Via WaPo: "Here's how it went down, with late-night host Stephen Colbert — who happens to be one of Trump's most unapologetic and high-profile critics — setting up the gag:"
COLBERT: What really matters to Donald Trump is ratings. You've got to have the big numbers. And I certainly hope we achieve that tonight. Unfortunately, at this point, we have no way of knowing how big our audience is. I mean, is there anyone who could say how big the audience is. Sean, do you know?The WaPo headline calls the cameo "yucky," and the column-writer, Aaron Blake is not grossed out because Spicey played along despite contempt for him and for the President he once served, but because:
(Spicer glides out with a podium, Melissa McCarthy-style.)
SPICER: This will be the largest audience to witness an Emmys, period — both in person and around the world.
COLBERT: Wow. That really soothes my fragile ego. I could understand why you'd want one of these guys around. Melissa McCarthy, everybody, give it up!
... Spicer yukking it up over one of his most demonstrably false statements from the White House lectern strongly suggests this is just what spokesmen are supposed to do. The president asked him to do it, so it must be okay. Damn the truth.Blake thinks this comedy "normalize[s]" the lying/bullshit/puffery of press secretaries.
[L]aughing at flouting the truth... serves notice to other spokesmen that they needn't worry about being credible.Blake belongs to the that's-not-funny school of comedy appreciation. I'm surprised at his reaction. I thought Spicer got conned into participating in political satire that hurts him and the politicians with whom he's allied himself. I think America deserves better political satire and that it was a bad idea to load the Emmys show with political satire — especially partisan political satire (why alienate half your potential audience?). But I think comedy, done well, is powerful, important speech. The Spicer bit was criticism of the dishonesty of the White House press secretary. It didn't slough it off or "normalize" it. If the bullshit is normal, there's no joke in Spicer's line.
Now, I can see that Blake could have said that just allowing Spicer into the Emmys party sends the message that he's not completely toxic. And perhaps that's the sad-sack reason Spicer did the show, like the high school kid who's pleased to get an invitation to popular kid's party...
Well, in that movie the popular kids get it in the end. The bullying and the hate can backfire. And we all know what happened when "Laugh-In" included Nixon:
Posts
80 comments:
These constant attacks and hate of Trump by Hollywood are so tiresome. We know you hate him. Not funny. Not clever. Not smart.
I used to love the Emmys, but last night it didn't even tempt me.
What I've read about this exercise in hate, condescension and self-aggrandizing makes me pleased that I wasn't even aware it was on.
Their day will come.
We have been conditioned,i.e, brainwashed, to think movie stars are just the super bestest of them all! But as with all brainwashing, you can be deprogrammed. With enough effort and time these carnie folk will not matter to you at all
What does Aaron Blake think press spokespeople do?
McCain had no idea who his friends were either, now he has no friends.
I read about the Emmys on Drudge. It struck me as quite a co-incidence given the readings at mass yesterday (Colbert purports to be a faithful Catholic).
Excerpt from the first reading (Sirach)
"Wrath and anger are hateful things,
yet the sinner hugs them tight.
The vengeful will suffer the LORD's vengeance,
for he remembers their sins in detail."
The whole theme of yesterday's mass was forgiveness and yet he spews hate all evening. I imagine this will wear thin, even among the like minded. Who wants to breath in such a poisonous atmosphere.
Who knew that the Emmys were on?
I don't at all think they are "alienating half their potential audience".
I heard that before he agreed to do this, Spicer had a chat with Scaramucci who assured Spicer that yes, Colbert's audience really likes him.
The Obama people- Obama people!- are freaking out on Twitter.
Ben RhodesVerified account
@brhodes
Follow
More
Ben Rhodes Retweeted Jamelle Bouie
No press secretary - GOP or Dem - has been rewarded with that size TV audience before. Also embraced by the top US university. Astonishing.Ben Rhodes added,
-----------
I do love how they see the Emmys as a reward.
Our politics today. Where people in the prior administration actually present the next administration as evil. (even the guys who paid ransom to Iran!!!)
Disgruntled former employee?
