Got this the other day from Elliott Kalan…
Long-long-long-time reader of your blog and your work, and I felt a foolish need to respond to something you said on Sunday in your review of this year's Emmys. I definitely agreed with your main point that this year's ceremony was as good as they ever manage to get, because most years it's pretty less-than-mediocre. But you parenthetically mentioned a trend among winners talking about how great the other nominees are and wondering if that's a way of bragging about how good the winner is because they managed to beat all these other supposedly great shows. So as the guy who accepted the Outstanding Variety Writing award for The Daily Show this year, in whose acceptance speech I mentioned how great the other nominees were, I want to clear my own name of bragging-through-compliment.
This year, for the first time in who knows how many that I can remember, I really felt like every nominee in the Variety Writing category had a strong shot at the title. Usually there's one or two nominees where I think, "If they beat us, I'm going to be pissed." But this year I wouldn't have had that consolation — if any of them had beaten us I would have had to admit, "Yup, they had a great year doing a great show and they earned it." It made me feel better about our winning that it came in a year when the other nominees were uniformly excellent, and I wanted to touch on that once I realized I was supposed to talk for the writers. Unconsciously, maybe it was a way for us to brag (my ego's just big enough to allow it), I'm no psychologist. But that wasn't my intended motive. I wanted the other nominees to recognize that we recognized how strong they all were. As for the actors, though, I can't speak for them.
And now having said my piece, I'll say keep up the great work with all of your work and thanks and I'll go!
You're quite right that this year's nominees were all outstanding. Feel flattered that I disagree with you that the others had a strong shot at the trophy. It's like the year two friends of mine were up for the writing Tony Award against The Book of Mormon. Everybody in the place knew long before it was opened what it was going to say in the envelope.
As I mentioned, I don't know how I feel about this kind of thing. There are times when a winner gets up at one of these shows and goes on and on about "what a great honor this is," and all they seem to be doing is inflating the importance of the award they just won. Other times, they seem honestly overwhelmed and grateful. I guess there's a humble way to praise the other nominees and a non-humble one and for what it's worth, Elliott, your speech sounded genuine and humble.
Speaking of genuine and humble: I thought it was kinda classy of Mr. Stewart to let a full-time writer accept the writing award on behalf of the staff, rather than to appoint himself spokesperson. Perhaps he had a premonition he'd be back up there to accept for Outstanding Variety Talk Series, as he was, but a star of greater ego and less consideration might not have taken that chance. I hope working with that guy was really as good as it appeared from afar.