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Where have all the Bob Hope's gone?
This year, it was Stephen Colbert who bobbled things at the White House Correspondents Dinner. We suppose they can’t resist. They’re invited to perform in front of the POTUS (a high-pressure gig, no matter who the Prez is, no matter what your political leanings) and they take the “bad boy” route– saying naughty things that anger one side and please the other– all in an attempt to… to what, exactly? Why this need to provoke? You’re already famous, so there’s really no need to get more famous? Is there?
We point out that USA Today recap devoted the first quarter of the article to Bush impersonator Steve Bridges, whose stock has risen since the repeated airings of his appearance on the Comedy Central Jeff Foxworthy roast. He busted the president’s executive balls mercilessly, but the humor was broad, the gags were ridiculous. USAT is polite when it comes to Colbert:
At the Bloomberg News post-show party, with guests including Desperate Housewives star James Denton, ER’s Maura Tierney, Terence Howard, Ron Silver and others, Colbert was almost the last person to arrive. He seemed pleased with his performance.
“I had a great time. The president killed. He’s a tough act to follow– at all times. It’ll be a tough for whoever comes in 2008, too.”
Colbert said the president seemed to get a kick out of the comedy.
“He was very nice. He was like, ‘Good job, good job.’ ”
American Idol contestant Ace Young thought the night was “outstanding.” The young crooner grinned non-stop as he worked the press line and the party. “To see people in Congress, to see the president doing his skit, actors, everybody just getting along with mutual respect. It’s awesome.”
It’s come to this? Ace Young has a better grasp on the evening’s dynamic than anyone else?
The internet, the blogosphere, was crackling with news of the performance. Colbert’s material was described variously as “satirical” or “edgy” and the reaction he got was described variously as “uproarious” or “stone silence.” There’s a video, so you can make up your own mind. (That site also provides links to a wide array of reactions to “Colby’s” performance.)
Why isn’t anyone taking the Bob Hope route when it comes to these affairs? He went right down the middle. Hope knew it wasn’t about him. He played to the entire room. When you have an audience that contains George W. Bush, Valerie Plame, Helen Thomas, Ludacris and Ron Silver, what sense does it make to not go right down the middle?
Interesting take from Bloggledygook:
In the comments, one will find praise for Colbert for speaking truth to power, or whatever cliche one wished to use. However, Colbert (who I find very, very funny) said a few funny things, but seems to have forgotten that it’s a failing prospect to attempt to direct satire at those who are beyond it.
Similarly, it has become tiresome to hear talk of courage in this case, as if Colbert is in some fear for his life, but chose to stand against the fascist state and mock the president and media. Rubbish. The easiest place in the world to be snarky is Washington D.C. The Capitol virtually runs on snark. I pointed out that courage would be exemplified by an Iraqi mocking Saddam (when still in office) where speaking against the government carried very real danger.
The other point that begs to be made is that the shrieking about police states, etc. demonstrates just how humorless much of Colbert’s audience is. There is less comedy being made than the fiction that Colbert and Jon Stewart “speak” for some voiceless mass. In the age of the ubiquitous opinion, screaming at the top of one’s lungs that one’s speech is being stolen is absurd and in itself, the best form of satire practiced today.
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Personally, I thought Colbert was both hilarious and ballsy, and I’ll take him over 5 million bland Bob Hopes any day of the week.
Perhaps we didn’t make our point well enough.We have no doubt you’d take a hilarious and ballsy Colbert over a bland Bob Hope. But it’s not really about who or what you’ll “take.” Rather, it’s about appropriateness for the venue.It’s about in keeping with the spirit of the event. Once a year, the folks in DC put aside their differences and get along. Colbert chose to be edgy and somewhat provocative– and, though he may be the most famous comedian in America for a news cycle or two, he paid a price. Even he admits it was a bomb.And it’s not about ideology, either– we seem to recall Don Imus and Bill Maher making similar miscalculations at previous WHCD’s. For the life of us, we can’t figure why someone would take the gig and not make an effort to amuse the entire room, not just half of it or one-quarter of it.We don’t know what the payoff is in taking the route he took– would your estimation of Colbert have plummeted had he decided to commission the penning of material that was down the middle yet still sufficiently “Colbertian?” We think not. And doing so would not have been out of the question or unachievable. He’s a comedian, after all– one of his skills should be the ability to make an entire room laugh, regardless of his or their political affiliations.