I think the Emmys must really be losing their cachet. Only one channe, E! Network,l even carried the red carpet before the event. Not even CBS carried it.
I am guessing Colbert went with Spicer because he didn't have the guts to get Steve Bannon.
Fame is a dangerous drug. When it becomes harder to score a fix you're willing to do odd things to get it.
They'll never forgive him for making fools of all of them.
....but it's obvious they are "rewarding" Sean Spicer for leaving the Trump administration.
Professor, I know we pay you the big bucks to keep us abreast of the news of the day but this has to be the bottom news of the day. The deplorables and most other Americans don't really care about Hollywood love fests.
"I am guessing Colbert went with Spicer because he didn't have the guts to get Steve Bannon."
I'm guessing they went with Spicer because Melissa McCarthy didn't want to get all made up to look ugly. She wanted to get made up to look pretty and to sit in the audience and clap and hee-haw like the rest of the pretty people.
Sparrow - the reading for today (1 Tim 2) says:
First of all, I ask that supplications, prayers,
petitions, and thanksgivings be offered for everyone,
for kings and for all in authority,
that we may lead a quiet and tranquil life
in all devotion and dignity.
This is good and pleasing to God our savior,
who wills everyone to be saved
and to come to knowledge of the truth
Trump wins again, smart business man. He knew this guy was a loser selling the trumps agenda so he fired him. His display last night just confirmed how bad a public performer he is.
Don't know why the libs had him on knowing how bad he is but maybe their TDS just overcame their judgement. There has been a lot of that TDS on display the last year.
Could we say Spicer was a culture prop trying to pass off as counterculture.
I didn't watch because I don't have a television and I already had a commitment to live tweet the crown 👑 via Netflix with Victoria and some of her Twitter following. It was delightful.
Thanks Professional Lady,
I pray for Trump pretty regularly actually. I'm sure he and all of us need prayers.
The real joke is that the Emmys had the lowest viewership ever:
sorry no link
“The U.S. television audience for Sunday’s Emmy Awards dropped to 11.3 million viewers on average, the lowest level on record in the 68-year history of the industry’s highest honors, according to ratings data released by ABC on Monday.”
I love the Nixon reference. Talk about normalizing. I think the Laugh-In guys gave Nixon the Fickle Finger of Fate once for lying.
I just saw a few minutes of the Emmys. I think it was Julia Louis-Dreyfus, in character for her Veep role, who sang something like "it's too bad we have a President the Nazis like." Surely the Veep character and her even more lizard-like staff would turn anything involving the Nazis into an opportunity. Polling shows people don't want the Confederate statues to be taken down. As the Supreme Court argued about Ten Commandments memorials, sometimes it's not religion, it's tradition. So we can distinguish ourselves from the Nazis while getting some of the vote that shades toward racist by celebrating Robert E. Lee! Then she does a media event at a statue of Lee, and a photo of her with a swastika behind her goes viral.
Trump is a serial liar, yet he doesn't really stand out among politicians for his dishonesty. Presidential libraries are usually pretty dishonest. JFK's, no doubt due to what has been called his martyrdom, has been referred to as a tissue of lies, or at best more myth-making than truth.
Satire and the sanctimony of the boomers. There's a funny podcast with Norm Macdonald interviewing Martin Mull (who's a bit older than the boomers). At one stage Mull tried folk music as a path into show business; he never liked it, and he actually came up with a song, "Stop the War Or I Won't Stop Singing." Mull says he always thought Bob Dylan was full of shit.
If you look at the left as the culture now, saying on live television you only believe in "the first amendment and boobs" can get your microphone cut off and probably never be asked on again.
Mull says he always thought Bob Dylan was full of shit.
Them's fightin words with the lady who owns this blog! But I never saw his appeal, either.
How weird you posted that Carrie clip. My hubby and I always use that quote from the movie because the scene is so fucked up. They're going to laugh at you; they're going to laugh at you.
Mull said of Dylan's lyrics 'It's like throwing a Thesaurus out of a window of a moving car'.
Heh.
