The Devil's Avocado

Everyone loves a monkey shit fight, right? Sploosh, thhhpthpthpthpth, boom, stinky, poopy - monkey shit fight.  One at another.  A return.  Some collateral splatter and then more angry participants.  It’s difficult to clarify who got it started, but it sure is beautiful to see all that shit flying through the air, shit exploding onto faces, shit dripping from eye brows…

I mean, that’s why we have Jerry Springer, right? That’s why we have Cops and Cheaters and The Hills, right? To watch the silly monkeys bare their gapped tooth snarls, speak in a new language consisting mostly of beeps, whip their tits out to use as weapons, grab hair, gargle, hiss and like totally diss one another, bitch.  That’s why we’ve enjoyed the feud between Conan, Leno and NBC - to see the monkeys fling their shit.  Right? And maybe toss in a few juicy nuggets of our own?

Jay Leno is a cowardly, opportunistic, impassive, pandering hack.  There’s my piece of flying shit.  He seems like a good man - nice, loyal, fairly humble.  He’s certainly done good things.  But he is not harmless.

Here’s how it looks to me:

When Johnny Carson announced his retirement about twenty years ago, Jay Leno went into secret talks with NBC to secure his place on The Tonight Show behind the back of his friend (and heir extremely apparent) David Letterman.  Yeah, he had a ball-bashing agent who talked him into it, who made all the nasty moves.  And, yeah, he sacrificed her to his shocked (SHOCKED!) gods (after she got him what he wanted) lest it look as though he had condoned all those helpful sins.

Letterman moved to CBS and crushed Leno for some time.  So, Leno learned to find a more populist tone to his comedy - making easy targets out of woeful public figures like all talk show hosts, but reciting punchlines that anyone at home could easily sing along to, conducting by the numbers, vacant interviews with celebrities who surely could not be THIS boring.  

The man is brilliant at allowing you to turn off your mind, wait for keywords like OJ or Lewinsky and then laugh along with the studio audience who are laughing along to a light-up sign cueing them to laugh.  He eventually triumphed over Letterman by snagging an interview with the recently all-too-woeful Hugh Grant, obviously because Leno would never dream of asking him an interesting (aka scary) question.  Oh, how we Americans love our sticky scandals and grotesque mass apologies.  What better way for Leno to gain his permanent leg-up?

Leno continued to deliver America its cheap, greasy, fast-food comedy - perfecting wildly popular bits like Jaywalking, that basically just showed some people talking…you know, dumb.  Because if there ain’t no scandal we can laugh at, we want to see people act dumb real good and laff at ‘em.  He was the King of Late Night, without doubt.  The all-seeing man in the tower shaking his head at his lowly, trivia-impaired peasants… tossing them half-eaten, centuries old bits of parsnip and fruitcake. 

Somehow, NBC thought that this couldn’t possibly last.  They decided to give in to the popular later night kid, and de-throne the King a good 5-10 years prematurely.  His older-skewing audience surely would not be dead by 2009.  But, evidently, NBC thought that they would at least be getting to bed earlier - they would give Leno a prime-time show to keep him from becoming competition, hooray!

Well, Leno likes to go with the flow, be a team player…a “company man”, if you will - so he didn’t fight this decision.  Nevermind that he was absolutely the most powerful man in Late Night - he just went right along without holding out for a better deal.  Oh poor Jay Leno: NBC cancelled him and there wasn’t a thing he could do, not a thing the most powerful man in Late Night could do………

That’s the history of it.  We all know what’s going on now.  There’s been shit flying all over the place, from every possible direction, and it’s been extremely entertaining. 

Some of the harshest stuff has been coming from Letterman, who has been bringing up a bit of the history I just painted.  There will be a few who will tell him to “get over it”.  But I say: history happened for a reason.  History teaches.  History informs.  Letterman has a long, complicated history with Leno.  Move past it, yes.  But do not forget it.  That’s over thirty years worth of memories there.  Valuable stuff.  It’s not like he’s brought up the history every day on the show for the past twenty years.  He’s bringing it up now because it is relevant now.  Because there is something he sees as a link between the past injustices and the present.  And it’s very funny.  If in a depressing sort of way.

But Conan has been the one who has generated the most viewership from this.  And there’s a reason: because of the drama.  Because no comedy is as funny as angry comedy.  Comedy that comes from a direct emotional response.  Conan has been sharp and honest and passionate.  And candid.  His final goodbye Friday night - when he pleads with his young audience not to become cynical, to be kind and work hard - is one of the most gorgeous moments I’ve seen on TV. 

Leno, on the other had, has gained no added viewership over the past few weeks… because he doesn’t really give a shit and it’s absolutely clear to anyone who watches him.  He has just been making some dumb business-as-usual dumb jokes about how dumb the heads of dumb fat gay NBC are.  Oh, and that one jab about Letterman’s marriage.  Classy.  Smart.  Imaginative.  Jay Leno. 

I know that you can’t always be passionate and dramatic late at night, every single night.  But you can at least come at it from a personal, creative point of view.  Especially in these days of such political and ethical tension.  Yeah, late at night we want to wind down and laugh lightly.  But should we really just turn our minds off? Isn’t it better to tease our minds to the very end, watching real humans interact honestly and intelligently, taking a humorous and elegant look at the very things that trouble us when the sun’s out? Isn’t that smarter? Isn’t that better?

Is this all Jay Leno’s fault? No.  It’s not his fault at all.  It’s NBC.  It’s the lawyers and agents.  It’s ambition.  Jay Leno didn’t do a thing at all.  And he’s going to keep doing nothing for a long time.

I’m not being cynical, Conan, I promise.  I’m just being passionate and honest and (hopefully) sharp.  And candid.  Because I believe people are more interested in those things than just monkey shit fights.

If they really think about it.