Actually, he didn’t even say something that controversial. All he said was he refused to call the 9/11 hijackers cowardly, because, as evil as the act was, it took some stones to execute. I don’t think he said Word One about our military (since they weren’t even involved yet).
Christ, I just find Dennis Miller incredibly uninteresting and quite full of himself. I guess if your creative zenith was playing a smart ass riffing on news stories in the 80s, you might want to grow a beard and become a “pundit.”
God, he is so unfunny!
The interview was dull and had the veneer of “hey, this is my buddy, we’re going to humor him by having him on to do a bit.” The convoluted and arcane references aren’t funny at all.
The Harry Reid one especially was pathetic. I mean, Pelosi does blink a lot and Byrd certainly is old, so at least those jokes made sense. But is Harry Reid anymore boring then any other politician? I’ve heard him speak a good number of times over the last few years and he hasn’t stood out as particularly more dry then anyone else in the senate. It made it sound like Miller was bascially reading down a list of the top ranked dems in congress (Byrd is Pro Tempore) and casting about for anything to make fun of them for (usually via a movie reference).
Don’t you mean Obi-Jon Kenobi? 
I watched Dennis Miller on SNL a million years ago and thought he was pretty funny. Then I lost sight of him.
Now he’s apparently our generation’s Don Rickles. And Don Rickles ain’t funny.
It’s funny that I happened to catch that very “interview”, and only that segment, since I haven’t watched TDS in a long time. But given how candid I remember TDS guests being back when I watched it every day, that episode was sorely disappointing.
That’s different–TCR is supposed to be scripted and fake. That’s part of Colbert’s character.
I actually was in the audience for this one. The funny thing is that Jon Stewart has to stare at his guests in a really intense, unnatural way. When you see it on TV, it all makes sense, but in the audience (he was basically staring right in my direction), it was a bit strange.
So yes, it is more like an “act” and not exactly like a natural conversation. It still was funny.
The highlight of the show was seeing Jon do the intro to the international edition (which I had no clue even existed). It was about a one or two minute segment in which he noted that outsiders can influence our politics by uploading embarassing videos of our candidates to YouTube.
I used to love Dennis Miller. I saw him live in the early 90’s and he was awesome. Watched him on SNL, watch his show. Then… he turned around and now, he seems mean-spirited and isn’t funny anymore.
On TDS, I too thought he was high. His delivery was rushed and not clear. It seemed like he was just trying to get through his script in a certain amount of time, funniness and timing be damned. He was phoning it in. I couldn’t tell if Jon Stewart was laughing at him or with him, for that matter. Probably a little of both.
It’s too bad about Miller. I wish Stewart hadn’t softsoaped him, but JS will do that for certain guests, I’ve noticed. Colbert would have roasted him over and open fire, one way or another, probably back-handedly and by agreeing with him. Just another reason I prefer The Colbert Report these days.
As someone who’s taken a pretty decent number of drugs, I propose that we dispense with this “Dennis Miller was high” madness immediately. People on drugs often think in extremely creative ways, for one thing–the routes that the “train of thought” can take often become subtly different–and if they have trouble reciting a rehearsed speech it’s more likely because they’re stumbling through it awkwardly rather than because they’re slamming through it quickly. And most recreational drugs tend to increase empathy and interpersonal understanding rather than leading their partakers to spout mean-spirited jokes. Lambast Miller’s performance all you want, but describing him as “probably high” will get a pair of :rolleyes: from me. I don’t think that makes any more sense than saying that his jokes were “gay” instead of “stupid”.
Okay, how about “impaired?” That’s what he looked like to me - not a normal person, not acting normally, not reacting normally. Of course, he is (being generous here) a comedian, not a normal person, so I guess that benchmark might not be all that useful for him. I’m not willing to go to the wall on this one; he acted weird to me, and I have no way of knowing if he was high or drunk or what or if he just normally acts so weird, so I’m not planning on arguing it much further than that.
For what it’s worth, having taken a lot of drugs doesn’t really make you an expert on what someone who is high looks like, unless you taped yourself while high. Having been around a lot of people on drugs would.
I don’t see why his behavior would be considered inconsistent with one who has taken some kind of amphetamine or stimulant type drug. His schtick is so rigidly memorized that it would not take a great deal of effort to start spewing it even while impaired in some way.
I don’t particularly think he was on any substance - I think he just sucks that bad anymore. However, I don’t see why such a suggestion should automatically be ruled out.
Whaaaaaaaaaat? Know many meth or coke addicts in your day? They’re just full of empathy and interpersonal understanding. :dubious: I think your line of argument here is just way off, and Miller doesn’t deserve nor warrant this defense. His performance on TDS was crap, and whether or not he was high, he did manifest some behaviors that some of us associate with an altered state, to his detriment.
Funny, the first thing I thought when I saw Miller the other night was, “Jeez, how much coke did he do in the green room?” That’s not conclusive proof of anything, but I do agree with those who say he seemed abnormally “up.”
And chiming in as a former fan of Miller’s: the “he hasn’t changed” mantra doesn’t ring true to me. In the old days his act was much more fearless, and he never had a problem taking the skewer to anyone who deserved it. But that was back when he was on top of things. His conservative bent has grown in inverse proportion to how far his career has sunk. I’m not sure why, though this sort of thing has happened before (Ronald Reagan famously switched from being a Democrat to a Republican in perfect time with his movie career going in the tank.) I certainly don’t buy the “9/11 changed everything” crap. Why? Why didn’t Oklahoma City change everything? Chaos from within is far more dangerous than attack from without. And Timothy McVeigh arguably got more bang for his buck than Osama bin Laden (smaller conspiracy, less financial resources, but still a lot of damage). I don’t think Dennis had a conversion experience in '01; more likely the “kissing Bush’s ass” strategy was just more convenient.
And Tuesday night’s show is where that decision has gotten him: taking handouts from his comedy buddies in order to get some measure of attention, and then showing little confidence once in the spotlight. Stilted, staged, canned, phoned in–I suspect that’s about all you can get from Miller these days. And that’s sad, because Miller once was something a lot better than that. A shame.
This is exactly the right phrase to describe Miller’s style. I hate it. It isn’t funny to me, it’s like he’s trying way too hard, and it comes off as so very, very rehearsed. And worse, it comes off like rehearsed “spontaneity” which is worse. Something that is rehearsed isn’t automatically bad, but Miller comes off as fake because he is so clearly hoping to be taken as coming up with the stuff off the top of his head, and he so very obviously isn’t.
A long time ago. He is so formulaic that there used to be a website called the “Dennis Miller Routine-O-Tron” that would randomly generate Dennis Miller bits that you could TOTALLY see him actually saying. He’s painfully unfunny 
Did I mention that it’s worse? :smack:
I’m not sure what you mean here. Do you mean it’s better? Maybe you mean it’s worse. Could you try to communicate with us more clearly?