Political Bite

It's nice to hear some political passion from someone supposedly on the culture's shelf. In a land where celebs, hot or not, parse every single vowel that passes through their hired mouthpieces and reps, some straight ahead go-fuck-yourself blasts are always appreciated. And unlike many political observers, I don't mind it when celebs speak out on whatever issue. The more the merrier, or crazier, or batshit insane, depending on the celeb and his or her cause. Graven images are our national soul, so it shouldn't alarm anyone when some of these images engage what passes for the real world.

Chevy Chase has long been absent from comedy's epicenter, mostly by choice, preferring to help raise his daughters far away from the Hollywood scene. But Chevy's always held political views, and he's had no problem stating them publicly, sometimes forcefully. Recall his spicy takes on the '04 election that set on edge the Respectable Liberals of People For the American Way. Before a polite celeb audience, Chevy called Bush a "dumb fuck," adding "I'm no fucking clown either. . . . This guy started a jihad . . . This guy in office is an uneducated, real lying schmuck . . . and we still couldn't beat him with a bore like Kerry."

This of course offended many in the audience, including PFAW's Ralph Neas and group founder Norman Lear, both of whom immediately distanced themselves from Chevy's rather cleansing remarks. And it showed that whatever one thinks about Chevy's later work, the fire that fueled his early satirical output remains well-lit. So it should come as no shock that after Rep. John Conyers "introduced legislation establishing a select committee with subpoena authority to investigate the misconduct of the Bush Administration with regard to the Iraq war detailed in my report to the Committee on the Judiciary on possible impeachable offenses (House Resolution 635)" in late-'05, Chevy cut a brief audio endorsement of the Resolution to air on radio and across the Web.

I hadn't heard this until yesterday (brought to my attention by the ever-busy Jon Schwarz), and while I'm pleased, I'm not surprised. Indeed, Chevy's mention of the impeachment proceedings against Richard Nixon is more than just political nostalgia; Chevy played a savage satirical role at that time, writing and performing impeachment-oriented material for the National Lampoon Radio Hour, the best routines of which were later collected on a Lampoon album, "The Missing White House Tapes." This was no Johnny Carson/Rich Little good-natured ribbing -- this was a full-frontal assault on Nixon's criminal enterprise by those who set the satirical standard for a generation, if not longer. Some of this energy burned into the early "Saturday Night Live," where Chevy, on Weekend Update, continued his political attacks. But not long after Chevy's departure, the aggression shown on those early mock newscasts subsided, replaced largely by whimsical jokes and recurring characters. When you watch (if you can) the present-day Weekend Update, what political takes exist are content-and-aggression free, the current writing staff preferring to mock celebrities who appear on E! and in US magazine.

Coincidentally, assuming coincidence exists, I've spent the last couple of weeks watching old TV sketch comedy, and was reminded of how political it was compared to much of what airs today. (Perhaps later this week I'll go into greater length about the bootleg "Fridays" DVDs I recently received -- without doubt some of the most leftwing comedy ever to appear on American screens.) My longtime friend and former comedy collaborator, Jim Buck, who lives and toils on screenplays in LA, sent me some complete and unedited first-season "SNL" episodes, many of which I haven't seen in over a decade or more. Chevy's Updates, while dated, remain funny and pungent, taking on issues like FBI domestic spying, CIA-backed wars in the Third World, the commodification of dissent, and the general criminality of the American political elite. Frankly, I was astonished by some of this material, which admittedly came at a time when much of the country could hear it without blanching. In the wake of Watergate and Vietnam, many Americans were, if not cynical, at least put-off by the political establishment, a "crisis of democracy" that startled American elites and launched them into full PR repair, with the corporate media assisting. Not all of the toothpaste was crammed back into the tube, but a fair amount was. You need only look at the Iran/contra scandal to understand that.

But today's political scandals are much worse than Reagan's support for state terrorism and abuse of domestic power (which I don't seek to minimize), and decidedly far beyond what brought down Nixon. Yet where are this generation's satirical assaults? Yes, we have "The Daily Show" and "The Colbert Report"; and while a lot of their material is quite sharp and very funny, both shows evince an "ironic" detachment, especially Colbert's. Call me a retro-fart, but I'll take the Lampoon's direct and merciless attacks on our masters. At least the Lampooners showed heart, passion, and above all outrage, qualities that today are dismissed as too emotional by those with an eye on demographics. Sometimes it takes an old timer like Chevy Chase to remind us what teeth are for.