Not as much anymore, but yes.
Back top the OP- Dennis, when he went on a Rant, could be pointed and hilarious.
Miller was always ignorant, but he was never a liberal. I don’t think all that psuedo-intellectual bullshit fooled anyone, before or after 9/11.
And 9/11 was hilarious, dammit.
Thanks for sharing that:
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Better a Marie Antoinette of the left saying, “Let them eat fruit and fiber,” than a Know Nothing who would be Robespierre if he could spell it.*
It used to be he didn’t want to go off on a rant. Now he does.
I like
“Bernie’s already been pressed under heavy stones—a real pair of stones—Hillary’s.”
I haven’t seen a career tank that badly since Rommel at El Alamein: Electric Boogaloo.
Another who thinks he lost the plot after 9/11. He just. . . grew sour. Like my beloved George Carlin. I watched one of his specials just before he died and I was saddened by the bitter old man he had become.
He was funny back when Charles Grodin used to be funny.
It was obvious to me that his political switch happened at the exact same time as a significant drop in his popularity. Sheer coincidence, of course. I’m not saying this applies to you personally.
It was always partisan. It’s just that now he’s not on your side.
Mort Sahl was a favorite of Democrats during the Eisenhower administration. But when the Kennedys came along, he started joking about them, and this did not sit well with some of his audience. He said they came to him saying “We thought this was what you wanted!” He said he replied, “You didn’t have to do it for ME!”
Midnight Run is a great film!
Sahl did that, sure, but his downfall doesn’t parallel Miller’s. It’s much closer to Lenny Bruce’s. Both of them thrived on adversity. They both had some contempt for the wishy-washy liberals who loved their partisan humor as long as it wasn’t trained on them. Bruce consciously went out of his way to start attacking everyone who agreed with him, seeking to find some level of bile that they couldn’t follow him onto. Sahl also kept escalating his idealism until nobody but him could possibly fulfill his vision. He would have been a funny Black Panther.
But his case is more complex than that. He bought in to the liberal lifestyle in a way that the lower-class Bruce never could. He was a regular not just at the Playboy Club but at the Playboy Mansion and all the goodies it provided, including a Playmate wife. You can’t satirize our cultural flaws from decadence. And despite the reaction against the Kennedys he became the nuttiest of conspiracy theorists after the assassination and started reading the Warren Report in his act like Bruce started reading his arrest reports. Audiences wanted neither.
I suppose you could say that Miller metaphorically started reading Rush Limbaugh in his act after 9/11 but that’s stretched the analogy until it snaps.
I am of the line that he was smashing with his very specific act on SNL but outside of that frame he did not seem to have “legs” to take it elsewhere. Which is largely par for the course for SNL alumni.
As Jophiel mentions, you can have an entertaining RW commentator but it has to really come from within, you have to be both a good *spontaneous *entertainer *and *have a RW point to make. Miller is great doing his structured schtick with the literary references, but ISTM he’s a weak on-the-spot man.
Also to contrast the other figure mentioned in the thread, O’Rourke’s evolution felt more organic, more natural, while Miller’s had that certain “sound of a record scratching/tires screeching” effect. You could feel and share that yeah, that’s right PJ, we were once young and full of fire in the belly but now we know better and need Prilosec – I can say I still enjoy greatly PJ’s books and columns, but then again he’s not a standup comic nor a Talk Show host: from the stance of a writer he has the luxury of not needing to make his point in a 15 second soundbite RIGHT NOW.
I only saw him on SNL. I thought then and I still think that sarcasm isn’t always funny.
I used to love him on weekend update, but think he’s just not funny anymore. I agree that 9/11 seemed to hit something in him - his more recent stuff doesn’t seem to have the humor, and seems to be more ranting/preaching than comedy. I also don’t think it’s the political stance that he takes per se, I think I would react the same way if he went full hippie after 9/11 and was ranting the same way about Bush and the like. Preaching your side of the issues in a rant just isn’t the same thing as skewering the other side plus taking potshots at the idiots on your side.
I think it is also a case that Miller has simply slowed way down in the past decade or so. The only place I really see him is on his Fox News commentaries, and I don’t find his humor there overly partisan or ad hominem. I still find it witty, smart, snarky and funny same as he’s always been. Al Franken once commented that Miller always leaned a little to the right to begin with (from Franken’s POV anyway).
BTW, I don’t know how common it ever became but there was a term used for celebrities that were generally left-wing but who shifted to the right after 9/11, they were called ‘9/11 mugging victims’. Actor Ron Silver was a famous example.
I always enjoyed his SNL Weekend Update anchoring, and I caught his standup act seven or eight years ago - still funny then, I’d say.
One of my all-time favorite lines of his: “The day virtual reality lets Joe Sixpack screw a supermodel in his rumpus room for hours on end, it’s gonna make crack look like Sanka.”
I have no opinion on Dennis Miller (except that I always get him confused with the other 90s actor-comedian named Dennis – Dennis Leary), but Norm McDonald was the best Weekend Update host.
I liked Norm, too, and also Seth Meyers.
That’s the thing with him – the mega-obscure references shtick goes only so far. There was a point where it became obvious that he was just trying too hard to be clever. He fell off my radar for a decade, so I don’t know if it was a gradual thing or if it did, indeed, start after the terrorist attacks.
I’ve heard parts of his radio show a few times, and he can be funny at times. It’s fun listening to him when he’s reminiscing with Dana Carvey or another SNL alum.
at some point he thought he could be bill maher but failed …and he had a failed show on cnbc