I took the news of Johnny Carson’s death with the same expression I get when I overcook Macaroni and Cheese. It’s not to say I’m unfeeling. I feel. I feel! But there’s nothing quite so alienating as hearing that an American icon of television comedy with whom you have no cultural connection–other than an Saturday Night Live sketch–is dead. Now Mourn, damn you!
It’s as if you’re expected to offer condolences to the wind, some kind of offhand salute to television comedy’s king of late night. Johnny Carson is a big name. Big in stature, big in iconoclasty, big in the history books written since 1962 (though not so big in relevance in later years). What do I, a child of the early 80′s, do with this kind of news?
Well I don’t dance a jig in delight, if that’s what you’re thinking. Despite my irreverence, I have no desire to trample on the icons and frescoes of our sacred popular culture gallery. I feel for the guy’s family; it’s sad; he’ll never be replaced; another wizened celebrity gone to that great Late Night Desk in the Sky, etc. etc. All those sentiments, of course. But truly, I can’t fake too much sympathy.
After all, my comedy king is Homer Simpson, not Johnny Carson. Even though Homer has been slowly dying over the past few years with new, poorly written episodes, he’s still the guy who can make me laugh, and consistently too. Was Carson so true to his profession? Probably. But I don’t really know about it, and I don’t care to. The old is passed away, behold.
Lileks recalls that the Tonight Show wasn’t always a laugh-a-minute. Rarely is anything. This is not to recount Mr. Carson’s stumblings. Nor is this to praise his coolness (Carson was hip only for a little while, but his coolness lasted forever). I’m just saying, if you identified with Carson and feel a connection to his time, if not himself, then you know something I’ll never know. Kind of makes me a little envious.
But only a little. That envy is coupled with the knowledge of 70′s fashion sense; I remember the kitsch and then I’m fine again.
I was going to mention something about the tsunami, but my reliance on the media to help me focus has left me bereft of any news about it. So how ’bout the war in Iraq, huh?
<british_guy_voice>Terrible thing, that, poor chaps and all. Elections coming up soon. That’s sure to be a disaster, almost as bad as the 2004 American elections. It’s really too bad, you know.</british_guy_voice>
Before you go narfing on me for using a Brit’s voice, I know they’re our allies. I love ‘em to pieces. But there are rather a lot of them who don’t exactly get into the whole “nation-building” thing, if you know what I mean. It is rather interesting to hear the murmurings from the Left Post or the New York (Cr)imes about the inevitability of failure for these first democratic elections. This I’m not so sure about. After all, if things are going so badly, why is Saddam Hussein on suicide watch again? (Link via Greg Piper)
In all seriousness, the irony of the left predicting doom and gloom over the Iraqi elections is the kind only the Right Wing can comprehend, for some odd reason. Once the elections are over, what will be next? The failure of the legislature to enact constitutional laws? The failure of the Iraqi judiciary process? There’s always something to whine about.
Like this – What War Will Wreak (warning: images are disturbing). Is this what people are hepped up on? The prevalence of these kinds of pictures on the internet is just one side of the story. The evils of this war can be and are matched and surpassed by the evils of the despotic regime before it. where are the pictures of the dead of old? And who can ask why, when we are all, in a way, culpable?
We all die. Some, like Johnny Carson, have people to remember them in fondness after they’re gone. Others use the memories of the dead as hooks to bait and scratch. When your stock is of images of the dead, how bankrupt you must be!