# Who's the current Bob Hope? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [November 14, 2016, 11:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whos-the-current-bob-hope/772014 "2016-11-14T23:58:41Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 12\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![CaptMurdock](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/captmurdock/32/11736_2.png) [@CaptMurdock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CaptMurdock)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2016, 11:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whos-the-current-bob-hope/772014/61 "2016-11-15T23:40:12Z")
Not that I dispute many of the good suggestions presented thus far… …but Jerry Lewis? ---
**Author:** ![tenacious\_j](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/439d5e/32.png) [@tenacious\_j](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tenacious_j)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2016, 3:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whos-the-current-bob-hope/772014/62 "2016-11-16T03:35:39Z")
> [@CaptMurdock](#): > > Not that I dispute many of the good suggestions presented thus far… > > …but Jerry Lewis? I thought of him too, and it might have fit back in the 1980’s when his movie and comedy career was mostly behind him, but he showed up on the MDA telethons and other specials. Kids like me knew him only as the MDA guy, but our parents had a lot more history with him. Now I haven’t seen him in years. If it weren’t for certain recently-exposed behaviors, I’d say Bill Cosby was the guy for a while. He was big in the 70’s, huge in the '80’s, then not as popular or prolific the last 25 or so years, but we old people kept talking about him and he didn’t completely disappear from our minds. ---
**Author:** ![SUZ\_MAC](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/8e8cbc/32.png) [@SUZ\_MAC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SUZ_MAC)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2016, 6:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whos-the-current-bob-hope/772014/63 "2016-11-16T18:41:34Z")
The name that popped in my head immediately was Neil Patrick Harris. He kinda does it all and is still very relevant. ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2016, 7:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whos-the-current-bob-hope/772014/64 "2016-11-16T19:00:15Z")
Right, but NPH was just on a very popular hit show, so the snot-nosed kids of today know why he’s famous…he was on HIMYM, and some other stuff. The angle I’m going for is “Very famous person 2016 who apparently did famous things in the past, but nobody born after 1990 has ever watched those things, so even though they know he’s supposed to be famous they can’t understand why.” ---
**Author:** ![Boyo\_Jim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/87869e/32.png) [@Boyo\_Jim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boyo_Jim)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2016, 4:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whos-the-current-bob-hope/772014/65 "2016-11-17T16:11:19Z")
> [@Derleth](#): > > No, the people who idolize Bill Murray have largely seen his films from the 1970s and 1980s especially. They know who he is and why he’s a star. > > And that’s the thing: Back when Bob Hope was a big star in the 1970s, nobody could see his Road movies unless some UHF station did a late-night showing or an arthouse or second-run theater got a hold of some old prints and ran them as a matinee or something. Old culture was flat-out not accessible to the casual viewer back then, in a way that’s hard for people who came up in the VCR and especially Netflix eras to really grasp. > > Back in the 1980s, everyone focused on cable TV and the hundred-channel wasteland it spawned as the horrible new threat to our culture, but the real harbinger of change was the video tape and the video rental store, which allowed average people to see old and obscure films on-demand, or as close to it as they’d ever come previously. The whole notion of “old” and “obscure” was redefined in the wake of that, and it continues to be redefined now that Netflix and YouTube are better video places than physical video stores ever were. > > There is no “Bob Hope” the way the OP describes the concept because the media landscape has changed. Again. Similarly, media fragmentation with the decline of TV means there’s no “Johnny Carson” to be _the_ person _everyone_ watches at night. > [@Loach](#): > > All very true but I do remember seeing his movies on weekends after cartoons. Living in an area that got all the New York stations meant I probably got a few more stations on the regular dial than many parts of the country. This. If you lived near a big city you had plenty of changes to see old movies from the 30s-50. I saw tons of the old “R_oad to …_” movies, and the great film-noires, and the Berkeley musicals, the Tracy-Hepburn romances, and … The independent broadcasters were an early version of the internet – aggregators who collected old popular stuff and offering them again and again. ---
**Author:** ![Vicsage](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/e68b1a/32.png) [@Vicsage](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Vicsage)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2016, 8:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whos-the-current-bob-hope/772014/66 "2016-11-17T20:13:33Z")
I don’t know if he’s important to young people today since I try to avoid young people today, but what about Bill Shatner? ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2016, 2:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whos-the-current-bob-hope/772014/67 "2016-11-18T14:57:56Z")
