Wasn’t planning on posting this week, but then fate intervened. I was indulging in my too-wild-for-Vegas lifestyle by spending part of my Friday evening watching a rerun of The Daily Show from earlier in ’07, and who should Jon’s guest be but Dennis Miller?
Anybody remember Dennis Miller? In the late 80s he did the news on Saturday Night Live. In the 90s he was a successful stand-up comedian who, for a while, had his own weekly show on HBO where he’d riff on whatever was in the news or the gossip columns or just at the forefront of popular culture. He was best known for opening each show with a trademarked Dennis Miller “Rant,” during which he would, at quite a rapid pace, interweave scathing social commentary with pop culture subreferences present and past, some so obscure they required regular viewing of PBS in prime time during the summer of 1975 and an encyclopedic knowledge and total dialogue recall of the entire pre-Superman II filmography of Richard Lester.
Then, on September 11, 2001, 9/11 happened. It happened to all of us, liberal and conservative, urban and rural, rich and poor, etc. Most of us had opinions about the events, their tragic toll, the terrorists, Islamic extremism, the politics surrounding it all, and many of us felt free to express these opinions, in spite of the efforts of the Bush Administration and their wingnut cronies to silence everyone who didn’t tow their line by calling us everything from un-American to terrorist supporters to neo-Nazis to – oh, how could they?! – liberals!
But very few of us were, or are, well-known comedians/social commentators with (at the time, at least) periodic HBO specials (his series had been cancelled due to, depending upon whose version you believe, poor ratings or Miller’s personal disgust with the corporate media). But Dennis was among the elite who had a following, a narrow one perhaps, but generally a well-educated one.
So in the wake of the 9/11 attacks and all their social, political and cultural impact, Dennis Miller did exactly what one would expect of a social commentator who prides himself, and whose audience generally prides itself, on intellect and reason: He became a hardcore, dyed-in-the-wool right-wing extremist and George W. Bush acolyte.
I once proudly counted myself among those who followed and routinely enjoyed the Friday –night Dennis Miller “Rants” back in the Halcyon (Prozac?) days of the 1990s. I laughed at his original takes on high-profile news items and pop culture nuggets, and I congratulated myself on occasionally “getting” his obscure subreferences. But then, in 2002 I believe, I caught his HBO special entitled The Raw Feed, in which, labelling it comedy, he basically praised to the mountaintops the gung-ho, take-no-prisoners, “kill ‘em all and let God sort ‘em out” response the neocon chickenhawks had to the attacks, and in which he proceeded to eviscerate anyone who disagreed with this approach. I gaped openmouthed for about 20 minutes and then shut off my TV and wept just a little inside.
Both liberals and conservatives were able to claim throughout the last century their respective shares of intellectual voices, ideologues who nonetheless prided themselves on reasoned, if impassioned, arguments, commentary, even diatribes in which they laid out their beliefs and proceeded to give some sort of context, be it historical, social, spiritual, or what have you, for those beliefs. These people would present documented evidence from sources generally recognized to be reliable, and they would thereupon build their cases. Sometimes they would even acknowledge the legitimacy of the opposing side and the arguments to be made for it, but they would always see that their point of view on the respective topic triumphed, always using the context they created and the evidence at hand to clearly and rationally explain to all open-minded listeners and readers why their side was in the right.
The right had LaFollette, Dulles, Safire, Friedman, Buckley and their ilk. Liberals could turn to Stevenson, Galbraith, Buchwald, Jack Anderson and the like. And both sides at various points could claim Norman Mailer, may he rest in whatever he regards as peace. At times throughout their respective careers, all of these partisan commentators had to accept that events, the public mood or even fate proved them wrong, or at the very least marginalized their arguments, if only for the moment. Sometimes they swung back with the ever popular “Well, just wait, you’ll see!” stance; sometimes they licked their wounds for a day or two and moved on to another topic of current or imminent importance.
In the 21st century, with our infotainment-on-demand appetites and our ever dwindling attention spans, we no longer have commentators. We’ve replaced them with bloviators, stand-up comics masquerading as the voices of rage for the new generation (whatever generation we’re awarding that title to this week, by whatever arbitrary moniker we’ve chosen to paste on it). I don’t need to name them – at least three probably sprung to your mind while you were reading the last sentence. In the 90s they had their own radio shows and occasional cable TV specials. Today they have their own radio and TV networks!
And then there’s our ol’ pal Dennis. Pre-9/11, I could at least say of the man, when he was a comedy writer, that’s what he was. When he was a politically- and socially- charged stand-up, that was his m.o. And when he opted to engage in outright punditry, at least you knew where he was coming from.
But when he woke up on Wednesday, September 12, 2001, after I imagine giving some serious thought all the previous day and night to how he wanted to approach this colossal, earth-shaking event, this potential paradigm shift for all time, he obviously made one decision: I am so incensed and so full of rage and hatred for an enemy I can’t see or kill or see killed, that the only way I can wrap my head around this is to abandon all clarity and reason and past conviction and become an unabashed right-wing extremist, throwing all my intellect and pop-culture influence behind President Bush and Shadow President Rove and Emperor Cheney and the neoconservative movement and all of its public icons and use my gifts of wit, broad knowledge and insight to join them in demonizing any and all who would dare dissent or represent in elected office or the public sphere those dissenting voices.
Many times over the last six-plus years I’ve said to myself or anyone who would listen that Miller is a loser. What else could you call a reasonable intellectual who overnight abandons reason and turns his support to a massive wave of anti-intellectualism?
Sure, he lost an enormous share of his following, only to have it replaced by a much smaller group that never really comprehended his substance but could always rally around his soundbites. Hell, he couldn’t even sustain a color commentary post in the broadcast booth on Monday Night Football.
But is Dennis Miller a loser? He still gets published, still gets a pundit seat here and there, still gets asked to guest on The Daily Show, where Jon Stewart respectfully laughs hysterically at his still-frenetic subreferencing while making oh-so-insightful and potent comments about Nancy Pelosi’s looks, Harry Reid’s soporific timbre and Al Gore’s verbosity. Stewart has to be sitting there wondering how this one time truly original voice for common sense’s rage against nonsense became so unhinged. But Miller is still there, still in the public eye, if not exactly a mechanical rabbit for the celebrity gossip greyhounds.
So no, I don’t really consider Dennis Miller a loser. To those of us who would have continued to listen to his rants and other tirades against the degeneration of reason and practicality in favor of countless bloviating ringmasters battling to see who can shout the loudest in order to reach a big top growing ever more catatonic, he’s something much worse than a loser.
He’s a loss.
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