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LENO VS. O’BRIEN – TEMPEST IN A TV POT 5/15/2010 7:14:08 AM
Conan O’Brien is pissed off at both NBC and Jay Leno, and this is a catalyst that may well change the course of history. The peccadilloes of British Petroleum, the malignant frustrations of the Whiners and Maligners, the embarrassing misinformation spewed by the Becks and Palins, the pedophiles of ecclesiastic chapters, the anomalies of Mother Nature—notwithstanding all of these abnormalities, we are beset with the unkindest cut of all: the National Broadcasting Company and the firing of Conan O’Brien.
I have never been a huge fan of Mr. O’Brien’s, but there have been times when I truly enjoyed his mild, little-boy-lost wit and whimsy; his onstage persona is usually pleasant and inoffensive, albeit amateurish. Conversely, I have for years been a fan of Jay Leno, yet I admit I was never reconciled to his choice as Johnny Carson’s replacement. Not that David Letterman would have been any more acceptable—actually, I am not completely comfortable with any of the three, and I have no idea who could have picked up where the incomparable Carson left off.
Placing Leno five nights a week in Prime Time and assigning O’Brien to the “Tonight Show” was, for NBC, the poorest example of scheduling strategy since replacing Kukla, Fran and Ollie with . . . with . . . whatever they replaced them with (was K, F & O an NBC show?) Anyway, somebody at 30 Rockefeller Plaza who should have become unemployed can honestly say on his resume that he received the “Jeff Zucker Bone-Head Award” for 2010 (along with the bozo who axed “Law and Order” and “Flash Forward,” the only two shows that justify the cost of a TV set.)
Selfishly, I almost liked Leno on at 10 PM. Without a 1st class drama to make me feel guilty if I missed it, I could be in bed right after the monologue, the only part of Leno’s show that did not make me cringe. On the rare occasion I caught Conan O’Brien at 11:35, my suspicions were confirmed that his talents as a comic were overstated, due mainly to inept writing and his audience’s penchant for forcing laughter and applause at all the wrong places. He might have done better if he’d foregone a live audience and opted for canned laughter. Of course, I blame Conan for all this (or at least, his producer.)
I am, however, delighted that O’Brien will appear regularly on TBS—-it’s a channel I don’t believe I’ve watched more than three times since its inception on basic cable. That record shall, in all likelihood and barring a miracle, remain intact.
Jay Leno, back on NBC’s “Tonight Show” where he belongs, will continue to amuse me and make me guffaw, even when he waxes philosophical. Like when he once said, “With hurricanes, tornadoes, fires out of control, mud slides, flooding, oil rig disasters, severe thunderstorms tearing up the country from one end to another, and with the threat of swine flu and terrorist attacks, are we sure this is a good time to take ‘God’ out of the Pledge of Allegiance?”
It got me to thinking about an e-mail I received recently from my old friend up in northern Ohio. Her subject line read ‘To Those of Us Born 1930 ~ 1979’ . . . and this is what she said: “First, we survived being born to mothers who smoked and/or drank while they were pregnant with us. They took aspirin, ate blue cheese dressing, tuna from cans and didn't ever get tested for diabetes. Then after that trauma, we were put to sleep on our tummies in baby cribs covered with bright colored lead-base paints.
“We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, plastic coverings on wall sockets, locks on doors or cabinets, and when we rode our bikes, we wore baseball caps, not helmets on our heads.
“As infants and children, we would ride in cars with no car-seats, no booster-seats, no seatbelts, no air bags, bald tires and sometimes no brakes. Riding in the back of a pick- up truck on a warm day was always a special treat. Meeting Dad when he came home from work and jumping on his running board, hanging on for dear life, was great fun. We drank water from the garden hose and not from a bottle; we often shared the hose with the dog.
“We always ‘gave dibs’ on our one Hires Root Beer with the dog and four friends, all of us drinking from one bottle after wiping off the neck with the palm of our grimy hands—and nobody, especially the dog, actually died from this. We ate cupcakes made with lard, devoured white bread, real butter and bacon. We drank Flav-Or-Aid made with real white sugar. And, we weren't overweight. Why?
"Because we were always outside playing—-that's why, stupid!
“We would leave home after school and Saturday mornings and play cowboys and Indians, softball, cops and robbers, or ‘war’ while roller-skating in the street, as long as we were back when the streetlights came on. No one was able to reach us all day. And, we were okay—even if the clamps and straps on our skates kept falling off.
“We would spend hours building go-carts out of scraps of wood and broken boxes and then ride them down the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes. After running into neighbors’ bushes and crashing into trees a few times, we learned to solve the problem by rolling them over on our sides just before colliding with disaster.
“We did not have Play Stations, Nintendo's and X-Boxes. There were no video games, no 150 channels on cable, no video movies or DVDs, no surround-sound or CDs, no cell phones, no personal computers, no Internet, no chat rooms, no texting nor Tweeting. We had FRIENDS and we went outside and enjoyed them!
“We fell out of trees, got cuts, broke bones and chipped teeth, and our parents never started lawsuits over these accidents. We would get spankings with wooden spoons, switches, ping-pong paddles, or just a bare hand and no one would call Child Services to report abuse. We ate worms and mud pies made from dirt, and—surprise!—the worms did not live in us forever and cause TB.”
“We were given BB guns for our 10th birthdays,” she continued, “made up games with sticks, rubber-tipped arrows and tennis balls and, although we were repeatedly warned what would happen, we did not put out very many eyes as far as I can see. We rode bikes or walked to a friend's house and knocked on the door or rang the bell, or just walked in and said, ‘Hi. You wanna play or sumpthin?’
“Little League had tryouts and not everyone made the team. Those who didn't (and we knew they wouldn’t) learned to deal with disappointment. Imagine that! None of them, to my knowledge, turned to crime, took drugs, or committed suicide. (Also, I don’t think my dad ever beat up a soccer coach, not that any of us knew what ‘soccer’ was. Baseball was baseball; football was football: softball, aluminum bats, tagging and flags were for sissies.)
“Come to think of it, the idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke the law was unheard of. They actually sided with the cops!
“Our generation produced some of the best risk-takers, problem solvers and inventors ever. The past 50 years have seen an explosion of innovation and new ideas. What can kids today do besides push buttons? We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we learned how to deal with it all.
“If YOU are one of us—CONGRATULATIONS!”
Kind of makes you want to run through the house with scissors, doesn't it? It does me. (“Run” however, is a word no longer in my vocabulary.)
