Wednesday, May 11, 2005

Hey, who’s that next to Scott Hennon?



This from Media Bistro:


Here is the memo from prez Mark Hoffman:

"I wanted to let you all know that we will be expanding our signature Business Day programming up to Primetime on the East Coast and will be adding an additional airing of "Mad Money with Jim Cramer" at 9 p.m. ET/PT.

We will be introducing a new Business Day program at 7 p.m. ET sometime in the Third Quarter. I will share additional details about this program in the coming weeks.

As the Business News Leader, it is incumbent upon us to ensure that our influential, out-of-home audience has access to our signature Business Day programming throughout their business day from coast to coast.

I have spoken with Dennis Miller about these plans and he has let me know that his strong preference is to leave his program immediately. Therefore, the final episode of "Dennis Miller" will air this Friday, May 13"
...
Dennis Miller didn’t stop being funny because he got conservative. As long as no one tries to sell me on the ludicrous idea that the current New World Ordure Party now being fronted by The Horse Masturbator and The Amazing Mono-Colored Christettes have anything whatsoever to do with Original Republican Conservative values, hell, we can have a beer and talk. And if your thinking runs along those lines, and you're funny, shit, I'll laugh. I'll laugh and buy you another round, becase funny is funny.

No, Dennis Miller pulled the feeding tube on his sense of humor the day he stopped “sticking it to the man”. Or, rather, when he just decided “it” was his highly-marketable tongue and “the man” was The Unblinking Brown Eye of Dick Cheney.

He stopped being funny when the mad, post-9/11 tide swept him up on to a strange shore, populated by Falwells and Roberstons, Coulters and Hannitys, and he chose to stay long after he could have seen their True faces and real motives if he actually was the honest scrutinizer of and commentator on the Establishment that he always positioned himself to be.

He lost it when he forgot the basic truth of real humor: that the strong, the privileged, the Powerful beating up on the weak isn’t funny. Curb-stomping the fragile and laughing about it isn’t funny. Joining the same Media Thug Army where Rush Limbaugh made Brigadier General by whipping the poor, the lame and the halt is not something to be proud of.

Then again, that Karma Train does go the full 360 faster than we ever think it will, eh Chachi?

Turns out people who think that footage of a US Soldier blowing the head off a bleeding prisoner is just, plain ROTFLM funny, and pictures of Iraqi men being beaten and electrocuted are positively the Swiftean apex of humor may not have been the Optimal Target Market for the “Two Phenomenologists walk into a bar” stuff.

62 comments:

Anonymous said...

O'Reilly is about to join Dennis in the Morton Downey Harebrain Club for Men. His ratings are down a third.

parsec

Civic Center said...

Do you mean to say you thought that Dennis Miller was once funny? I don't know anything about his pre-SNL career but I hated him on that show and when he became the Handsome, Smirking Voice of the Neocons I wasn't surprised.

Anonymous said...

Hey, what happens to the Phenomenologists?

driftglass said...

parsec,
Does this mean (say if very softly) that we're winning?

sfmike,
I'd plead "youthful indiscretion" and that I'm not "backwards looking", but that seems so...Bush-y. So yeah, I inhaled. He was never funny in sketch comedy or movies, but on Weekend Update I liked him.

usblues,
Shit, I should have figured someone would ask. Let's just say their fate is my "Giant Rat of Sumatra." :-)

Anonymous said...

driftglass, I agree totally. Thanks for putting it into better words than I could have even if I were capable of putting it into any words at all. The last few years, he's been shooting fish in a barrel, and doing it with blanks. They look good to an ignorant audience, but there's nothing there.
Either he doesn't know that, which seems to mean he's deliberately avoiding learning anything that would disturb his worldview, or he does and doesn't care. Which one makes him better than Rush Limbaugh, again?
Only been visiting a week or so, but I'll be here for the duration. Your writing and your ideas are top level.

Anonymous said...

I swear when I saw him on his talk show, I could see the seeds of this coming. Then he only copped to being "leaning libertarian" or some such garbage. MNF was another thing altogether - I watched it to see if it was really as dumb an idea as it sounded. I had the same thought as you before reading this - nobody with any sense likes a person who spits on the downtrodden, especially for entertainment. Being an asshole isn't "edgy" or "dangerous", it's just disgusting. BTW, driftglass, was that a Firesign reference I spotted up there?

