"The End of the Jerry Lewis Telethon—It's About Time."

Says history prof Jon Wiener:

Every year it was the same. Jerry did his telethon shtick, parading little kids in wheelchairs across the Las Vegas stage, making maudlin appeals for cash, alternatively mugging and weeping, and generally claiming to be a friend to the doomed.

The pitch was always for “Jerry’s kids.” But two-thirds of the clients of the Muscular Dystrophy Association were adults, and they didn’t like being referred to as “Jerry’s kids.”

Time passed. The "kids" kept growing up. And Jerry got more and more outmoded.

For me, the worst moment of the telethon came in 1972 when John and Yoko appeared. They played some good music—“Imagine,” and a reggae version of “Give Peace a Chance.” But they were there for a political reason: President Nixon had been trying to deport them for almost a year, and they were desperate to say in the USA. So to prove they were deserving of residency, they stopped hanging out with Jerry Rubin and instead embraced Jerry Lewis. That’s why Lennon told the telethon audience “Jerry is one of our favorite comedians.”

Nixon! Still railing about Nixon over there in The Nation, where this article is published.

Elsewhere, in the same old lefty journal there's another Labor Day piece, "Top Ten Labor Day Songs," and there's John Lennon again, holding down the 2 position with "Working Class Hero." John Lennon, John Lennon, John Lennon. I wonder how he'd feel if he could know how closely American lefties would cuddle him 30 years after his death.

"Working Class Hero" is not one of the labor songs sung by the Solidarity Singers who do their singalongs every weekday at the Wisconsin Capitol. And it's not surprising. The unions that were fought for in the Great Wisconsin Protests of 2011 were public employee unions, especially teachers unions. Picture the teacher-folk singing these lyrics:

They hurt you at home and they hit you at school,
They hate you if you're clever and they despise a fool,
Till you're so fucking crazy you can't follow their rules,
A working class hero is something to be,
A working class hero is something to be.
When they've tortured and scared you for twenty odd years,
Then they expect you to pick a career,
When you can't really function you're so full of fear,
A working class hero is something to be,
A working class hero is something to be.

There's really nothing in that song stoking enthusiasm for labor unions. There's nothing about working. It's about a disabling fear of work. And it's not the boss who tortures and scares you in those first 20 years. It's the parents and the teachers.

"This year should have been a final tribute to Jerry [Lewis]."

"It should have been a chance for him to say goodbye to everybody, to thank them and to bow out gracefully. It's not right."

Jerry's final finale, from last year's telethon:



"He seemed very happy. I don't know why they'd let him go."

Back in 1950, Sammy Petrillo got a haircut, and then everyone started laughing at him and telling him he looked like Jerry Lewis.

From his obituary:

[A]fter several appearances on television variety shows, Mr. Petrillo moved to Los Angeles, where he teamed up with Duke Mitchell, a singer who sang in the smooth-baritone style of Frankie Laine, Vaughn Monroe — and Dean Martin. They put together a nightclub act based primarily on their impersonations of the comedy team Martin and Lewis.

Based on that, the movie producer Jack Broder cast them in a low-budget comedy, “Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla,” opposite Mr. Lugosi. In the movie they played nightclub performers, stranded on a tropical island, who act very much like Martin and Lewis....

... Mr. Lewis’s eldest son, Gary, said: "When Sammy and the other guy played in that gorilla movie, I remember my dad and Dean saying, 'We got to sue these guys — this is no good.'"

See for yourself:



Bonus: Gary Lewis plays drums and sings.

Live-blogging the Oscars.

Hang out and watch with me.

7:28: I'm loving Tim Gunn gushing over the lady actors.

7:28: Hugh Jackman, he can sing and run around desperately on the stage, and oh! that gorgeous white foam in the corners of his mouth.

7:43: Best Supporting Actress ... a stripper need never take off her dignity with her clothes... blah blah... bullshit. Ugh! this is boring. So so stilted. But yay! Penélope Cruz, won. I love her.

7:52: "They're making the announcing of the nominees into a religious ceremony," IMs Chris (my son). Yes. Indeed. Good lord, it's deadly. This may go down as the most embarrassingly bad Oscars show of all time.

7:58: "Milk" wins original screenplay, and we get some mawkish bilge about the gays.

9:02: Sorry, my interest flagged...

9:09: Heath Ledger wins Best Supporting Actor and everyone acts all sanctimonious and morosely glum. Seriously, folks: Don't encourage suicidal behavior. The man had some talent. He performed a role. And he threw it all away. How about rewarding the living? I'm taking a break. Carry on without me. I find tonight's Oscars insipid and sickly. I'd rather live than sit through this embalming.

9:45: I went off and lived the real life for over an hour. Came back to the TiVo and found Jerry Lewis maundering about himself.

