Leno vs. Letterman

Jay Leno is back on NBC, and not a moment too soon. Except for sports programming it has been a dreary summer for television, which right now, except for an occasional happy hour, is about the only entertainment I can afford. The news, dominated by hysterical Republican mobs screaming their guts out and cursing Democrats as commies and agents of Satan, quickly degenerated into a tedious, repetitive loop. Every night the same blah blah blah. Obama was on TV so much that he seemed to be starring in own reality show. Last weekend he appeared on no less than five public affairs interviews on Sunday and then did Letterman on Monday. He essentially has taken his cue from the Republicans, who bused the same characters from meeting to meeting, in making believe he is a crowd.

Hey, I support the guy’s goals, if not his family size ego. If I were he, I would watch a tape of Shakespeare’s “Othello”, to remember what follows when a fellow’s overwhelming self-esteem gets the better of him. He better watch out about getting what he wishes for, because once the Democrats achieve their health care goal, it will remove their primary raison d’etre, clearing the way for a Republican resurgence. Sad but true. Now that the economic crisis is somewhat stabilized, people are going to return to their old voting patterns, which does not augur well for the Dems in the midterm elections.

I myself might write an updated version of “Othello”, based on the comedy piece Macbird, where some joker substituted Pres. Lyndon Johnson for Macbeth, which pounded another nail into the coffin of his presidency during the 1960’s. In my version, I would cast Obama as Othello, Hillary as Desdemona and Bill Clinton as the jealous Iago, whispering into Barack’s ear that Hillary is deceiving him with the nefarious French monarch Sarkozy. Naturally, the whole farce would degenerate into nuclear war between the U.S. and France, which is where things seem to be headed anyway ha-ha! Forget Russia, it’s the French who shaping up to be our real rivals, in my humble estimation. Just as Napoleon united continental Europe against England, so are the contemporary French mobilizing the eurozone countries against the Anglo Saxon hegemony.

In fact, the world of entertainment is totally moribund right now. Sorry, I’m not shelling out $15 to see “Transformers” or “Inglorious Basterds”, although the idea of watching some animalistic Jews cut the balls off Nazis rather appeals to the barbaric Hebrew trapped within me. Anyway, reality is always more fantastic than fiction. Even as we speak, Israeli Dolphin-class submarines equipped with nuclear tipped cruise missiles patrol the Arabian Sea off the coast of Iran. Not that Iranian president Ahmadinejad, a classical anti-semitic prick ever one existed, hasn’t got more immediate problems, with his own disaffected citizenry rioting in the street and hounding for his blood. Anyway, the Persian nation has historically been a soft touch militarily, dating back to the days of Ancient Greece, when Alexander the Great’s army destroyed a Persian force ten times its size and chased the Persian emperor clear up to the Caucasus.

But it has been a tedious, mirthless summer since Jay Leno’s show ended in June. NBC replaced him with Conan O’Brien as part of a strategy to lock in the next generation, the same as you might use a quacking wooden duck to try to imprint baby ducklings. It might work on them but it didn’t work for me. Conan O’Brien is a Harvard man, and I don’t find the Harvard brand of comedy particularly funny. Hey, what do I know? I love The Three Stooges, who didn’t go to Harvard – they went to Jail. Show me a funny Harvard man and I’ll show you an opium dream. Look at Steven Colbert, another Harvard dude with a phony French name, which he even insists in pronouncing with a French inflection. Their brand of comedy is punishment. Same with Letterman. I never liked his brand of gentile hilarity, which I liken to Mussolini’s secret police forcing left-wingers to swallow a bottle of castor oil. Maybe it’s good for you, but it makes you puke.

No, Jay’s my boy. For him, as for all true comics, it’s an act of desperation. He ain’t freakin Moses descending from the mountain with the 10 Commandments. He’s a guy who is desperate to do good so he can advance and keep working, like everybody in the world.

