Yesterday, Phil Donahue aired an hour with Dennis Miller, primarily talking about going to war — a topic about which those two men vehemently (but respectfully) disagree. Not that he'll lose a wink of sleep over this or even read it, but I have to say that my opinion of Mr. Miller has fallen off somewhat since his 9/11 conversion to "Rowdy" Roddy Piper. There are good, rational reasons for the U.S. going to war against Iraq and maybe a few other hellholes. I'm not sure I concur that the pluses outweigh the minuses, or that we're getting an honest assessment of either, but I grudgingly buy the argument that certain warlike actions may be warranted if all else fails.
What scares me — and what seems to be the sole mindset behind Miller's rants — is this notion that we have to go to war because we're the Good Guys, they're the Bad Guys, and it's time the Good Guys killed a large group of the Bad Guys and scared the crap out of the rest of them. If we go to war, let it be because that's our best course of self-defense, not because someone's testosterone deficiency has them jonesing to beat up on a little guy. (And, though this does not relate to Dennis Miller: …not because someone thinks it'll be good for business and/or their approval rating.)
As with many who feel as he does, Miller did not seem to want to address minor points having to do with things like killing innocent civilians, spending trillions of dollars, encouraging reprisals or that old bugaboo of what we may do to the environment. He urged that we frighten Korea by conducting a couple of well-publicized nuclear tests and, when Donahue asked what that could do to the environment, Dennis said, "The caribou will have to wait," and Phil, being polite and pressed for time, didn't ask if nuclear testing could conceivably affect, say, human beings. Or even make someone feel more pressured to nuke us first.
But then, I don't get that some of these folks remember that actions have consequences. At one point on the broadcast, Miller made a reference to having sex with sheep, complete with the "f" word, and then remembering he was on live TV, he turned to Donahue and asked, "We're on a delay, right? They're bleeping me, right?" They weren't, at least insofar as the East Coast was concerned. During the next commercial, someone informed Miller that he'd just said what he'd said on live, non-HBO TV and when they came back from the break, he muttered a slight apology and told his host that it was stupid not to have a tape delay on a show of that sort.
Now, I don't think saying that word on MSNBC is going to matter one bit in the world. It wouldn't even matter if it was uttered on a show that someone besides me was watching. But Dennis Miller was live on Saturday Night Live. Dennis Miller was live on Monday Night Football. Dennis Miller was even live on Dennis Miller Live. The man understands the concept of live television and has usually appeared on it without a tape delay. He has also spent an awful lot of airtime blasting people who don't accept personal responsibility for their actions. But apparently, it's the Donahue show's fault that he was heard saying something he said but didn't mean to have heard.
And it's also the first time I've ever seen a professional comedian complain about not being censored.