Why does every tribute to Johnny Carson have to include unfavorable comparisons to Leno, Letterman, Conan O’Brien, Jon Stewart et al? If people want to honor Carson, by all means, do so, but I’m sick to fucking death of hearing and reading, over and over, “…and no one else compares to him. Leno/Letterman/O’Brien/Stewart are pale imitations. No one could EVER be as great as Carson. We shall not see the like of him again blah blah blah.”
I vastly prefer Letterman to Carson. He’s a hick and proud of it. Freely admits that he doesn’t know shit about golf, or any of those rich-white-guy fixations of Carson’s. And Stewart has a set of brass ones like Carson never did. Not a particular fan of Leno, and rarely watch O’Brien, but they’re worthy in their own right too.
No, I am not putting Carson down, so please don’t rush in here to give me more quotes and anecdotes, trying to convince me how great he was. He was good, very good. But to say that he was unsurpassable, or the only late-night host worth a shit, is ridiculous and narrow minded. I’m just sick and tired of the gratuitous putdowns.
Yes I am darned tired of everybody speaking of Johnyy Carson as if he should be nominated for sainthood. I think he was incredibly overrated. Think about it. What were his skills?
Was he a comedian? I’d say he never really told anything that could be considered a sidesplitter. Did he ever “pay his dues” by travelling the country playing small shithole clubs? No.
Was he a musician? Well he was a drummer. (I’ll let someone else comment on that). He never wrote any songs.
Did he write any books? (“Happiness Is A Dry Martini”? - oohhh a real page turner that one). Any scripts, articles, etc?
Was he innovative? Steve Allen and Jack Paar pretty much established the talk show format long before Carson popped up on the screen. The great Sir Isaac Newton was humble enough to say he owed his success to the fact the he “stood on the shoulders of giants”. Did anyone ever hear Carson give credit to anyone in television for his success? I know David Letterman attributes much of his show’s style to Steve Allen and Jay Leno pretty much thanks everybody.
Well, I was never much of a Johnny Carson fan and I guess I’ll stop this posting right here.
My guess as to why Carson is being so eulogized everywhere, is that he is a pop culture icon. He was a talented guy who essentially standardized the late night talk format. Lots of people grew up watching him, laughing… and maybe were inspired to do something in the entertainment biz.
Johnny Carson is recognized among quite a few people, though maybe not so many young people.
The fact is, he was around before all of the other hosts mentioned. He may not have been as edgy or tough as other hosts, but that was what made him great. Anyone could like him, and you could talk to your mother about the show, even watch it together. Try that with Conan* and his Masturbating Bear skits.
Also, the newest Simpsons episode was dedicated to Johnny Carson. It had the shot of him from the Simpsons lifting the Buick on the Krusty the Clown Show.
*(For the record, I love Conan. I just don’t watch him with my parents.)
I’m not questioning why he’s being eulogized. I’m just fed up with the unfavorable comparisons to current late-night hosts.
No one has to convince me of his worth. There will never be anyone exactly like him. But different does not mean worse. And the qualities that people find admirable about Carson’s hosting skills should be strong enough to stand on their own, without adding “See, Letterman/Leno/O’Brien/Stewart doesn’t do that, so he’s a hack.”
Stewart is all about skewering politicians, an area in which Carson trod very lightly. Letterman holds rock musicians in high regard; Carson never really warmed up to rock at all. They are what they are, and I don’t believe they suffer in comparison to Carson.
Sorry… I just haven’t heard such comparisons, but i’d be peeved if I did. Since they’re obviously out there, I’ll bet it’s because some people love all the newer late hosts individually, but few love them all equally. Back in the day, Johnny was IT. Even little old ladies loved Carson. Edgy is good, to us; to a lot of other people, it’s the end of an era.
The people who put down the current hosts, while comparing them to a long retired man, are stupid; apples and oranges, and all that.
Stupid, eh?
So if I compare modern writers to Joyce, Milton, or The Bard, I’m stupid?
If I compare modern guitarists to Django Reinhardt, Stevie Ray Vaughn, or Jimmi Hendrix, I’m stupid?
If I compare anything modern with something that came before but is still of the same ‘type’, I’m stupid?