Not to digress, but that’s why Brazil’s president, Inacio Lula da Silva, is the most successful world leader, controlling Brazil’s currency, rationalizing its economy, dynamising its industrial and agricultural bases, expanding its petroleum industry and redistributing its wealth to the needy classes. Lula didn’t attend Harvard, nor has he an MBA from Wharton. He comes from a dirt-poor family in Brazil’s blighted northeast that emigrated to Sao Paulo in search of opportunity. Starting out as a tool and die machinist, Lula advanced to union shop steward, which took balls back in the days of the right-wing military dictatorships, who repeated threw him in jail. From there he went into politics and fought his way up through a corrupt and dysfunctional system. It’s safe to say that Lula has personal experience extending from the factory floor to the boardroom and all stops in between. Brazil is advancing so fast under his leadership that it’s emerging from the group of emerging nations, developing vast new petroleum deposits and upgrading its military capability with multi-billion dollar procurement programs.

Practical hands-on experience, that’s the ticket! Nobel Prize-winning agronomist Paul Borlaug, who just died at age 95, immediately moved to Mexico upon graduating from agricultural college and developed the techniques that led to the Green Revolution. By enabling farmers to triple their crop yield through the use of genetically engineered strains and scientifically enhanced fertilizer, Borlaug increased crop yields by a multiple of 3, enabling India and Pakistan to achieve agricultural self-sufficiency and save billions of persons from famine and starvation. Paul Borlaug, with his own hands and his scientific imagination, did more for humanity than Einstein, Mother Theresa and Batman put together, even as Harvard genius Paul Erlich was raking in millions of bucks for writing “The Population Bomb”, wherein he predicted famine, mass-starvation and destruction (sounds like my house on a Saturday night) – based on the statistics. Blah blah blah. The reason nobody knows who Paul Borlaug is, is because writers and journalists generally tend to avoid writing about anybody who knows more than they do, preferring to concentrate on other useless writers and journalists.

Naturally, with Jay Leno gone from late night, New York Magazine, which can always be counted upon to get everything exactly backwards, proclaimed Letterman, with his entitled WASP act, to be the undisputed champ and new King of Comedy. They actually liked the fact that he now resembles somebody’s crotchety grandfather. The problem today is that people seem to feel the need for an avuncular figure of authority. Basically, I can’t think of anything more tedious than adult persons seeking a paternal figure, and it speaks to a lot of contradictions that exist in today’s world. Anybody seeking that kind of forbearance from me is playing in a field of dreams, that’s for sure!

I was relieved that the 10:00 Leno show is following essentially the same format as his 11:35 slot. My habit has always been to tune in for the first five minutes to check out his monologue and then forget the guest portion of the show. Celebrity interviews, I can live without. Who cares if Ellen Degeneres has tennis elbow? Now, with the new time, I wouldn’t have to stay up late. I could check out his latest gags and then go back to watching the Yanks.

For his opening night, Jay’s monologue was a little bit flat, but what do you expect coming off a three-month hiatus and NBC execs breathing down his neck, everybody frantically nervous? My girlfriend, Magpie, who’s a little bit on the WASP side of things herself, seemed to derive a kind of perverse satisfaction from watching him deflate. But I have been a steady viewer for 15 years. I have seen him kill night after night, going after O.J. Simpson and Bill Clinton like a shark attacking the scent of blood. I was confident that once he gets his hooks into a victim and finds his rhythm, ol’ Jay will start to kill again.

He followed up with a mock interview with Barack Obama, where he asked stupid questions which were interspersed with recorded answers from old Obama interviews. Not too funny. About the funniest thing was when asked Obama “Will you be my Facebook friend?” Unfortunately, Facebook is already about as shopworn a subject as exists, and Barack Obama is not exactly a barrel of laffs either. One look at Obama and you know why I miss Bill Clinton. Life was fun with Clinton. He accompanied Chuck Berry with his saxophone. There were endless years of laughs over Monica Lewinski, He continually made monkeys of the Republicans, where Obama seems to be bending over backwards to placate them (see where it gets him!). Even Bush was funny, though he drove the country off a cliff. Unfortunately, for all his virtues and good intentions, Obama is not terribly entertaining, with his endless moralizing and entreaties advocating responsible behavior. Am I asking too much of the man?

