Great Moments in Talk Therapy

If you want to get in on a little moment in media history, watch the Dennis Miller Show on CNBC before it’s canceled. It’s a valiant attempt to skewer the Bush-hating left with humor that’s failing to find an audience. The problem is that Dennis’ hip humor, laden with pop-culture references, is lost on the conservative audience most drawn to his unvarnished support of the President and his conduct of the war on terror. Not that there aren’t plenty of people who get the humor and support the President – the South Park audience is full of us – but I’m not sure they’re in the mood for another daily news/talk/politics/humor show, and they’re certainly not in the studio audience; those stiffs sit on their hands when Dennis makes the most hilarious jabs, just not getting any of it.

One of the show’s unique moments was an interview with Eric Alter-the-facts-man, where Dennis just quit talking and pretended to doze off after his guest exhausted his quota of received opinion, knee-jerk response, and scripted claims. See the Observer’s account:

[Miller] pretended to be asleep.

When Mr. Alterman finished his spiel, Mr. Miller went bolt upright and snapped at the camera: “All right, you’ve been great. Come back anytime.”

Mr. Alterman left stunned.

Alterman flogged the heck out of the story on his blog, and was livid with the Observer’s account.

Whether the incident was a melt-down for Miller or a brilliant move probably depends on where you sit. It’s clear that there’s not much point in trying to engage someone as dishonest as Alterman (or Chomsky or Moore) in a point-by-point debate, so yawning is probably the best move. Mocking would be another angle, but Alterman himself wouldn’t know he was being messed with, and neither would the dimwitted audience. So yeah, maybe it was brilliant, but if it was it was too brilliant for TV.

I like Dennis Miller and want him to succeed, but the show clearly needs work.