Wow. This is the second time that I’ve been surprised that TBTB at Sheckymag are coming down AGAINST a comedian (the first being the Club Soda Kenny affair.)I thought Colbert was brilliant–he was every bit the character that he’s created for himself, a lampoon of the right wing pundit/windbags like O’Reilly. That’s what he does. I mean, if that’s not what was required–isn’t it the booker’s fault? What if they’d have hired Stanhope…and he offended Bush…would you still be blaming Stanhope for being Stanhope?And I think Colbert DID make an effort to amuse the entire room… He made just as much fun of the gathered press corps as he did the Bush Administration… I really don’t think Colbert was inappropriate. I don’t think he was meanspirited. I think he nailed it… If the worst president this country has ever had also lacks a sense of humor–at what is, ostensibly, a roast of both himself and the people who fail to hold him accountable…I mean, “cover” him–well, I think that says a lot more about HIM than about the skills of the performer hired to make fun of him.But, far from me to blame the audience for a comedian not being able to reach them…if they didn’t like it, they didn’t like it–that happens. At least Colbert didn’t attack the audience, he didn’t crack, he didn’t do a snap set. He did what he does every night on his show–and those of us who appreciate good writing and a masterfully crafted character enjoyed what he did.Perhaps POTUS is more of a LTCG sort’a fella? Hey George…<><>Git-r-done!<><>As far as Sheckymag goes…to each their own… When I see you stand-up for stand-ups, as you have in issues regarding how stand-ups are treated on tv shows and in other news media, I think of you having an advocacy side–so, when I see you swerve in the other direction, it throws me a little……and I think you’re throwing Colbert under the bus on this one–but again, certainly your right to do so…Respectfully,peter greyy–seattle
I actually agree with you guys on this one.I’m a big Colbert fan, and excitedly watched the live feed as I chatted online with other Colbert nerds. I cringed. It was terrible. I thought his approach was wrong — it was just… too much. Some people watching it on tv or online may be lovin’ it, but he didn’t deliver on the task at hand that night. He may feel like he accomplished something (and since we’re all talking about it, we know he’s getting attention), but I wish he’d just done the job.Did you guys get my emails re: the Wpg Festival? Sent a few weeks back, never heard from ya.
Guys, you say of Colbert, “He’s a comedian, after all– one of his skills should be the ability to make an entire room laugh, regardless of his or their political affiliations.” That’s setting the bar too high, isn’t it? What’s funny depends who’s laughing. Funny is in the ear of the beholder. There are degrees, of course; some humor is closer to being universally funny than other humor. But it’s of the essence of political humor that you make fun of the other side. Political humor ain’t supposed to be neutral. It’s supposed to be, well, political.Furthermore, to expect Colbert to stop being Colbert just because he’s invited to that gig–well, if I’m Colbert, I’m going to assume they invited me because they like what I do. So I’m going to go there and do what I do. Which is what he did. So as PG said, Colbert was Colbert. What did anybody expect?
I think the people who bring up Stanhope and Colbert being Colbert nail it. He did what he does – he did his kind of comedy, pretty much how he does it. I, too, was absolutely thrown by Shecky’s editoral reaction to the whole affair.
Let’s take another whack at this:Mr. Rogers says: “But it’s of the essence of political humor that you make fun of the other side. Political humor ain’t supposed to be neutral. It’s supposed to be, well, political.”We aren’t talking about Political Humor in general, we’re talking about one political humorist specifically at one particular gig, in this case, the White House Correspondents Dinner.We’ve seen Colbert’s show. We’ve read about him. He’s more than capable of going down the middle, of making light of the culture inside the beltway, of the pomposity of our leaders, of the excesses of the MSM. But, on the one night when that neutrality was the order of the evening, the one night when folks check their affiliations at the door, when his obvious ability to tweak everyone present would have stood him in good stead, he opted for… “brave.”A tactical error.Do we “expect Colbert to stop being Colbert just because he’s invited to that gig?” No. We expect him to be a slightly different version of himself, in keeping with the tone and the spirit of the evening. If Helen Thomas can do it, if Karl Rove can do it, surely Stephen Colbert can do it.Consider what we’re all engaging in here is akin to an NTSB investigation. Only in this case, we’re the National Comedy Safety Board, picking through smoldering wreckage that was Colbert’s set, trying to determine what went horribly wrong.
“What went horribly wrong” was not Colbert’s set, it was everything that happened in real life that his set was about.“When his obvious ability to tweak everyone present would have stood him in good stead,” he chose to remain in good stead, not with the people in the room, but with his conscience, his character, and his integrity as an artist.
