The continued mix of politics and comedy
It was a night the moguls of cinema swore they would never forget, until they did.
The year was 1939. The topic was the upcoming release of “Gone With The Wind.” The film’s stars, Vivien Leigh and Clark Gable, were on hand for a public discussion of the movie. The interviewer was radio’s Jack Benny.
Just a few days earlier gossip columnist Louella Parsons had published an item that raised eyebrows.
“It seems MGM’s biggest star cornered a fetching studio makeup artist in his trailer while on location recently. The lass rushed from the trailer in tears. Poor kid.”
Benny questioned Leigh a few minutes before turning to Gable.
“Clark,” he said, “I would be remiss if I failed to ask you about Miss Parson’s column concerning an unnamed actor assaulting a member of the crew.
“Clark, do you have anything to say for yourself?”
Gable stammered that he had no idea he’d be confronted like this.
“Clark,” replied Benny, “I would feel terrible if I didn’t ask. Your actions were just about the most ridiculous thing I ever heard of. Well?”
This never happened, of course. Gable, for all I know, was always a perfect gentleman. As for Benny, he was a comedian, first and last. He went for laughs; he was not a newsman or a social commentator.
How times have changed. Today a comedian is considered irrelevant if he’s not busting someone’s political or personal chops.
An encounter like the one described above took place in December between actor Dustin Hoffman (The Graduate, All The President’s Men, among others) and John Oliver, whose show Last Week Tonight appears on HBO.
Weeks earlier, Hoffman was the target of sexual harassment accusations by a woman who was 17 years old in 1985, when she was an intern on the set of Death of a Salesman, a TV movie starring Hoffman.
The Hoffman-Oliver confrontation took place at a panel discussion marking the 20th anniversary of Wag The Dog.
Oliver said he would have “hated himself” if he had failed to question Hoffman. “No one stands up to powerful men,” he said.
Now, I’m not defending Hoffman. Neither am I accusing him. I know next to nothing about the incident in question. What I’m puzzled about is this: how did the comedian morph into the pointer dog of politics, the enforcer of cultural norms?
I admit I don’t have an answer. I do know this: we’re in an odd moment, comedy-wise.
Politics and comedy have been in cahoots a long time. As a nation, we’re better off for it.
Comedian Robert Klein told his comic buddy Jerry Seinfeld on Netflix recently that he first stepped foot on stage in ’66 — 1866. Lincoln had just been shot. The country needed laughs.”
In reality, Will Rogers poked fun at Coolidge and Hoover. Bob Hope skewered Truman, Eisenhower and Kennedy. Benny and Charlie Chaplin took on Hitler, while Mel Brooks killed the guy. Johnny Carson spared no one.
But there’s never been such crowded comic moment like this. Let’s see, there’s Oliver. And Dennis Miller. Trevor Noah of the Daily Show. Stephen Colbert on CBS. Seth Meyers of NBC. Saturday Night Live, naturally. Samantha Bee. Jimmy Kimmel. Sarah Silverman. In many ways, it all began with Jon Stewart, the Walter Cronkite of funny.
How long this goes on is impossible to predict. I know how it might end, however.
Remember the song “Ruby, Don’t Take Your Love To Town,” about a paralyzed Vietnam vet pleading with his wife/girlfriend to stay home instead heading off alone to a bar with lovin’ on her mind?
The song came out in 1967. The singer was Kenny Rogers. At the time, I thought Rogers was part of the vast entertainment-anti-war complex spawned by Vietnam. Until … well, I don’t exactly remember … until he recorded a regular old love song. Then he became Kenny Rogers, just a singer.
For a lot of young people, I suspect this will happen to them, only it will be the comedian, not the singer, who surprises.
A snippet from Seinfeld’s on-demand show provides perhaps the best insight into why it’s a good idea to be skeptical of the comedian as political commentator.
On “Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee,” Jerry spoke with John Oliver. “We (comics) will put any words together,” Seinfeld said at one point. “I was talking with Julia Louis-Dreyfus (for the show) and she said I said I’d never get married and I said I still feel that way ….”
“That’s obviously funny,” Oliver offered. “Did you pay a price (with your wife) for that comment?
My wife knows, Jerry said, that “these are meaningless thoughts and words … I don’t understand what I’m saying.”
“There was a sequence of words,” Oliver said, “and there was a laugh at the end.”
“You have just described my entire brain,” Jerry answered.
“The internal logic of comedy … is we’ll do anything for a laugh,” Oliver said.
A chuckle at the expense of the powerful is a good thing; just make sure you understand how and why the ball is being teed up.
Richard Robbins lives in Uniontown and is the author of two books — Grand Salute: Stories of the World War II Generation and Our People. He can be reached at dick.l.robbins@gmail.com.