Generation Gap

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.

 

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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.