Failing to take context into consideration may indeed be ignorant, but comparisons between the past and present are not, in and or themselves, stupid. Sorry, I don’t buy it.
Back to the OP: I think it’s only natural when one of the ‘greats’ dies that we shake our heads and say “kids these days… why when I was a kid, we walked through ten feet of snow to get to school every day, and it was uphill both ways!”
The past is romanticized, and we almost always have a warmer place in our hearts for nostalgia than we do for a modern buzz. After all, packaged with that nostalgia is your first kiss, the first time you drove a car, college graduation, etc…
Carson was the icon of an era, and in comparing him to modern hosts, one is essentially matching one era against another.
While I, too, don’t see the need to belittle others in order to praise Carson, it seems unavoidable that if one is to refer to him as the best that one automatically says the others aren’t as good.
I watched Johnny for decades and I can tell you, IMHO that is, no else comes close. Letterman is good in certain ways, Leno is good in certain other ways, and Stewart and O’Brien have their strong points. But Johnny was the best overall…and by far.
He was gifted in ways that most of those who never had much experience watching him will never know. His monologue gets a lot of attention and his famous comic bits do, too, but he was incredibly strong in every facet of his job.
However, his true gift, IMHO, was his ability to make his guests interesting. Even popular, well-known celebrities were more interesting on his show than they were on anyone else’s. Burt Reynolds on The Tonight Show was a much more entertaining Burt Reynolds than the one who appeared on Dick Cavett’s show, or Dinah’s show…or Merv’s, Mike’s, etc. The same with Bob Hope, Sammy Davis, Jr., and so on., even down to the plain old everyday people like the potato chip lady. Carson just had an ability to make people interesting, and to me that is where his true genius lay, and why he was so much better than the people working today.
Why?
If an artist comes out next year and writes something that puts The Wake to shame, why shouldn’t we say “Yeah, Joyce was good for his time, but he’s no _____ ?”
How does being able to compare and contrast artists make one stupid?
Ok… comparing things doesn’t make one stupid. In fact it probably makes people smarter. The point is, comparing an older generation of talk show hosts with a newer generation is not even worth comparing. They are different. Very different. I can’t even believe we’re having a conversation with Joyce and Carson as the main subjects.
There has to be a Carnac the Great joke here somewhere.
Yeah, but we’re talking about a talk show host here. This’d be more like comparing Katie Couric and Matt Lauer to Jane Pauley and Bryant Gumbel. “Yeah, Al Roker is nice, but he’s no Willard Scott.” The hosts mentioned share a similar format, except for Jon Stewart. The only similarity is that he’s on late and has guests. And the format was already pretty much established before Carson took over.
In my opinion, the hosts have such different styles and humors that the comparison doesn’t do anyone justice. Best to just pay respects without them.
In addition to my comments above, I should also point out that Carson was a STAR!
He had charisma, appealing good looks and a quick and ready intelligence that made him interesting in and of himself. People wanted to emulate him, dress like him (the Johnny Carson clothing line, by Hart, Schaffner & Marx for example), and live like him. If he found something interesting, many people around the country found it interesting. If he was concerned about something, lots of people became concerned about it, etc.
The media celebrities who probably come closest to having the respect and social impact today that he had for most of his career would probably be Oprah Winfrey or Martha Stewart (I know, I know), rather than Letterman, O’Brien, et. al.
Perhaps… I still think it’s possible to judge one style/format as being superior to others. But I’ll drop out of this Pit thread gracefully, and agree to disagree.
FinnAgain: Who thinks that Bill Hicks could eat any twenty commedians alive and still have room for Robin Williams.
You have no idea how hard it was to get Hugh Grant out of the way. In the end I had to say “Jeez, is that an even skankier whore, over there on the other block?”
Man, you should’ve seen the Brit hussle, he should run track.
Not to derail an otherwise fine rant, but wasn’t the “shoulders of giants” quote, rather than an example of Newton’s humility, an example of his arrogance? The story as I remember it was that the “giants” line was a slam on another scientist who claimed Newton borrowed from his work without proper credits. Said scientist was small in stature, thus Newton’s reference to “giants” was both a slam on the other scientist’s work and his size.