The deplorables and most other Americans don't really care about Hollywood love fests.
Truer words have never appeared in the Althouse forum. One year ago Hillary Clinton enjoyed the largest celebrity endorsement ever accrued by a presidential candidate — almost complete unanimity. Historically, Republican candidates could count on a few kind words from some figure of the entertainment culture, usually, professional athletes or old school lounge acts (such as) but Donald Trump got virtually none of that. I can think of one — only one — person with a legitimate claim to a place on a Hollywood award show stage (two Emmy wins, dozens of nominations) and that is James Woods (I do not count the pathetic Bruce Jenner). So the Hildebeast got a 99.99% sweep of the Hollywood endorsements. She thought and everyone else Stevie Colbert might have lunch with was sure that fact was as conclusive as anything other than Trump dropping dead of a heart attack.
And yet they still think they have influence, that their opinions and snarky, authored by Harvard Lampoon alumni jokes shape America. Jeezus H. Christ, I'm tempted to label Colbert and Julia Louise Dreyfuss (crikey, what leftover ham hock she is) and the piteous Sean Spicer pop culture dinosaurs, except the comparison is an insult to those magnificent and most successful of all amniotes.
I pray for Allah to strike the infidels of hillarywood, with a bullseye on colbert's tiny peepee.
It would also explain the reaction to Trump retweeting a gif of himself appearing to knock down Hillary with a golf ball. He is the counterculture in the White House.
Reward your friends, punish your enemies and gaslight flyover trogs by insisting that the media is not partisan.
Blake is an ongoing political reporter, too. So now we know what he thinks of the administration he is supposed to be covering.
The only counterculture is the Right. The Lefties took over the culture a long time ago.
The ivory towered gated wall dwelling over-paid self-congratulatory elites of hillarywood gave corruption a pass.
Screw them.
If the bullshit is normal, there's no joke in Spicer's line.
Poor ol Mike McCurry actually got sympathy from the press during the Year of Monica.
I *liked* the Emmys (and Oscars) for escapism. I loved seeing the fashion, and cared about which actors and shows got the awards.
BUT I hate to see the creative class of America be so completely uncreative. To bash Trump over and over is boring. It takes nothing. And it's been done with Republican presidents to an escalating degree over and over during the decades. It's been done.
Having Colbert host was the first signal it was going to be dreadful. It interests me that the entertainment industry has so little interest in entertaining on their big night. So we see it turn into *their* night, and no longer something *we* want to see.
If Spicer had any balls, he would have said "Hillary Clinton will never be President of the United States. Thank God!"
So what can we learn from the intersection of Hollywood and politics over the last twelve months, culminating in the lowest ratings turn out for an Emmy show in its history? ... In terms of then versus now Hollywood has certainly gotten gayer, but it's no longer fabulous. I'll leave it to Titus to chew over that conundrum.
I'm remembering (Gosh, I'm old) when Gerald Ford's press secy, Ron Nessen went on SNL. He thought he was being a good sport and all, too dumb and culturally unaware to realize SNL was making fun of his boss through him even though Ford was their constant target. All confirmed years later by Lorne Michaels
But in Ford's and Nessen's defense, that was SNL's first or second season and Michaels had a rep as somewhat sympathetic to the GOP, so they had some small reason to kid themselves.
Spicer is a Paul Ryan/Reince Priebus protege, and no one could have any doubt where the Emmys were going (Colbert as the host... gimme a break) you can believe that (a) this is the GOP establishment giving Trump the finger, and (b) Trump knows it and (c) Trump being Trump, will search for a way to pay them back.
Urg. I went over to Tom and Lorenzo to see what they are saying about the fashion....and their page is practically unreadable.
There are so many ads it loads and then reloads and the reloads again so you can't even scroll. You get to a certain point on the page and then you are bounced back to the top as another video pops up. This is happening on more and more pages. I get that people need revenue, but how hard are you going to make me work to read your stuff? How hard do they think people are willing to work?