> [@Vicsage](#): > > I don’t know if he’s important to young people today since I try to avoid young people today, but what about Bill Shatner? That’s probably a great example. Most famous for being Captain Kirk in the 1960s and a handful of 1980s-1990s movies, and less famous for being TJ Hooker and Denny Crane. The last thing I can think of he did was Boston Legal, and his run on there has been over with for a decade. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2016, 3:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whos-the-current-bob-hope/772014/68 "2016-11-18T15:18:23Z")
But William Shatner isn’t a comedian/host type. He’s not at all comparable, really. Really, Billy Crystal is about as good a comparison as you’ll find. Both comedians, both sort of elder, repsected statesmen of comedy, and both work well in the same wheelhouse. Both had extensive careers in film. Both are very famous for hosting the Academy Awards - Hope and Crystal are 1st and 2nd, respectively, in the number of shows they’ve hosted. Both are relatively safe, affable characters. ---
**Author:** ![Gyrate](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gyrate/32/3588_2.png) [@Gyrate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gyrate)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2016, 3:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whos-the-current-bob-hope/772014/69 "2016-11-18T15:43:55Z")
> [@RickJay](#): > > Really, Billy Crystal is about as good a comparison as you’ll find. Both comedians, both sort of elder, repsected statesmen of comedy, and both work well in the same wheelhouse. Both had extensive careers in film. Both are very famous for hosting the Academy Awards - Hope and Crystal are 1st and 2nd, respectively, in the number of shows they’ve hosted. Both are relatively safe, affable characters. Like Don Rickles, Crystal is probably best known to the younger generations for voicing a Pixar character. I doubt he’s identifiable by sight for those who are used to hearing his voice come from a small green monster. To take a different approach I had a look at recent USO performers (as per Wikipedia): > [@](#): > > Bruce Willis visited Baghdad, Camp Kir Kush and Camp Caldwell, Iraq around December 2003. Mr. Willis visited military bases in Iraq during his visit in Iraq. > > From June 8 to 11, 2009, TV personality Stephen Colbert traveled to Iraq to film his show The Colbert Report for four days in a USO sponsored event. > > Other entertainers who have traveled to the Middle East to perform include Al Franken (who made six USO tours in Kosovo, Iraq and Afghanistan before being elected a United States Senator from Minnesota), Robin Williams, Craig Ferguson, Gary Sinise, Zac Brown, Five Finger Death Punch, Artie Lange, Gary Dell’Abate, Nick DiPaolo, Jim Florentine, Dave Attell, Avenged Sevenfold, Jessica Simpson, Carrie Underwood, Drowning Pool, Toby Keith (with special guest Gina James), Montgomery Gentry, Kellie Pickler, Mayra Veronica, Carlos Mencia, O.A.R., Dave Attell, Trace Adkins, Kathleen Madigan, Louis C.K., Dane Cook, Lewis Black, Third Day, Colin Quinn, Kathy Griffin and Neil McCoy. Of those, the only one who might remotely qualify would be Senator Franken and he was more of a writer than a performer back in the day. ---
**Author:** ![Vicsage](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/e68b1a/32.png) [@Vicsage](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Vicsage)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2016, 4:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whos-the-current-bob-hope/772014/70 "2016-11-18T16:00:16Z")
While Shatner isn’t a true comedian, he does do comedy. My comparison was that, like Hope, when Shatner makes an appearance older people seem to be a little awe-struck while younger people just scratch their heads, like they don’t get it. ---
**Author:** ![cormac262](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f14d63/32.png) [@cormac262](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cormac262)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2016, 4:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whos-the-current-bob-hope/772014/71 "2016-11-18T16:17:24Z")
> [@MrAtoz](#): > > but I see plenty of younger folks on _Big Bang Theory_ forums wondering why they keep bringing back that “unfunny old guy with the stutter.” Man does that upset me. I think Newhart’s comic timing is still intact, and he was hilarious on BBT. I think this is more about having someone “too old” appear on the show. As to the OP, I nominate: Terry Bradshaw. He’s definitely still very prominent on football related shows. But he seems to be all over the place as well. I think most of the younger generation doesn’t know of his fame other than that he was a “football player”. His “good old boy” and “have a good time, all the time” persona seems to have carried him through the years, irrespective of his start in the public eye. ---
**Author:** ![notfrommensa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/f14d63/32.png) [@notfrommensa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/notfrommensa)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2016, 8:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whos-the-current-bob-hope/772014/72 "2016-11-18T20:07:42Z")
No mention of Dick van Dyke? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whos-the-current-bob-hope/772014.md?page=3)