Leno next brought out this LA comic and they showed a clip of the guy singing to a girl in a carwash to a boom box accompaniment while a couple of guys in business suits danced in the background, reminiscent of the Blues Brothers. Bomb-o City!

My girlfriend seemed to be enjoying the spectacle of Jay Leno taking a header in his primetime debut, the same as some people get their kicks from rubbernecking a car crash. She fancies herself a comedy critic, though her idea of hilarity is watching a You Tube video of a kitty trying to drink from a faucet. Her idea of hilarity is watching old black-and-white reruns of Victor Borge telling anecdotes about Baltic herrings while playing a grand piano in a white tux on the educational network.

It’s absurd to believe that Leno himself would have allowed this mess to represent his primetime debut. He definitely would have preferred to bring on Gilbert Gottfried dressed as Octomom, or Bob Golthwaite, if he hadn’t turned himself to creamed corn in a car crash. After 30-plus years of doing stand-up, including 15 on late night, Jay Leno knows what works.

Unfortunately, corporate comedy is a collaborative effort that includes a lot of executives who understand only ratings, and the NBC investment in this show is too significant to be left up to a comedian. That’s why he got stuck with this dog of a premiere. The next guest was none other than that tired old standby, Jerry Seinfeld, the king of reruns. Seinfeld is NOT FUNNY, OK? His fabulously successful sitcom show, recounting a comedy of manners involving a group of ineffectual Upper West Side nitwits, used to make me cringe. You want to write a show about a strike at H&H Bagels? I’ll write you the damn show. I was a manager at that freakin Porto-San for a couple of years, and I’ll write you a show that will make your hair stand straight up!

Then there was the time when a Seinfeld segment contrived to have him burn a Puerto Rican flag during the Puerto Rican Day parade. What the hell was that all about? OK, I know. He’ll tell you the joke is on him for playing the fool. Really? Seinfeld represents what I call the Wooden Stool School of Comedy, where the comic comes out and philosophizes to the audience from his rich knowledge of contemporary culture while perched on a stool, like Socrates. Give him some hemlock! The whole concept is strictly from hunger. One of the pioneers of this school, Bill Cosby, who was funny about 40 years ago but not now, has now started to bill himself as Dr. Bill Cosby, because some school awarded him an honorary degree. Ugh! What’s next, Professor Seinfeld? How about Dr. Curley Stooge or Dr. Keith Richards, Doctor of Pharmacology? I go by Groucho Marx, who declared, “I refuse to belong to any club that would accept me”.

So Seinfeld comes out in this very expensive tuxedo, except it didn’t fit. It was cut too tight. A monkey in a monkey suit, behaving for all the world like Mr. Showbiz. See, he’s not a comedian any more, he’s a cultural icon, like Letterman. These guys don’t even feel compelled to try to be funny. It’s like they’re gods descended from Comedy Olympus to show us what’s hot. The other genius, Howie Mandel, is also infected with the same virus. At least Mandel knows he’s sick, insisting on wearing latex gloves all the time and refusing to touch anybody. Basically, these comics feel that they have achieved such an exalted status that it is enough for them to come out and regale the public with little details about what is happening in their lives.

Lenny Bruce was obsessed with the idea of class, like a lot of schmucks. He had a routine where he constantly badgers his manager to book him into a “class room”. Finally, the manager manages to get him an engagement at a dinner club in London which meets all his criteria for a “class room”. When he starts to do his act there, the audience responds by throwing cutlery at him.

But the most notable offender has got to be Jerry Lewis who, sick of being treated like an illiterate clown from New Jersey in spite of all the money he had made, decided to show the world that he had class like Peter Lawford or Kennedy. Of course, it was a New Jersey concept of class, with big French cuffs and ersatz Bing Crosby, Perry Como smoothness, as though he had emerged fully grown from the head of Sinclair Lewis’ Elmer Gantry character as portrayed by Burt Lancaster, but it was enough to inspire a whole generation of buffoons going forward.

If it wasn’t enough to have Seinfeld’s tedious little anecdotes about himself, his wife and his upcoming HBO special, they managed to contrive a brief videoconference with the Queen of Daytime TV, Oprah, which didn’t exactly enchant this viewer either. Ha-ha, very funny.