(this does not happen with Althouse)
"Spicer yukking it up over one of his most demonstrably false statements from the White House lectern strongly suggests this is just what spokesmen are supposed to do. The president asked him to do it, so it must be okay. Damn the truth."
Aside from bias, how does "demonstrably false" compare with "unproven gang rape"?
From the inauguration photos I saw during Trump's speech, even on CNN's website, the purported crowd size deficit was not self-evident.
We watched Casino last night. My husband made a custom media server from an external drive and a raspberry pi and we have thousands of hours of TV and movies for our viewing pleasure. The Emmy's are totally irrelevant.
My husband made a custom media server from an external drive and a raspberry pi
I've been thinking about playing around with one of those, there dead cheap. But, I have been working on learning to play the guitar, which has led me to thinking about building my own electric guitar. The first book I ordered on it arrived a few days ago and I have started to read it.
Anyway, while I practice my chord changes I play youtube videos in the background. Some of them about how to build a guitar, some about how the comic book industry is killing itself via political correctness, some about weird conspiracy theories (the earth is hollow and weird creatures with tentacle noses come up from it in secret elevators to torment people in their bedrooms at night) you know, the usual. So, yeah. Hollywood is getting to be pretty irrelevant. Why would anybody watch the Emmys? Its going to be the "I hate Republicans, Republicans are stupid" brand of humor.
The honest correspondent(or entertainer) would admit that every presidential spokesperson, every fucking one of them, has always dissembled, deflected and lied through his or her teeth as required to advance the agenda of his boss. Of course such an admission would require honest correspondents. In the eyes of the press, Spicer's sin was not lying, it was working for the wrong boss.
"And perhaps that's the sad-sack reason Spicer did the show, like the high school kid who's pleased to get an invitation to popular kid's party..."
Maybe. I wonder how much he got paid.
There's no such thing as bad publicity, they say.
And being hated by the Trump haters can be leveraged these days.
@MayBee
Get some ad blocking software or change to a browser like Brave that has ad blocking.
Spicer is a PR person and worth $4 to $14 million. He partially owned a pr firm and was a GOP strategist.
He did not directly attack Trump and the rest of the emmys came off as victims of Trump Derangement Syndrome.
This was all about his image, and it worked. He came off as reasonable and not hyper partisan. Mission accomplished. It showed he could take a joke.
I didn't even realize the Emmmies were on. I was too busy watching that terrible Packers-Falcon game.
I haven't watched the Emmies since I was a teen. Award shows bored me even before they got overtly political.
McCarthy's portrayal of Spicer backfired in an Archie Bunker type of way. She made Spicer the HERO of those skits and made the press look like idiots.
Didn't watch, don't care really.
Ron- I have ad blocking software, but I think advertisers keep thinking of ways around it. I will look into Brave, thanks!
The whole point of all these things: Nixon on laugh in, Ford On SNL, Bush with Dana Carvey etc. is show one is a "good sport".
Spicer was probably flattered that he was important enough to be mocked/parodied on SNL and this was his last bit of fame before he faded into the woodwork.
I assume that Spicer got a nice check for his appearance. I'll take $$ to be mocked, especially because almost anyone who means anything will know this is just the same crowd who applauded Kathy Griffin's severed Trump Head "art" -- so why would their opinion matter?
Plus he probably scored a nice goodie bag.
Take the money and run.
My favorite Martin Mull comment was when he referenced "the great folk music scare of the '60s. Good God... that stuff almost caught on!"
I don't watch any of the TV shows and neither does my wife. I've never watched the Emmy's. I watched the Oscars sometimes as a kid, but that's because I didn't control the family TV and we didn't have much else to do - back in the stone ages.
It's been years since I've bothered to read a blog post that claims "I haven't seen x" or "I haven't done x" in years.
I liked Mull, but found out a little of him goes a long ways.
Didn't watch. Will not watch the Golden Globes or the Oscars either. Those, especially the Academy Awards, used to be MUST watch shows. Hell, in my youth we had Oscar parties.
But I find my taste in television is non-mainstream. And I go to few movies.
Plus, today it's too much a circle jerk, unfunny, hateful evening by people I don't even recognize.
