http://metromix.chicagotribune.com/tv/mmx-0402110236feb11,0,6309214.story?
coll=mmx-television_heds
From the Chicago Tribune
Even at CNBC, Dennis Miller has a monkey on his back
By Steve Johnson
Tribune television critic
February 11 2004
On his new and flailing CNBC talk show, Dennis Miller has, to these
guests'
faces, lauded California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's accent as
"infectious"
and opined that former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani has personal parts
the
size of Macy's parade balloons.
He's also granted co-host status to a chimpanzee, whose wanderings through
Miller's darkened studio are often very amusing but also a sign of a show
that
doesn't know whether it wants to deflate standard television or join it.
"The Dennis Miller Show" airs weeknights on CNBC, as part of that
channel's
grand strategy to get back in the prime-time news channel game. A John
McEnroe-hosted show, coming in the spring, is the plan's Phase 2.
Or maybe, by then, it'll be Phase 1 all over again. Miller's
disconcertingly
flaccid attempts to meld jokes on the news, serious political commentary,
conservative hero wor****p and the chimp were greeted by a
huge-by-CNBC-standards initial audience of 746,000 viewers, but they seem
to be
plummeting.
Week one averaged 540,000 viewers for the first airings of new shows; week
two
pulled in less than half, just 261,000.
And it's no wonder, because a once-iconoclastic, hyperskeptical comic who
seems
to have moved into bowing before swaggering conservatives is nobody's idea
of
entertaining, no matter how hard the crew that is Miller's only in-studio
audience chuckles. You can't spend a career deflating absurdity, and then
conduct the kind of fawning interview with Schwarzenegger that Miller did
on
his first CNBC show, Jan. 26. Viewers' discomfort was mirrored in the face
of
the man who, Miller seemed to forget, was a
bodybuilder-turned-actor-turned-governor.
Miller has said, with candor that he wants and deserves some credit for,
that
the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks turned him conservative on matters of national
security, while he remains liberal on social issues.
He wants, he often says, his government to kill terrorists before they
kill us.
And he thinks it's wrong that other hosts don't admit their biases.
Fair enough, but the one social issue he repeatedly mentions is gay
marriage,
with which he has no problem. On almost everything else, both on his show,
where his deadly dull nightly issues panel, The Varsity, features his
impatience with left-leaning panelists, and in interviews, he seems to
have
moved entirely into the conservative camp.
He's now unflaggingly pro-President Bush despite having once derided the
president's intellect in the manner of most other comics. Fox News Channel
primetime host Bill O'Reilly, Miller says, is much more "fair and
balanced" --
yes, Miller used the term without irony -- than ABC News anchor Peter
Jennings.
The latter Miller called an obvious liberal who gives away his opinions
with
eyebrow raises and the like. That's a direct echo of the daily postings on
right-wing mailing lists, not the observation of the man who used to seek
unconventional wisdom.
Miller was one of "Saturday Night Live's" best faux news anchors ever and
host
of a reliably sharp, probably left-leaning but primarily skeptical weekly
show
on HBO for nine years ending in 2002.
Then, in the midst of his unusual but often entertaining two-season
sojourn as
a color commentator on ABC's "NFL Monday Night Football," Sept. 11
happened.
The post-football Miller began popping up on political cable shows, then
doing
some commentaries for Fox News Channel, sharp, scabrous and hyper-literate
like
the "rants" he made famous on the HBO show. They reflected his new,
hawkish
politics, but at just a couple of minutes a pop, they were often funny.
But it was CNBC that signed him to the regular show, and it's at CNBC
where
he's proving that an hour of the new Dennis Miller four times a week (8
p.m.
weeknights; the Friday show is a repeat) is entirely too much.
So much longer than anything Miller has done before, the CNBC show mostly
feels
satisfied with the status quo.
And then there's the chimp. On night one, Miller delivered a mission
statement
for his show, very sincere sounding, then ended it by saying, "I believe
there's a common-sense revolution coming, folks," and having the chimp
come
over and join him to pose for the camera.
It was a very funny undercutting of everything he had just said, a
reminder of
the old Dennis Miller.
But most everything "The Dennis Miller Show" has done since suggests that
he
was kidding about the chimp, serious about the revolution and his
rightness to
help lead it.
If they can succeed in making Dennis Miller no longer funny, does that
mean the
terrorists have won?
|
