Yesterday's news

The amazing, unchanging world of late-night TV

by Robert David Sullivan

The arrival of Jon Stewart as new host of The Daily Show (Monday through Thursday at 11 p.m. on Comedy Central) would be a bigger deal if he didn't start out with the same Clinton/ Lewinsky jokes that have dominated late-night comedy for more than a year. Or if he weren't stuck with the same weak format left by original host Craig Kilborn. Or if this weren't Stewart's third attempt at late-night success, after his MTV series in 1993 and a syndicated show in 1994.

All of the late-night hosts have made jokes about Bill Clinton's amazing political longevity, but their own survival skills are pretty impressive. Jay Leno has headed The Tonight Show since 1992 (five years after he became Johnny Carson's regular guest host), David Letterman has been on the air since 1982, and if you want to count straight news programs, Ted Koppel started Nightline in 1980. Conan O'Brien arrived at NBC in 1993, the same year that Bill Maher introduced Politically Incorrect on Comedy Central. And Dennis Miller, the talk-show host that HBO makes you pay for, has been kicking around on late night since his syndicated show in 1992.

They can joke about Strom Thurmond, but job turnover has never been this low in Washington, and it's been a long time since Congress had an all-straight-white-male roster. (The quick disappearance of The Magic Hour and Vibe last year left HBO's Chris Rock, now on hiatus, as the lone black talkmeister.) The only guy headed for retirement is CBS's Tom Snyder, who first hit late night in 1973, and he'll be replaced in March by none other than Craig Kilborn -- whom Tracey Ullman succinctly described as "that Aryan woman hater" during a chat with Stewart.

I had high hopes for Stewart. His recent book of essays, Naked Pictures of Famous People, included a delicious parody of talk shows (in which Larry King interviews a mellowed-out Adolf Hitler). A concert special rerun by Comedy Central before his inaugural Daily Show also proved Stewart to be a savvy political commentator. But with a half-dozen segments on each 30-minute installment, The Daily Show (which premiered in late 1996) is just too choppy for him to show any depth. He spends too much time plowing through news items on his way to one-liners that sound the same as Jay Leno's. Granted, there are some brutal jokes: calling John Hinckley "the man with good taste but questionable aim," or claiming that when Republican congressman Bob Barr drove his wife to an abortion clinic, he "killed time by throwing doll parts at teenage girls." But so far Stewart doesn't have the gleeful mean streak that got Norm McDonald fired from Saturday Night Live.

Worse, The Daily Show has kept its most distinctive feature: sarcastic reports about morons in the American heartland. "The truth is funnier than fiction," according to promo spots for the series -- a marketing ploy that's no more cutting-edge than the "based on a true story" line in ads for Patch Adams. The show often ridicules people or ideas that never had any credibility to begin with, such as "ex-gay" churches. (Was any viewer surprised that the members seemed about as straight as Nathan Lane?) Some of the more bizarre stories, on the other hand, raise the possibility that the rubes are just having fun with the Daily Show invaders. The farmer in Canada who uses pig spleens to predict the weather, cure impotence, and reverse hair loss seems like a character out of Waking Ned Devine. I couldn't help wondering what happens when a Daily Show producer suspects that the village idiot is really a practical joker. Is there a "don't ask, don't tell" policy?

I don't know why there are so few segments about eccentrics in big cities, unless the producers think that subjects are funny only if they've never heard of The Daily Show. Meanwhile, there must be thousands of more interesting entrepreneurs and interviewers within a few miles of the show's Manhattan studio. In his early days, David Letterman found some great material on the streets of New York (I've never seen a yokel on The Daily Show as funny as the low-wattage proprietor of the "Just Bulbs" store), but he's spending less and less time outside. Stewart would be wise to take advantage of this vacuum.

AS FOR LETTERMAN, he has only 12 seasons to go before he breaks Johnny Carson's 30-year record in late-night TV, and I think he'll make it, even if he has to finish his career on VH-1. He's safely made it past the scariest part -- hosting the most popular talk show on television and having to kiss up to "A list" guests. Last year, The Late Show with David Letterman (weeknights at 11:35 p.m. on CBS) fell behind Jay Leno and Ted Koppel in the ratings, and Letterman celebrated by putting up a billboard in Times Square with the slogan "Number 3 in Late Night."

I can't think of another television personality who's handled a falling career arc with such good humor and inventiveness. (In politics, there's Jerry Brown, the former California governor and presidential candidate who's just been elected mayor of Oakland.) "I wrecked the Academy Awards!", Letterman crowed on a recent show, referring to his first and undoubtedly last time hosting the Oscar telecast, back in 1994. "Damn near put them out of bidness!"

