On ONN, actors with wonderfully off-kilter appearances play the smarmy prigs that parade through cable news: spokesmen, ambassadors, consultants, people on the street. The spokesmen enunciate in a firm, value-neutral way, as if auditioning for legitimate jobs in the industry. They all seem convincingly unaware that what they’re playing is comedy. The false news stories manage to seem plausible in a dangerous, “War of the Worlds” way, coming across as only slightly distorted versions of the clichés that appear all day on CNN and Fox News.
In one segment, the Food and Drug Administration, represented by an exhausted and concerned-looking official at a lectern, stages an urgent Class I product recall of “piping hot” potpies and asks that they be delivered to the F.D.A. headquarters — to the attention of the F.D.A. panel conference room. In another, a Chinese ambassador crows over China’s status as the world’s No. 1 polluter, his diction combining Confucius and Mao (“The labor of the people made the sky black with the smoke of progress”). And in a segment that’s too sad to laugh at, a pudgy single woman appreciates the streamlined process of heartbreak and rejection on Match.com, which might, a reporter approvingly summarizes, “distract her from killing herself.” The Onion’s bellowed instruction to America is to give up and stop pretending to have hope.
By contrast, fancy, coastal visual comedy — “30 Rock,” “The Sarah Silverman Program,” “Curb Your Enthusiasm” — has a strongly aspirational element to it, with protagonists mired in what Joni Mitchell once called rich people’s problems (real estate, restaurants, relationships). They comparison-shop values like consumerism and thinness, glamour and goodness, Obama and Clinton.
The Onion shrugs at these choices. Indifferent and impassive before overblown moral showdowns, The Onion offers only contempt, impotence and blank depression. ONN’s producer, Will Graham, has said he wanted The Onion’s first video foray to be “sinister.” And indeed it is, painting TV news as driven less by bimbos than by mentally ill martinets. After 20 years and various media incarnations, The Onion still displays the attitude of a sidelined teenager who sees no percentage in any of the great human sweepstakes. He has an unbreakable heart. “F.D.A. Approves Napalm Breast Implants.” “Army Holds Annual ‘Bring Your Daughter to War’ Day.” “New Abortion Bill to Require Fetal Consent.”
What struck me while I was reading Heffernan was this: I too, think the Onion parodies are brilliant. Some of them approach and even exceed the sharpness of the satire at work in the longrunning print incarnation. (As an aside, if you are a comedy writer or an aspiring comedy writer, you should go and download the "Tough Room" program of This American Life. It features a long audio profile of The Onion Writing Room. Very eye opening. Should be available on Itunes or Audible.com)
That's why I always tend to prefer the segments that manage to skewer the self-importance of something that's really trivial. Here's my favorite recent example.
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The other bulwark of my current comedy consumption, Jon Stewart and The Daily Show, has been kind of leaving me cold of late. Last night, his interview with Barack Obama on the eve of the Penn. Primary was downright embarrassing. To me, Stewart's best interviews have always been with his ideological opponents -- people who came on and actually tried to engage on the points. When they trotted out their standard soundbites -- the ones that pass unremarked on every other cable stop -- Stewart would mercilessly mock and hammer, letting you know that there was a price for bringing out only the low hanging fruit.
But when a Christopher Hitchens or even a Bill Kristol actually gets out of the comfort zone and tries to talk -- actually have a conversation, the results are sometimes illuminating, and always interesting. And unlike anything else you'll see on the TV dial, at least if you're watching something other than BBC World.
On his best nights, Stewart helps put the lie to the whole "short interview" format that's rife in Cable News. He's proving the point made by ONN -- that vapidity is the only thing possible in the restrictive cable news format.
Unfortunately, when he admires his subject, especially political ones (but also, to be fair, a couple of his interviews with the late Kurt Vonnegut) the questions get softer and Stewart seems to lose his focus. What is he, if not the loyal, outraged opposition?
It's worth thinking about if you want to write comedy: what is your point of view? What does it say about the times we live in? And what reaction are you going for? Where does your funny fit? Are you peeling the Onion? Or peeing into the corners of power and privilege?
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