Teaching freshman-level courses at a
community college has—from time to time, at least—provided me ample time and
creative energy to think about other things. One topic of my reflections
lately[1]
has been Craig Ferguson, host of "the Late Late Show" on CBS.
After some time, I have decided that Ferguson is a genius, if not a prophet
(the latter being a subcategory of the former).
My realization of this began when
Ferguson had philosopher Cornel West on his show, and West commented to
Ferguson on the topic of spirituality, "You have a spirituality in
your honesty." This, I realized, is
the nature of Ferguson's genius, the genius of honesty to be found in any good
satirist. However, before considering that, we should consider another
element of Ferguson's greatness, one not unrelated to his honesty: his talent
as an entertainer.
Once upon a time, in the era of
Johnny Carson, late night television was about entertainment; now it is little
more than a place for celebrities (and I use the term loosely) to promote their
latest projects. What do we have today? David Letterman is a
decadent imitator of Carson, while Jay Leno is a clown (only not half as
funny)...the others do not even deserve to be properly labeled. Into this
desert has come Craig Ferguson, a man who understands that he is in a
decadent genre, so he might as well have fun with it...and so he does.
Sometimes his most entertaining material is found in the opening
moments before the monologue, often--especially in previous seasons--dedicated
to a performance involving puppets.
First, who,
having seen it, can forget this hilarious instance of a yodeling monkey?:
Only slightly less funny
is Ferguson lip syncing to the same song himself:
In the same period, Ferguson,
joined by various other characters--including his puppets—memorably performed several songs, such as:
"Oops, I Did It
Again":
"Wonderful
Night" (watch for the puppets):
"Instanbul":
And "In the Navy:
There is also wisdom in Ferguson,
such as this rant explaining the deification of youth, inexperience, and
imbecility:
Similarly, where else on late night will you find
appearances by such figures as Bishop Desmond Tutu and Cornel West (the latter
was his only guest on Feb. 1 of this year, to celebrate black history month)?
Not to be outdone completely by his guests, Ferguson
slips in from time to time elements of his own erudition, like references to
19th-century Christian existentialist philosopher Soren Kirkegaard.
But Ferguson's greatest contribution is his satire.
Take for example, the character of Sid, the cussing rabbit. Sid is one of
the puppet characters with which Ferguson often begins his show. He is a cute little white bunny rabbit who speaks in a high, even falsetto, voice,
and cusses without restraint (usually by using a certain Anglo-Saxon
monosyllable better known as the "F-word."):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOsRSH1IHJU
You may ask, why is this satire? The answer is that
Sid, with his juxtapositioning of adorable forest creature with sailor-esque
vocabulary, satirizes the hypocrisy of a network that would spend millions of
dollars an episode (mostly to pay the vastly overpriced cast) on a show like
"Two and a Half Men"--a show which, despite being located squarely in
Monday's prime time, was basically one long dirty joke; a show which was still
not canceled, even when one of its stars turned into an embarrassing drunk
in a tragic case of life imitating art--while censoring the swear words on a
late night talk show airing at 12:36 EST (when all the children who have been
properly corrupted by the antics of Charlie Harper have gone to bed.).
Ferguson's own prolific use of swearwords--mostly the
same aforementioned Saxon monosyllable--serves the same basic purpose: to
expose the hypocrisy of CBS.
Shall I go on? I could
discuss his excellent monologues, which are obviously highly crafted, but are
so designed as to appear a series of brilliant spontaneous utterances (there is
the prophet angle again), as opposed to the boring summation of the day's news
that passes for comedy on Letterman and Leno. There is Geoff Peterson,
his robotic skeleton sidekick---who, as one guest once astutely observed, is a
deconstruction of the idea of the late night sidekick, the fitting culmination
of the slide from Ed McMahon, to Andy Richter, to (again) Letterman and Leno
chatting with their band leaders.
There are the brilliant gags that become even funnier as
they become more predictable, such as the chronic confusion of a picture of
Angela Lansbury with a picture of Paul McCartney--which is endlessly funny
mainly because they really are terrifyingly alike. My personal favorite
was the time he said, "Do we have a picture of Hallie Berry?" only to
cry, as the picture came up, "Ohh! That's Frankenberry!"...and
so it was.
So there you have it: Craig, Ferguson, a genius of
decadent satire in an era of decadent comedy. Long may he continue to
remind us of how foolish is so much that passes for
"culture" and "ethics" today. As long as we
still have this one American citizen to remind us of these things, perhaps it
will continue to be true that:
It's a great day for America, everybody!