Anonymous said...

Miller's going down in flames, but that's not an unusual fate in the teevee biz. And his political pandering to the right was certainly ill-conceived. I am reminded of his joke about Islamic terrorists going to paradise and being greeted by 72 virgins. ("Hey, at some point you get tired of virgins and you want a pro. I want somebody to stick their thumb up my ass....") I don't know about anyone else, but I think that would be at least as offensive to Reichsreverend Dobson as anything Spongebob Squarepants had to say. Hey Dennis! Run for office! The commercials would be priceless.

The brightest of the bright sides to Miller's demise is the fact that he's never been afraid to be smart (as opposed to merely pompous, ala Limbaugh). I'm likely to tune in the next couple of days just to see (and hear) the pretty explosions.

And you can never make enough Firesign Theatre references......

Anonymous said...

i'll never forget that day seven years ago. I was sitting, idling my car in the parking lot of the food-for-less in visalia; waiting while my wife was grabbing a few things for dinner. i glanced over at the newspaper vending machine and, through the window, read that phil hartman was dead. for me, that was the day the music died.

Anonymous said...

Well, I occasionally thought Miller's writers gave him some funny-things-to-say-in-a-snarky-way when he was doing his 'rant about...' schtick, but that got old quick. I watched his show once and thought 'jeez, annoying, trite AND boring -that's a potent combination'.

But I was intrigued by driftglass' (great site by the way, love the writing) comment: "And if your thinking runs along those lines, and you're funny, shit, I'll laugh. I'll laugh and buy you another round, becase funny is funny."

At the risk of heaps o' scorn I'll toss out p.j. o'rourke as someone who can occasionaly do that. I never agree with what he's saying, but damn he can turn a clever line. 'Sides, it's hard to totally dislike someone who can say:
"I don't think drugs are bad. I used to be a hippie. I think drugs are fun. Now I'm a conservative. I think fun is bad..."

Can't think of anyone else from that side of the tracks that comes across as even remotely funny...

darrelplant said...

Miller was never funny. He got credit for being "smart" because he threw out semi-obscure references to things "smart" people were supposed to have learned about in college, but that was a schtick. He never really made jokes about Derrida, he'd plop a reference to deconstruction into a discussion about football, and that was supposed to show that he was smarter than the average comic. But it's a shallow, shallow methodology.

driftglass said...

davey,
I liked parts "Team America" too. It got way, way too slanted way too fast, but you show me a marrionette Kim Il Sung singing "I'm So Lonely" and puppet sex, and I'm going to laugh. Also Carlin makes me laugh in a pan-political kind of way.

darrelplant,
I never laughed at the Three Stooges even once, but I have friends who swear that, if I'd just give them another chance...
Nah.
Just one of those things. Like sex have in that regard: you can't fake what does or doesn't turn you on, even if you'd rather it didn't.

darrelplant said...

driftglass, I'm not a Stooges (unless you're referring to the band) fan myself, although I have very good friends who find them hilarious. That's OK, a lot of people like slapstick comedy, I can appreciate their taste without sharing it myself, in the same way that I can understand that Homer Simpson liked the movie about the guy getting hit in the crotch with a football.

But Miller was smarmy and self-inflated even back in his SNL days, which is why I suppose I wasn't particularly surprised when he became a conservative mouthpiece. He knows lots of buzzwords, he knows lots of terminology, but my impression is that if you pressed him to explain what any of it meant, you'd get the vacant state of George W., because what Dennis really is is a guy who managed to pass his test because he had a good memory for names and dates but he has no idea of how anything hangs together.

Anonymous said...

Don't know if we're winning yet but they're definitely losing. Both of them are on the back end of Downey's career arc.

parsec

merlallen said...

Pre 2000 election Dennis Miller said Bush was 20 gallons of bullshit in a 10 gallon hat. that was the last funny thing he ever said.

Anonymous said...

Dennis Miller kissed Jesse Jackson's ass, When he ran for President in 1988.

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