to support a party that would close Gitmo and bring those who want to destroy us here to benefit from our justice system. They do not want to support an administration that is redefining the Imperial Presidency or a Congress that makes secret deals and pay offs just to ram through legislation that the people oppose.
The voters have spoken again and will have a chance to be heard come this November when many more seats will go from blue to red.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)