10:11: The Parade of the Dead. Marching to the tune of Queen Latifah singing "I'll Be Seeing You." She doesn't have the pipes for this song. It's painful. But take heart. The dead can't hear her. The agonizing death of this song has me rethinking my beliefs about euthanasia. Finally, we get to Paul Newman. We hear the only spoken word in the death sequence. The big difference between people, Paul says, is between those who have had "pleasure in love" and those who haven't. True enough. So turn off the fucking television and love somebody.

10:18: Danny Boyle wins Best Director. Appropriate. I agree. He hops up and down. He says it's in "the spirit of Tigger."

10:30: Best Actress. It's torture listening to presenting actresses' leaden praise of the actresses who longingly ache for the little gold man. The presenters are hogging camera time by talking slow slow slow. Thank God the Oscar goes to Kate Winslet because we're all tired as hell of hearing about how Kate Winslet has not won the Oscar yet. She gives a cheeseball speech about how as a little girl she pretended to do her Oscar acceptance speech with a shampoo bottle.

10:40: Now, the religious ritual for the Best Actor. Oh! It's so slow and dumb. This is the worst Oscar show ever. I have some things to do, but I'm hanging on to the end (after fast-forwarding through the whole rotten (I presume) center. Come on, give Mickey or Sean the damned man. And it's Sean! I approve!

10:44: "You commie, homo-loving sons of guns," says Sean. I'm going to pack it in now. I'm going to assume "Slumdog Millionaire" gets the Best Picture, and if it doesn't, I'll find out in the morning. So carry on without me, my friends.

So everyone hated Rosie O'Donnell's attempt at bringing back the old-fashioned variety show.

I can tell from all the links about it on Drudge. Is it that people just don't like Rosie anymore, that no one wants variety shows anymore, or is it just the combination of Rosie and variety that's poison? Writing the headline to this post, I typo'd "old-fashioned variety sow," which seemed like a clue from my not-very-nice subconscious.

Only 5 million tuned in at all, so the problem can't have been the actual content of the show:

Segments included Kathy Griffin impersonating Nancy Grace, Alec Baldwin hitting Conan O'Brian with a pie, O'Donnell singing "City Lights" with Liza Minnelli and Jane Krakowski doing a product-placement-themed striptease for White Castle burgers and Crest Whitestrips.

Critics were not kind. The NY Times described it as "hokey comedy with an enemies list." TV Guide called it a "ghastly ego trip." And the LA Times asked, "Rosie, what on earth were you thinking?"

That NYT review -- from Alessandra Stanley -- came after the show aired. So it seems the concept was off-putting enough to people, but if hadn't been, they'd have found the execution deadly. Per Stanley:

In between skits, celebrity cameos and hokey novelty acts, the legendarily thin-skinned Ms. O'Donnell found time to take potshots at some of her favorite targets, including Donald Trump, Nancy Grace and Bill O'Reilly....

Ms. O'Donnell's self-referential swats at detractors were light, but they clashed with the context, lending a hard, contemporary edge to what was intended to be a corny, heartfelt homage to variety shows of yesteryear, like "The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour" and "The Carol Burnett Show."...

It's not easy to be the brilliant Ms. Burnett, and you should never, never underestimate what constitutes the greatness that is Cher.

From the L.A. Times:

For weeks now NBC has seduced and tantalized with the promise of a cross between Carol Burnett and “Sonny and Cher.” And this is what we get? Rosie in a glitter top having Baldwin speak into her cleavage and making jokes about her weight? Someone get a hold of Tim Conaway, stat.

Tim Conaway? I guess the L.A. Times doesn't really spend much time reminiscing about the old Carol Burnett show.

Joe Gandelman blogs:

If you’re a student of show biz history, there are books that detail the careers of Burnett, Sullivan, and Martin that chronicle the thought and care that went into the preparation of their shows and what they were trying to do on them....

But what you don’t read as much about are the many variety shows that hideously flopped over the past 50 years and the performers who either hit a dead end and didn’t do as well on weekly TV series as they did in other venues: Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis, Jr. Jerry Lewis and a host of other. Every attempt at a variety show didn’t click: a huge number of shows noisily bombed....

So the variety show format isn’t dead. It could still be revived– with the right performer who isn’t controversial, with careful thought, and with packaging and production values more akin to a Vegas or cruise style variety show than a celebrity vanity production with a bunch of celebrities instead of high-powered talent of its era.

Any ideas as to who could fit that role? Celebrities are so awful these days. Who wants to see how they behave presenting other celebrities?

We'd rather watch another season of "American Idol," with third-rate music and annoying youngsters who only want to become the celebrities who have become too loathsome to watch. At least we get to see "American Idol" contestants judged and insulted for thinking they are much good. Maybe the old variety format could live again with a panel of judges or some sort of on-screen vote tally as we phone in and tell them they're nowhere near as good as they think they are.