Steve Hyden, welcome back to the blog! It’s been too long. Seems like you’ve changed venues—taking your
talents to Grantland.
To be fair, this article isn’t all bad. For most of its bizarrely excessive length,
it’s rather innocuous. And then,
suddenly . . . . Well, you can see for yourself.
There are some hints of the majesty to come, though, early
on.
Even as Leno has
faded as a high-profile media figure to the point of virtual invisibility for
anyone born after the Late Shift era, he remains a symbol of generational
privilege for the People Who Followed the Boomers.
The “People Who Followed the Boomers” is really going to
catch on as a term. Nice and succinct. Insightful.
And really, Leno’s a symbol of generational
privilege? Yes, it’s really Leno’s age
that’s the problem. Not his terrible,
canned, repetitive jokes. His age. And I assume if you don’t like Leno, you
don’t like Letterman, either, cause he’s even older (a fossil!)
Oh, wait, but you like him. He’s apparently not a symbol of generational
privilege. I’m confused.
My generation has
been defined by its antipathy toward boomers, and Leno is the Coca-Cola of
boomer culture.
I love broad generalizations about generations! They’re always so very accurate. It’s not enough to say that members of Steven
Hyden’s generation have an antipathy towards baby boomers, as incorrect as that
might be. No, we’re defined by that. As
a man of similar age as Steven, I can say that my entire selfhood is predicated
on hating The Eagles. Man, “Take it
Easy” is the worst fucking song.
And that’s not even taking into account the second half
of that sentence—“Leno is the Coca-Cola of boomer culture.” What the fuck does that even mean? I mean, really—I’m lost.
Do boomers particularly like Coca-Cola? Is that a thing? Unlike those young folks who are all drinking
Pepsi, the “choice of a new generation.”
I’m glad you’re relying on advertising campaigns from the 1960s.
Also, if you are relying on advertising campaigns from
the 1960s, then that “new generation” who like Pepsi so much is the baby boomer
generation.
Unless you’re arguing that Jay Leno is, in reality, a
sugary beverage. Either way, I’m sure we
can agree on one thing: you should not be allowed to write articles.
Comparing anyone
to Nixon is like the morphine alternative to a Hitler comparison.
Good god, what have you wrought?!
It won’t get the
accuser entangled in a potentially lethal Godwin’s law violation, but it still
totally fucks up whoever is being administered the dose.
Again, I’m starting to doubt that Grantland employs
editors. Because this is some
industrial-grade mixed metaphor here (see, I can mix metaphors too!). Let me back up and try to parse this (spoiler
alert: I’m going to fail). Ok, so Nixon:
Hitler :: morphine alternative: morphine.
Sure. I don’t know what you mean
by morphine alternative, but alright.
But then . . . what?
It won’t get the
accuser entangled in a potentially lethal Godwin’s law violation,
So, morphine could be lethal, but morphine alternative is
not lethal? But why would a “Godwin’s
law violation” be lethal? Mentioning
Hitler on the internet may be déclassé, but it’s not going to kill you. Usually.
I’m starting to think maybe you should have used a
different metaphor.
But let’s resume.
but it still
totally fucks up whoever is being administered the dose.
Ok—mentioning Hitler kills you, like morphine, but
mentioning Nixon only “totally fucks up whoever is being administered the
dose.” This might make sense if I knew
what a morphine alternative was. But I
don’t. Let me try: Oxycontin? Percocet? Street-grade heroin? Or are we going nineteenth-century
here? Laudanum? Opium? This makes my head hurt. Pass the morphine alternative!
Also, isn’t it the person comparing someone to Nixon who
is administering the morphine alternative, not the one who is being
administered it?
I’m going to have to have another few months of therapy
just from this experience. And possibly methadone. I’ve also lost a few IQ
points, to boot.
I wasn’t hanging
out at comedy clubs in the ’70s and ’80s, so if people who were there say that
Jay Leno was the funniest man alive back then, I’ll take their word for it. But
judging by the YouTube clips I recently watched of Leno’s celebrated mid-’80s
appearances on Letterman’s Late Night show, the old young Jay isn’t that
dissimilar from current old Jay. Here, you can see him always pushing hard to
the next joke, favoring the security of a prepared act to the uncertainty of
real human interaction.
It’s true that, in the clips you link to, Leno seems a
little canned and desperately, almost sadly, eager to please. Which certainly helps to explain how
dumbed-down his shtick on The Tonight
Show is. But you miss one thing (the
most important thing): his jokes are funny.
