John Stewart and Steven Colbert drove Ted Koppel from hosting his groundbreaking late night news show, Nightline, after 25 years. Things had changed since 1980 when Koppel's show debuted. In 2005, more late night viewers wanted their news flavored with a tone as absurd as the news itself. The Daily Show and Colbert Report were funny like life. Koppel was not. Koppel was just life.
It was like Koppel couldn't cope with the fact that logical insanity was the mood of the day. It replaced objectivity as the news ouvre of the day. But instead of getting Seussian with his, Koppel got more droll. More like Yertle the Turtle, who found you can't be king of the pond but for so long, instead of more like Dr. Seuss, who adjusts, digs deeper, keeps his art on par with the topics and tastes of the times.
Put a different way, people saw journalists as such a big part of the problem, and news gathering as such a part of the story, that they needed news reporters to show they understood that on every broadcast. (And The Onion thrives on the web because readers want that, too.)
Example: Colbert starts a recent interview about the heartbreaking suicides by gay teens by bashing the gay guest he's invited to discuss the topic. I think it's funny, but I know it's a set up just like the guest does: Colbert's faux-conservative delivery is the hot hook, and if you can stand the heat, he'll allow - even facilitate - whatever newsiness you'll help him burn into the brains of the audience. At the end of a long day, to get to my mind, it takes a hot poker, my girlfriend once told me. Colbert gets it and says, "Why not just tell the gay kid, hey, the clarinet player over there is catching it, too. It's not just you, it's being a teenager."
So the Colbert guest says, "The clarinet player is probably being called a fag, too, on top of nerd. The difference is that the clarinet player, while maybe picked on daily, isn't going home to family or church folk who also are disparaging folks with his sexual orientation." Good, gay comeback for dat ass, a homothug might say! All Colbert guests need good comebacks, and are allowed them - are expected to provide them. In Koppel's journalism, things were not so balanced as his generation liked to think. Guests after a while, especially the politicians, either came on with a script and they stuck to it, which provided us with less and less information in the 80's, 90's and 2000's, or just stopped coming (literally, and maybe bud-doomp-boomp). No joy in Mudville, if you ask me, the average American black male liberal.
Back to the Example: Then the gay Colbert interview turns serious. A clip from Itgetsbetter.org shows the highest ranking gay US official on the site saying you can go as high as you want and love who you want, if you love yourself first. Biden, Clinton, even Al Franken - but no Republicans or conservative pundits - have done a similar clip viewable on youtube. Colbert agreed to do it, so long as it didn't involve "pegging" (bud-doomp-boomp)!
Koppel would have done an outstanding story about the tragic suicides of the teens. Koppel would not have had any jokes or other powerful means of informing the public of the absurdity of where we stand today. The truth of it is powerful: didn't 1980-2005 prove to journalists that the truth is not enough?
This might be a stretch, but R&B music got the same message some time ago. Its death knell was rung when Anita Baker and Luther Vandross - two of the best to ever do it - couldn't sell as well as Too Live Crew and N.W.A. It struggled until when? The emergence of The R. - and I don't mean Rakim. (I wish.) R. Kelly kept R&B relevant to the New School rap audience. When Diddy was producing Aretha Franklin, you had to know the soul of black music was hurtin'! But only hip hop captured the ideas, impulses and the dominant ouvre! (Tresa, sister, French major, what AM I saying??? It feels like the right word, though!) R&B couldn't match hip hop's grooves, plain and simple. Madonna, Prince, Michael, Janet - all schizophrenic with theirs, trying to find the staying groove. Jam and Lewis, Teddy Riley, and later, Lauren Hill, we thought: but where today? Kirk Franklin and Dr. Dre and (hiccup) Lil Wayne and (hack!) Alicia Keys came to run diss town.
I was riding the H-bus the other day past C. Dolores Tucker's house here in Philly, and I was reminded of something. While white and black conservatives (Bill Bennett and Tucker) were building alliances and together smashing Tupac CDs (I would have helped if they'd have just asked), only hip hop was putting black pain into a music that estimated the absurdity of it all - the context, I mean, the world at the time. Sure we need to pull back, but you don't pull back by just screaming, "Pull back!" Not if trying that hasn't worked repeatedly. I don't say resorting to "Pull back, nucka!" is the best alternative solution, but the market proves that intent plus ouvre win out in media. I mean, it's Kanye's world.
Likewise, it's Colbert's in the news, in my view.
Koppel is a superior journalist to Stewart, actually. (Sorry, John: Godfather.) To Colbert? Maybe. Maybe not, right now. Why then is Koppel on the History Channel? Well, hate to go here but: do you know how much money Koppel was making when he quit? How much money my fellow Wahoo Katie Couric is pulling down? Matt Lauer? Anderson Cooper? Tons. That's part of the story. You ought to give me the news and ONE joke. Dang. It's got to be like that when your product isn't providing the citizenry as much good stuff as Colbert. If he's showing you can be timely, informative, relevant, funny, and subversive - providing you with not only information but a framework for questions, for carrying on a conversation on your own, about the news AND the industry - that's just awesome. Awesome, awesome, awesome.
Sound gay? Like that clarinet player, I've gotten that as a smart guy my whole life. (Smart GOOD LOOKING GUY: my bag.) Gay, white, nerd, weird, names, names, names. And as sure as we learn we are (or are not) beautiful by others' eyes, it hurt. I got called that because I, skinny and black and living downtown but not "down," idolized folks like Koppel and Jim Kincaid, the Hampton Roads news anchor I emulated as a teenager (the newscaster happened to be friends with Koppel as a Viet Nam War correspondent, Kincaid told me). I survived it because of seeds planted by my grandmother (parting my thick hair like Mandela before anybody knew), and by the ouvre with which family and others in the community surrounded me (your mama was so smart, boy! your sister skipped a grade! "i ain't dumb!" - beave, "hi, seanpierre!" - pretty black girls, pretty white girls).
The old heads in journalism held it down during their reign, but didn't step it up in the 21st Century. They - the traditionalists - may all go the way of R&B if they don't get the message. They've got to be themselves, but that may mean stepping down or finding a co-host to provide that other thing. Or it may mean, god forbid, changing.
Koppel's recent diatribes in The Washington Post and elsewhere against Comedy Central's guys and MSNBC's lineup (The Olbermany) suggest that's the direction he wants to lead good, old fashioned journalists in. My advice: instead of becoming naysayers and arrogant and screaming, "We still were better," to that idea, throw up the deuces and...get Suessian. It's not just about being absurd, it's about matching the ouvre.
Did I sound like Kanye? DID THAT SOUND LIKE KANYE??? KANYE WAS RIGHT!!!
Throw up the deuces and...get Seussian. Throw up the deuces and...get Seussian.
Just like me.
No comments:
Post a Comment