Letterman on W's Faulty Elocution
As thinking people, we naturally tend to resist the straightjacket of declaring ourselves as one or the other polar opposites. Things generally aren't just black or white, simple yes or no, all good or bad. Years ago, my wife flew through the lengthy marriage test the Catholic Church administered in hopes of testing our compatibility, while I took almost twice as long. There's simply no way in hell to answer that with a straight yes or no, I silently thought to myself as I read half of the absurdly binary questions.
Still, there are some things that are simpler, and I think Letterman vs. Leno is certainly among them. If you like one, you're unlikely to fully like the other. And your choice of comedians probably says a lot about you. You perhaps won't find it shocking to learn that I prefer Letterman. A couple of weeks ago, he got off what I think may be his best joke ever. "Bush had dinner at Taverne on the Green to celebrate his 10,000th mispronunciation of the word nuclear." Well, okay--it was funnier to watch him say than it is to read it here. In any event, I can't picture Leno saying that. But then, maybe I'm not the best judge, since I rarely watch even a minute of his show.
8 Comments:
Like you, I much prefer Letterman over Leno. I'm not sure what that says about me though.
In the movie Fahrenheit 9/11, there are a slew of clips dipicting W's many speech errors. I was laughing so hard in the theater that I had tears coming out of my eyes.
What it says about you, GB, in my admittedly biased eyes, is that you're smart and discerning. But then a 60-second scan of your interesting blog would also tell one the same thing.
Thank you! I'm also a horrible speller. D-e-p-i-c-t-i-n-g.
I've always been more of a Conan O'Brien fan. Does that make me the wacked out third-party supporter of late night comedy? :-)
Great point, Jim. It's not merely a two-man race, but a three-way thing. I happen to have hated Conan at first when he went on, but have come to not just like but love him (though I probably don't see his show more than perhaps once every two weeks).
And it'll be interesting to see how he follows in Leno's footsteps, as he's set to do in a couple of years, even though he's far closer to Letterman in terms of edginess. He'll no doubt have to tone that down a bit when he goes to the earlier slot, with more viewers and ad dollars riding on it, as Letterman has also toned things down a bit since he was in a later slot. Then again, maybe some of it is just middle age and having kids. I can personally attest to how that makes you rethink everything...
Leno is horrible. Letterman is just ok now, was better at NBC. Conan is truly funny. But then again, I'm a 30-something punk.
What about Carson Daly? I'm up, aren't you?
Yes, Jim, Letterman's lost some, maybe much, edge since his glory days in the later spot at NBC. Chalk up some of that to the inevitable pressure to be more mainstream in prime time, but probably also it's a result of plain old aging. As for Carson Daly, I must admit, I'm out of his demographic, and haven't really seen him. Can't even say for sure which network he's on. I think it's MTV, right? Or maybe he began there and has since graduated to one of the older networks. Illuminate it for me, Jimmy K.
He's after Conan on NBC, and he pretty much sucks. I was joking.
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