Not all of them, but a lot. And as
such they have nothing in common with anything he’s done in the last 22
years.
But shit’s about to get ludicrous here, and I’m not the
only person to call attention to this moment.
Prepare yourself.
If
I can reference a seminal event for individuals in my demographic group that
occurred a quarter-century ago, the end of Leno is like the fall of communism
in Russia.
()
()
()
Those parentheses are supposed to represent
speechlessness.
HOLY FUCKING SHIT.
Holy shit.
Holy shit.
Why are there not licensers for writers? How are you paid—PAID—to write shit like
this?
You just compared a talk show host leaving to the fall of
fucking Communism.
I hope they just pulled down a bronze statue of Leno in
Burbank. Because otherwise I think you
might slightly have overstated the importance of Leno leaving. Just a little.
(Also, I’m sure the fall of communism was not seminal for
anyone over the age of 40. They were all
like—oh, great, Berlin Wall coming down, Yeltsin and a coup, whatever, honey,
what’s the Mets score?)
I hope you’re willing to explain this comparison.
It’s
a destabilizing event that signals larger changes that will irrevocably alter
how we see the world.
It’s true—it has altered how I see the
world. The fall of Communism: radical
restructuring of Russia’s economy, end of the Cold War, creating of numerous
independent European and Asian countries.
Fall of Leno: I turn on my TV at 11:30, and I see this
young guy who imitates Bruce Springsteen.
Exactly the same.
It
might take awhile [sic] to feel the aftershocks in the media
landscape, but they’re coming.
I know! Once one white man has been
replaced by another white man on a program hardly anyone watches, tectonic
plates in the earth’s surface are going to shift. This after an opening to this article that
stresses how nobody really cares that Leno’s leaving, and that he has nowhere
near the cultural cachet of Carson.
Maybe the analogy you’re looking for is The End of Carson: the Fall of
Communism :: The End of Leno : The Fact That I Had to Throw Out My Mets T-Shirt
I’ve Worn for 10 Years. Not a good
analogy. But better than yours.
Yes,
there’s a TV special airing on Sunday commemorating the 50th anniversary of the
Beatles performing on Ed Sullivan. But the future belongs to Nirvana
retrospectives. While the original Woodstock turns 45 this summer, I suspect it will be
overshadowed by remembrances of Fred Durst’s sociopathic behavior at Woodstock
’99.
Really?
I will wager any amount of money that in 100 years people will remember
the original Woodstock more than fucking Fred Durst. I am your age and I barely have any idea who
Fred Durst is. And I have absolutely no
knowledge of what sociopathic behavior you are referring to.
Maybe in 100 years few people will
remember the ’69 Woodstock. But no one,
I guarantee, will know who the fuck Fred Durst is.
Everything
is different now. Except it’s really not.
You might as well just write: “all the ‘ideas’ I just
said; they’re not really true.”
Or, you might as well just write: “I think I’m a cool,
edgy writer. But I’m actually a fucking
idiot.”
After
all, Leno himself once signified a younger generation that “pushed aside”
Carson.
To you, Hyden. Only to you.
And
then he got old. Everybody gets old.
Wise fucking words.
Generational
wars aren’t won on the basis of better ideas or funnier jokes. They are rigged
contests that favor the young 100 percent of the time.
Wow, that’s true. People die.
Did everyone know that?
Also, kind of missing the point here. People don’t hate Leno cause he’s old. Or cause he represents the baby boom
generation and whatever false generalizations you want to project onto it
(because everyone who was born in 1947 is exactly the same, right? Carlos Santana,
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Cheryl Tiegs. Indistinguishable). People hate Leno cause he’s not funny. People
like Letterman (who’s older, remember that?) because he is funny. And you can go on with your stuff about, oh
it’s young people who like Letterman and old people who like Leno, except that
Letterman’s median audience age is actually higher than Leno’s (Facts!). But
let’s take a step back. Letterman’s
“postmodern” comedy: it kind of resembles the comedy of former Tonight Show
host Steve Allen. It really resembles
the high-concept gags of Ernie Kovacs.
These are people from the fucking 1950s.
It’s not about the generation.
It’s about the comedy.
But
only in the short term. Eventually, we all get thrown over a cliff. So,
congratulations, my brethren. After Thursday, we’re next on the chopping block.
I don’t like to call for people to get fired. But you brought up the chopping block.
