Is Brian Williams Funny?

Well, first off, there's precedent: Edwin Newman hosted SNL in the early to mid-80s, when he was still with NBC News. My memory is that he was kind of awful, but then, the whole show was pretty dreadful at that time.

Secondly, if you've ever seen Brian Williams on his regular appearances on Late Night with Conan O'Brien, you wouldn't be asking: he IS really funny.

And frankly...erm...there's this guy? Named Luke Burbank? Who occasionally guest hosts a comedy show? On NPR? Called Wait Wait Don't Tell Me? Which also features NPR's main morning newsreader?

If it's okay for Luke and Carl to appear on Wait Wait, why isn't it okay for Brian Williams to appear on SNL?

Sent by Stewart | 1:39 PM | 11-2-2007

Have you ever seen Brian Williams on the Daily Show...the man totally upstaged Jon Stewart, so I don't think you need to worry about the funny bit. And so long as he doesn't crack jokes in the middle of the evening news, who really cares? If I had a television, I'd watch SNL just to see him...actually that's a lie. I'd TiVo it though.

Sent by Megan | 7:02 PM | 11-2-2007

For that matter, Keith Olbermann busted out a version of Kent Brockman's "I for one welcome our new ant overlords" speech last night in the first (i.e., most hard-news) segment of Countdown last night, and I found it both hilarious and absolutely appropriate to the story. So there's a place for humor even in hard news. It just seems odd that someone connected with a show like the BPP, home of the boompity boompity boomp, would be worried about the thinning of the line between news and entertainment.

Sent by Stewart | 10:04 PM | 11-2-2007

I think it's always worth keeping an eye on the blurring line between news and entertainment, but as has been pointed out by others, Williams' appearance on SNL was hardly without precedent. This sort of thing has been going on for a generation or more, and actually I think it's a good thing, in a way, almost an *antidote* to that blurring line problem.

No, really -- think about this. When we talk about how damaging it is that people seem increasingly unable to distinguish news from entertainment, we are, for the most part, talking about people from the entertainment world posing as credible sources of news. The TV version of this phenomenon goes back to the genesis of "infotainment" shows like "Entertainment Tonight," "Extra," and "Access Hollywood," or to tabloid TV like "Inside Edition" or the now defunct "A Current Affair" or "Hard Copy." The latter are especially confusing to people, since they sometimes employ actual news people as their anchors, even though they're produced by people from the entertainment side of the media world and have entertainment as their primary goal.

But these shows are why people think that Britney's and Paris' latest run-ins with their inner demons constitute news, or why people accept without critical evaluation anything Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly, or, yes, even Michael Moore (and even possibly Keith Olbermann) have to say.

That people coming of age in this environment would name Jon Stewart their most trusted news source comes as no surprise to me; in fact, I even agree with them a little, because at least Stewart winks when he says the stuff he says. His show and Colbert's are sort of the bastard third generation: Inside Edition begat The O'Reilly Factor, which begat the Colbert Report. But these third generation shows have their tongues planted firmly and obviously in their cheeks, and I think that actually helps with the blurring thing. Stewart and Colbert blatantly demonstrate the silliness of "fake news" and "truthiness." They ruthlessly skewer that which they pretend to be, which is pretty much the textbook definition of satire.

So if the problem is entertainment masquerading as credible news, then I think there are two potential antidotes. One is entertainment masquerading as INcredible news, and the other might be putting the shoe on the other foot, having newspeople masquerade as entertainers. I think both of these have the potential to help rather than hurt because in both cases, the line blurring that occurs is blatant. Nobody's being sold a bill of goods here; nobody says "oh, good, I'm glad Brian Williams is on Jimmy Kimmel; now I can catch up on the news." People understand that it's entertainment because it's an entertainment show. And then maybe, just maybe, people think about that for a minute, and start to recognize the difference.

Is it a long shot? Yeah, probably. But at the very least, I think I can say with some certainty that it doesn't hurt anybody.

And yes, I think Brian Williams IS funny. But he's no Carl Kasell.

Sent by Tony Camas | 2:05 PM | 11-4-2007