Let us now praise Ellen DeGeneres.
Last week, Ellen announced she’d go back to work on her show even though her comedy writers remain on strike. “I support [the writers] and hope that they get everything they’re asking for,” Ellen told her audience. But “I want to do everything I can to make your trip enjoyable and give you a show.”
That’s the right approach. The writers are on strike, and that’s their right. But their cause isn’t Ellen’s problem, and there’s no reason she should put her show on hold to satisfy their demands.
Unfortunately other hosts, including Jay Leno and David Letterman, did put their shows in reruns rather than cross the writers’ picket lines. Leno even turned up with doughnuts and disingenuous praise. “I’ve been working with these people for 20 years,” Leno said. “Without them, I’m not funny.” Oh, don’t give yourself so much credit, Jay. You’re not that funny with them.
Let’s face it: Late night comedy isn’t difficult. Even an infrequent viewer has surely noticed that most hosts simply come out and say, “George W. Bush is dumb. He’s dumb. I mean really DUMB.” At this point the host slips in a couple of “Dick Cheney is sneaky” zingers, heads for the desk and begins interviewing Hollywood airheads.
In fact, scripted late-night monologues aren’t as funny as plenty of the stuff that liberals pass off as factual and serious these days.
Look no further than a recent issue of The Atlantic magazine. Its editors asked scores of people to define “The American Idea.” Princeton University’s Joyce Carol Oates quoted D.H. Lawrence, who was unimpressed with the United States during a visit 80-some years ago. “If I say anything that displeases them, the free mob will lynch me,” Lawrence had observed. Apparently, we’re lucky he was able to survive long enough to criticize us.
That’s how Oates sees our country today. “If not ‘lynch’ precisely, how about ‘crucify in the media’? The ravenous tabloid press and ever-more-ominously ‘mainstream’ media have become the lynch mob of contemporary times,” she writes, “pummeling those guilty of the most innocuous blunders with the ferocity with which they pummel outright criminals.”
Wow. Oates thinks being insulted in the media is like being killed? That’s so sad it’s funny. Continued... |