Letterman doesn't put a lot of energy into chumming around with his guests, in contrast to the proceedings on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno (weeknights at 11:35 p.m. on NBC). For example, Whitney Houston recently appeared on Leno's show not only to sing but also to chat with the host for a good 10 minutes. The biggest revelation on this segment was that Leno's baby pictures and Houston's are vaguely similar. ("Awww," cried the audience.) On the same night, Letterman had the moodier Alanis Morissette, and he limited her participation to a quick song at the very end of the program.

Another night, Michael Jordan's announced retirement led Letterman into a story about the basketball player's chilly refusal to appear on the show. Having burned that bridge, Letterman moved on to a similar tale about Oprah Winfrey. (He has always had one of the whitest talk shows on TV. I don't know whether that's because he rarely pursues black guests or because black celebrities are particularly put off by his irreverent manner.) When I switched channels a few minutes later, Leno was congratulating guest Robert Downey Jr. for surviving drug rehab and jail time -- and for being such a good sport about Leno's countless jokes at his expense. The camaraderie must have helped millions of viewers to achieve a pleasant loss of consciousness. While that was going on, actress Patricia Arquette kept rolling her eyes at Letterman during an obviously uncomfortable tête-à-tête.

If enough People magazine subjects freeze out Letterman, maybe he'll recapture the glory days of his NBC show, when his stock company of guests included Sandra Bernhard and Pee-wee Herman. Lately, he's been giving more time to cronies like Al Franken and fellow talk-show hosts Conan O'Brien and Charlie Rose (who giggled uncontrollably during a discussion of William Rehnquist and the impeachment trial in the Senate, especially when Letterman gravely intoned, "We've got another Judge Ito on our hands"). My favorite Late Show moment from last year came when Charles Grodin flew into a (feigned?) rage over Letterman's jokes about Bill and Monica. It was almost as good as having the perpetually scowling Brother Theodore back.

One of Letterman's frequent guests in his first few seasons was Jay Leno, who became popular by gently mocking the smugness and stupidity of middle-class America. Naturally, he's emphasized his regular-guy affability on The Tonight Show, but he can't resist the occasional highbrow allusion. (Predictably, his line about "Larry `Oliver Cromwell' Flynt" got a minimal reaction from his studio audience.) Leno also has a regular feature in which he interviews the most illiterate people he can find on the streets of Burbank. A couple of weeks ago, the theme was literature, and so we got a parade of people unable to answer questions like "What was the name of the ship in Mutiny on the Bounty?" Like the Daily Show reports, this is a forced premise, and it's rarely as funny as Leno's collection of dumb newspaper headlines and typos in restaurant menus.

As for the other late-night offerings, I've grown accustomed to Politically Incorrect (weeknights at 12:05 a.m. on ABC), which has one of the most diverse rosters of guests on TV. Since Bill Maher started this show, "politically incorrect" has passed "conservative" as the most popular ideological label in America, and I would guess that 90 percent of the panelists on this show would claim it. But Maher manages to keep finding sacred cows that provoke lively discussions, and he rarely resorts to putting total nutjobs on his panel (the closest I've seen recently was Monica Lewinsky's former therapist).

Late Night with Conan O'Brien (weeknights at 12:35 a.m. on NBC) is a pleasantly goofy way to end the evening. Best joke so far this year: when New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani was a guest and O'Brien complimented him on how quickly he shows up at major accidents and crime scenes. Sidekick Andy Richter leaned over and earnestly asked the mayor, "Do the police ever get suspicious that maybe you're causing these tragedies?"

But I'm baffled by the presence of Dennis Miller Live (Fridays at 11:30 p.m. on HBO) on a premium cable channel. Except for the use of four-letter words, Miller's jokes aren't any racier than Jay Leno's. Furthermore, his libertarian political philosophy is more wittily expressed by Bill Maher, and his guests show up on free TV all the time. Can't HBO cut short Chris Rock's vacation?

FEBRUARY IS Black History Month, which means plenty of documentaries on the African-American experience -- some of them rehashes of programs that ran last year. One of the most promising new programs is the three-part PBS documentary I'll Make Me a World: A Century of African-American Arts (February 1, 2, and 3 from 9 to 11 p.m., locally on Channel 2). The series is produced by Boston-based Blackside Inc., which was also responsible for the superlative Eyes on the Prize in the 1980s.

I'll Make Me a World details the lives of such artists as James Baldwin, Bill T. Jones, Bessie Smith, Spike Lee, and Bessie Walker. An abbreviated version of the series, screened for critics a few weeks ago, included the same understated and eloquent narration that was a hallmark of Eyes on the Prize, along with some fascinating interviews. Of particular note are segments on Harlem Renaissance writer Zora Neale Hurston and ballet dancer Raven Wilkinson; the latter describes with quiet dignity how segregation laws put a premature end to her career. Dan Tobin can be reached at dtobin[a]phx.com.