Last week, Eric Alterman (an author I like) appeared with Dennis Miller (a comedian I used to like). Unlike a lot of folks, I actually started to lose my taste for Mr. Miller years before 9/11 and his political conversion. I think the disillusionment began when I went to see him at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas. Rita Rudner was his opening act and she was fresh and funny and everything you want a stand-up comic to be. Then Dennis came out, mumbled some very dated material with an absolute minimum of effort, got his check (one presumes) and left. I can't recall ever paying so much to see a performer who was so uninterested in performing. Miller had a line he later used about how the models on The Price is Right were getting old, asking if they could be rotated every two or three millennia. I thought that was an odd comment from a guy who was still doing a joke comparing Dan Quayle, a forgotten politician, to Dan Tanna's sidekick on Vegas, a forgotten TV show.
Miller's occasional attitude of "I'm too hip to even try" was on display at the MGM Grand, and also on his show the other day when he had Alterman on. If you'd like to see a few minutes of it, this website has posted a video excerpt. If nothing else, it demonstrates why Miller's CNBC show is one of the lowest-rated things to ever appear on a network that's had some pretty low-rated shows.
What I find interesting is that if you cruise right-wing websites, you'll see plenty of messages from folks who loved the way Miller treated Alterman. They're happy Miller didn't dignify the guy's charges by responding to them and instead just treated the guy with disdain. There's a certain segment of the population out there that doesn't want to hear an exchange of ideas…doesn't even demand wit of its entertainers. They just want to hear someone saying Hillary Clinton is ugly or George W. Bush is a drunken fratboy or otherwise insulting whoever they've decided they don't like. Way too much of today's Talk Radio is about this. It's a shame that Dennis Miller, who once had clever material, has devolved into just calling people idiots. It even bothered me one day when I tuned in and heard him dumping on Joe Lieberman, a politician I like less than anyone who's recently gotten within spitting distance of the White House.
On his weblog here, Alterman tells of his experience on the show from his point-of-view. And here, he says that Miller later phoned him to apologize. If so, good for Dennis…and more so if he has the integrity to apologize on-air.
Leaving aside the political end of this and dealing only with the issue of creating watchable television, I think Miller made a bad mistake. Nothing has hurt David Letterman's ratings more than occasionally acting like he was bored with his own show and/or that he thought the guy in the guest's chair was a jerk. Sometimes, the guest is a jerk but in that case, you shouldn't have them on…and if one does get through, you try to do what Mr. Carson was so good at, which was making a stiff look good, steering him or her away from their jerkier behavior and making the spot work in spite of the subject. The coward's way out is to act like you don't know what this guest (whose appearance you approved) is doing there. I also think Miller is making a mistake if he thinks that he can outdo Fox News at their own game and attract the right-wing audience to CNBC.