It's a seeming paradox: As I begin to take significant strides toward physical fitness for the first time in my life, I find myself watching more television. This is probably because many of those strides are on a treadmill pointed at the TV set.
I spend too much on my cable considering that all I ever watch on the extra channels are news shows. As I sweat and stare, sometimes I contemplate the politics of celebrity, of news as entertainment, of people actually getting their hard news from "The Daily Show."
I often long for political leaders to express themselves in the blunt, honest, insightful idiom of standup comics. Sometimes this happens, but only when some sort of lame duckery is involved. One of my movies for the weekend is "Head of State" which I found very very cheap. The Hollywood pitch was probably three words: "President Chris Rock." My review may be straight out of David Spade: "I liked it the first time I saw it, when it was called 'The Distinguished Gentleman' with Eddie Murphy." But I've long thought Rock was one of the most honest comics around, one who gets away with all kind of outrageously true statements, and maybe his take on the political system has something to say.
At one point a couple years back the GOP was trying to talk Dennis Miller into challenging Barbara Boxer. And the other night I flipped the channel from Boxer's floor speech against Condoleezza Rice to Dennis Miller's CNBC show. I prefer Boxer's politics and Miller's entertainment value.
Dennis had a medium-liberal reputation on Saturday Night Live and on the HBO program, but that was always a misnomer, a combination of the SNL vibe and the fact that he swore a lot on pay cable. If you listened to the content, you'd realize that Miller was at his core a small-L libertarian. I still think he was the Libertarian Party's lost opportunity in the age of the politics of celebrity. The smartest thing the LP ever did was nominate Howard Stern for New York governor in `94 (he later quit the race rather than disclose his finances), and Dennis Miller for President would have been priceless publicity. But as they proved at their 2004 convention, if you give the Libertarian Party the choice between an effective proselytizer and a purist ideologue, they'll choose the purist every time.
As a fan I was disappointed in Miller's sharp post-9/11 turn to the right. I'm sure I read politics into my entertainment choices more than most people, but that's what you'd expect from a Clash fan. Maybe it shouldn't matter if the material is pure entertainment; one could easily be a conservative Dixie Chicks fan and ignore the politics (but give a second listen to the subtext of "Goodbye Earl"). But stand-up comedy is topical and timely which inevitably leads to politics. And with all due respect to the late great Johnny Carson, who walked a careful tightrope of neutrality with his political humor, I find comedy that takes a stand much more entertaining than the evenhanded gentle zings approach.
"Take A Stand" is a feature on Miller's current show - it's basically a different name for The Rant. And a lot of other elements are familiar - the show starts with Dennis at the de facto Weekend Update desk. And there's guests like on HBO, only more of them with a 60 minute format.
But let's look at The Big Picture a year into Right Wing Dennis. What's the impact of Miller's political turn to conservatism on his work?
I've watched on and off for a couple weeks and my take is the basic Dennis is still there. The only place I see a sharply conservative attitude is in discussion of terrorism and the war, which Miller has acknowledged are the primary reasons for his shift. This turns up more in the serious interviews, but spills over into the jokes. I paraphrase:
Miller addressed the drug war a couple times with libertarian ambiguity:
Overall it's a little less witty, a little more mean-spirited (not that Dennis was ever sweetness and light) but still entertaining. He's loose enough to cuss occasionally, knowing CNBC will bleep him. I'll rate it as a more palatable red-state reality check than, say, Joe Scarborough.
And I still wonder if they would have kept Dennis on Monday Night Football if John Madden hadn't become a free agent. Madden over Miller was obvious, but that's no fault of Miller's.
Of course, that's just my opinion. I could be wrong.
Entertainment | Politics
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