He's good at zingers, but you can't have a 10 minute stand up with zingers.
99.9% of the audience at the theater were Hillary voters. the other .01% were drunk and pulled the wrong lever. Trump won so suck it losers.
Most of these folks get paid to deliver someone else's message.
Spicer to some degree had to think on his feet, but ultimately, similar job.
Does Spicer have his next gig lined up?
Maybe he's working the any advertising is good advertising angle while he can.
The last late night comic I watched was Craig Ferguson. He was funny and, not coincidentally, rarely did political humor. There are other funny things in life besides Republicans.......,.I agree with Ray that Spicer probably came out ahead in his appearance last night. He seems like a decent enough human being and a better person than those who mock him.
"The world will little note, nor long remember". Another self serving lie from a venal Republican........Who can predict the words that will live on. "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down thus wall." "I did not have sexual relations with that woman." By their Bartlett quotations shall ye know them.
I wonder if--or rather when--SNL will have its Rolling Stone/frat house rape moment. Some discrete moment in time when a SNL skit seems not just unfunny or wrong but malicious and calculated in its malice. Probably not in my lifetime, but you never know.
William- you would think the number of SNL actors/alums who have died at a young age would be some kind of "moment", but it isn't.
Didn't watch the Emmy's. PBS Vietnam War Episode 1.
I saw some people extremely irate over Spicer appearance thought "Are you still watching then?"
Both Colbert and Spicer are Catholics right? Maybe Colbert was forgiving, which I never have a problem that someone else has forgiven another. It's a great thing about Catholics. Personally I wouldn't think that's what forgiveness or mercy look like from my vantage point, but I'm not the end-all be-all on that.
saw some people extremely irate over Spicer appearance thought "Are you still watching then?"
Let me re-iterate this *completely* NSFW take from the often very funny, usually very filthy oglaf.com http://oglaf.com/annals/
Does anyone know if the Spicer Tweeter account is really Spicer or fake acct. If it is or not, it's a hilarious take down of SJWs.
Does anyone know if the Spicer Tweeter account is really Spicer or fake acct. If it is or not, it's a hilarious take down of SJWs.
The blue check mark is your friend.
Look at the name. It's Sean SPICIER, not Sean SPICER, thus a parody.
There must be some Bible passage about the scenario when all the evil ones are mocking the one righteous man. Can someone find it?
It's been years since I've bothered to read a blog post that claims "I haven't seen x" or "I haven't done x" in years.
Heh.
I do this with Althouse's Facebook posts because 3/4 of the comments are about how people don't Facebook. That said, in this case, I think it's relevant to consider how few people actually give a rip about the Emmys, let alone watch.
RE: Why did Spicer do the Emmy's?
Because it would melt their little minds. McCarthy was not pleased when he stole some of her material. That makes it all worthwhile.
Spicer got the last ironic laugh. He described the audience the largest ever when it was (predictably) one of the smallest audiences, if not the very smallest. They thought they were making fun of him or that he was making fun of trump. Actually, he was makind fun of THEM.
Blogger jaydub said...
The honest correspondent(or entertainer) would admit that every presidential spokesperson, every fucking one of them, has always dissembled, deflected and lied through his or her teeth as required to advance the agenda of his boss. Of course such an admission would require honest correspondents. In the eyes of the press, Spicer's sin was not lying, it was working for the wrong boss.
9/18/17, 9:10 AM
Tony Snow did no such thing even if hindsight has shown perhaps he ought to have, to prevent Obama.
"like the high school kid who's pleased to get an invitation to popular kid's party..."
or
"...like the high school kid who's pleased to get an invitation to popular kid's party..."
MOr4e importantly as originally thought, and meant to be typed-to-read as "More" is the Althouse understanding of the high school kid who's (whose too but way, way different and inappropriate for this discussion unless this discussion starts to resemble a Poison concert atmosphere circa 1988 with a focus on roadies and their interactions with wannabe or actual bona fide groupies, or Groupies as you like} not "pleased to get an invitation to popular kid's party..."
Post a Comment