is that you<\/em>?).\u00a0\u00a0We see Buffett getting into shape, riding an exercycle so vigorously that the wheel belt catches fire. For hand speed, he works an old-fashioned manual adding machine. Faster, faster! Fight night arrives. Long shot of the venue, where diamond lights sweep the darkened arena like the opening of a rock concert. Camera pans to ringside celebrities, including Jack Nicholson. Buffett, in sweats, and Mayweather enter the ring. Jimmy Lennon Jr. announces the particulars. Sexy gal stuffs chocolates into Buffet\u2019s mouth in lieu of a mouthpiece. Somebody asks if he\u2019s going to keep his glasses on for the fight.<\/p>\nBell rings. Fighters advance. Static voids the screen picture. Cartoon Buffett, back at his desk, rings his secretary.<\/p>\n
\u201cDid we pay our cable bill this month?\u201d<\/p>\n
If this segment had anyone else in it other than Very Famous People, let\u2019s say a comedy club headliner pitching the same spoof with other comics to a studio exec or powerful agent, you\u2019d wager the response to be, \u201cThat\u2019s it? That\u2019s the bit?\u201d and later stake a round for everyone at the bar.<\/p>\n
But since it was Very Famous People appearing in real footage of a fake event, the segment has more bothersome implications than a dumb comedy stunt that\u2019s fallen flat. Let\u2019s put aside the first rule of successful satire, which is that, whether it\u2019s Moliere depicting a hypocritical cleric or Tina Fey doing Sarah Palin, the fit is so close to reality you can never look at its object the same way again. Despite first-rate production values (John Landis directed) the segment comes off as a goof broadly concocted by a group who, like giddy New Year\u2019s Eve revelers, thought it was a good idea at the time.<\/p>\n
It wasn\u2019t, but so what?\u00a0\u00a0The sun still rises, the axis of the Earth hasn\u2019t shattered. But a couple of misgivings stuck with me. How easily Rose used his credibility, and that of the CBS logo and newsdesk setting, to indulge a theater of the absurd whim and further conflate news and entertainment, as if the distinction weren\u2019t already so obscure as to merit specialist scrutiny on Antiques Roadshow.<\/p>\n
It struck me too that this is what plutocrat humor must be like. I thought of the 1996 movie \u201cThe Game,\u201d in which megabuck expense and slick corporate chicanery are used to try and crush Michael Douglas in a towering blue chip world. The unremarked level of privilege and indulgence were obscene. It was a product of its time.<\/p>\n
So was this segment a product of 2015. Charlie Rose mainly deals with the rich and famous, and powerful. That media-celebrated world is wrapped in a peculiar set of values, rules and protections so that, for example, Rose can sit across from a mass murderer like Syrian president Bashar Assad and not aggressively call him on his use of chemical weapons against his own people. (Imagine how Mike Wallace would have handled that interview). You can mention it, as Don Corleone advised. Don\u2019t press it. That would be impolite, and bad manners is the capital offense in Charlie\u2019s world, where nightly he competes with the best talent on the planet to prove, often at garrulous length, that he\u2019s as smart as they are.<\/p>\n
No one ever seems to want to take him on. The only time I\u2019ve seen it alluded to was in \u201cThis is Spinal Tap,\u201d when no one at the interview table could get a word in except the host. Maybe that happens for the same reason that outrage against the predations of the superrich hasn\u2019t taken deep popular root\u2014everyone in his heart of hearts hopes to join them somehow. So it is with the Charlie Rose show. To get on is to join the magic circle, the ring of the fabled and the fabulous. It\u2019s better than making a bundle.<\/p>\n
If there\u2019s any moral to this story, it has to be that humor is the first victim of those who take themselves too seriously.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
[contextly_auto_sidebar id=”lgir0rOvQFYZoxYQdc3socyTbOjSL7EA”] Gang, I’ve been AWOL from the blog lately because of my new job at Salon and a trip last week to Toronto for Canadian Music Week, where I spoke on artists’ rights. I expect to have some fresh, uh, content for CultureCrash one of these days. For now, here is new piece by […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[607,631,77],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-3208","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-lawrence-christon-guest-column","7":"category-plutocracy","8":"category-television","9":"entry","10":"has-post-thumbnail"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3208","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3208"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3208\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3211,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3208\/revisions\/3211"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3208"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3208"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3208"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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