Mercifully, this segment finally ended only to be followed by an interview with rap performer Kanye West, who the night before had jumped onstage during the MTV video awards show presentation for best music video to “country” singer Taylor Swift, for her video that had been entirely shot on the New York subway. What happened to the usual country themes of mountains and pick-up trucks, I don’t know. It just goes to demonstrate the standardization of commercial culture when the subway suddenly becomes a theme for country music. Hank Williams and Hank Snow have got to be looking down from Grand Ol Opry Heaven and shaking their heads in astonishment.

Hey, who am I to complain? Given the current depression, anything that makes money is good. It’s a sure bet that the subway was not Taylor Swift’s concept, but that of her record label’s marketing department, based on input data supplied by innumerable polling data and focus groups. That’s probably where she got her name as well.

In any case, there she is receiving an award for a video she never conceived, based on a song she probably never wrote (maybe she never sang it either), and Kanye West jumps onto the stage, grabs the mike and declares that the award should have gone to Beyoncé. Very charming. But these award shows are a bunch of garbage anyway. Remember when Sasha Baron Cohen descended from the ceiling dressed as Tinker Bell the Fairy complete with magic wand, and plastered his bare butt directly in the face of P-Diddy (or whatever he calls himself now)? The whole grotesque event was revealed to have been staged. Anyway, who cares? Cohen’s movie disappeared almost instantly, a victim of the Twitter rage, as spectators emerged from the theaters and immediately texted, “Don’t go it stinks”. Next year Twitter will be gone too.

Personally, I believe Sasha Baron Cohen has got a lot of comedic talent and nerve. He just shouldn’t be allowed to write his own movies. After years of hearing about how great “Borat” was, I finally got a chance to see it on TV and it totally stank, except for the scene where the naked fat guy sits on his face and screams “Eat me!” That I liked.

Kanye West appeared appropriately chastened on Jay Leno about ruining Taylor Swift’s star turn on the MTV award show, but he also betrayed an unbelievably spoiled and indulged personality bereft of any capacity for reflection or even self-expression. “I know, as a celebrity I should have behaved better”, was about all he could get out.

What did Jay Leno care? This dork has got a big name and his appearance and abbreviated mea culpa were guaranteed to draw big ratings, which meant that Leno would live to fight another day. Leno did not give West the bum’s rush he so richly deserved, like he did a couple of days later with Mel Gibson. His producers are turning over any rock they need to in order to ensure ratings, and they even gave some air time to Gibson, who is a virtual pariah in Hollywood since he revealed himself to be an unreconstituted falangist anti-semite. Everybody is charming when he is young, and Mel Gibson was exciting and vital 30 years ago. Unfortunately, he never figured out how to remain current in middle age, revealing himself to be a xenophobic, drunken half-wit. Leno shut him down halfway through the segment.

With Kanye West, even though he was no more coherent than Gibson, Leno was obliged to finish the interview because West was scheduled to “sing” with Jay-Z and Rihanna, whom I must say are no less diminished in talent than he. I am not going to go out on a limb and state that hip-hop is not music. I own an LP from the sound track of 1980’s movie “New Jack City”, and it is very entertaining. At this stage of the game, though, I have to say that it is much depleted as a musical genre over the last 30 years, and the current group of artists, if I may grace them with such an elevated term, are strictly the dregs. Jay-Z, Kanye West and Rihanna somnambulated through their performance with a lack of passion that seemed calculated to stimulate the audience to wish it was in Philadelphia, as W.C. Fields once put it.

Despite its rather flat beginning, I predict the Jay Leno Show will do very well so long as his opening monologue is sharp enough to keep the audience tuned in. That is the hook that will keep me tuning in, and I have no doubt that he will pull it off, based upon his previous years of success. Jay’s monologues, rather than being one-off affairs, are based upon a culture of cumulative themes. He may not have OJ or Bill Clinton to kick around currently, but once he gets his hooks onto some good running themes, he should take off in primetime and stay on top for a while.

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