All this talk of “conscience” and “artistic integrity” and “character” is nice, but it doesn’t square with reality.Consider this: Just 72 hours after Colbert’s performance in our nation’s capital, he shared the bill with Dora the Explorer at MTV Networks’ upfront meeting with advertisers in New York, playing to “a room full of advertisers presumably hungry for promises of viewer engagement” (See < HREF="http://www.broadcastingcable.com/article/CA6330990.html?display=Breaking+News" REL="nofollow">MTVN’s Pitch for Multiplatform<>)And God bless him. For he has found the Holy Grail– he sits astride a prgram (“The Colbert Report”) that is a daily fixture on Comedy Central, which is one of MTVN’s worldwide assets, consisting of 122 channels, more than 100 Web sites, broadband channels and mobile content.His trek to D.C. and his billing as the featured speaker at the WHCD wasn’t an artistic exercise so much as a commercial for one of Sumner Redstone’s fine products.And it worked. Just 11 hours ago, the Vila Presse in Vanuatu posted an article about his speech. (Vanuatu is, according to the CIA Factbook, “three quarters of the way from Hawaii to Australia.”)So, if we take artistic integrity off the table (and we believe we can), and look at the gig in the starkest, simplest, most pragmatic terms, he failed to deliver what the gig called for. And that was the thrust of our posting.And, mind you, we would have said similar things about his performance had he “spoken truth to power” at the MTVN upfronts and called Dora the Explorer a whore.
Okay, as far as I’m concerned, ’nuff said about Colbert; but on the general question of how much and in what way one should change one’s act to accomodate a particular audience–Lewis Black has a most interesting take on a similar case. He talks about it in his Carnegi Hall CD. Wanna hear what he says–get the CD! And no, I’m not getting kickbacks, I just think he’s a genius, and I wish more comics could do what he does .
I still don’t see that he failed to deliver the goods – or at least made a legitimate effort to deliver them. He told jokes – well-crafted, well-written jokes – of the sort he’s known for telling. He didn’t stop and make a political speech about Iraq. He didn’t unfurl a banner or throw a drink at the President.He did what he does. He told jokes. He told jokes that were based in reality and had more substance than a dipshit impersonator, but they were still jokes that he intended to get laughs with.He held up his end of the bargain, artistically, ethically, and professionally.If, like you say, the comic MUST adhere to the tone of the venue, how do you handle it when you’re playing a road room and the manger asks you for some good nigger jokes?
Timmy Mac comments:“If, like you say, the comic MUST adhere to the tone of the venue, how do you handle it when you’re playing a road room and the manger asks you for some good nigger jokes?”This example is outrageous and ridiculous. If anything, the request (if there is indeed any attempt to shape the tone of the evening with regard to the choice of material) is to <>not<> make any ethnic jokes (or any other kind of offensive reference). And those requests (with the obvious exceptions of corporate gigs or private parties) come mainly from event coordinators at 1. College campuses2. Military basesHowever, that isn’t the topic here.Everyone seems to be losing sight of the fact that Colbert– when all is said and done– bombed.We maintain the bomb was due to a tactical error and was eminently avoidable.We just listened (at the urging of a commentator) to <>Lewis Black<>‘s account of his preparations for the Congressional Correspondent’s Dinner. Black did it exceptionally well (getting a standing ovation) but felt like a whore afterwards.That he would take the gig, make an effort to do what he was asked to do, do it well and uplift everyone present– and then feel badly about the whole affair upon reflection– is sad, really.There seems to us to be far more degrading things in this profession than changing the phrase “get laid” to “get lucky.” If, in an effort to avoid offending a group of 2,000 congressman, their spouses, the congressional press corps and the president, you are called upon to knock the word “fuck” out of your set– and this represents too much of an artistic compromise– the solution, as we have said or implied many times, is <>don’t take the gig<>.If Colbert’s desire to “speak truth to power” overrode his obligation to amuse the audience at hand, he seriously misplayed the gig.Also, Steve Bridges is a pro who is good at what he does whose act has struck a chord with a huge audience– at the WHCD and via his Comedy Central appearance. He deserves better than to be characterized as a “dipshit impersonator.” In all our discussion of Colbert, we’ve not referred to him in any other than positive terms, as have the other serious and sober commentators in the MSM and on the blogoshpere.
He was hilarious AND on point.