It will come as no surprise to many of you that I derive much of my current events knowledge from late night chat shows on telly. With the exception of dedicated news providers like the CBC News Channel, there are very few places to find information on world events. It may also come as no surprise that late night chat shows can be extraordinarily superficial and annoyingly fluffy industry-schmoozing and giggling.
I PVR these programs not because their broadcasting hours are past my bedtime, but because the advertising is monumentally dominant in terms of airtime. I skip something like 30% of the time by blowing through the commercials. The shows that I have currently scheduled to PVR reveal something of my preferences and choices.
I stopped recording Jimmy Fallon's Tonight Show primarily because his cringeworthy toadying and obsequious celebrity worship was starting to nauseate me. Another factor is one that Fallon shares with Stephen Colbert - his consistent tendency to act as a huckster for his own book. Both of them use airtime ostensibly intended for entertainment and information as a platform for shameless self-advertising.
The straw that broke the camel's back was the death of Fats Domino. Fallon spent a goodly portion of his monologue rhapsodizing about the musical legend, reminding people of the legacy that the big man bequeathed to us all. Throughout the monologue, and into a large portion of his time spent behind the show's desk, Fallon kept on lyrically leading into Domino's big hits, launching into a capella versions of "Ain't That a Shame", "Blueberry Hill", and "I'm Walking." on each occasion, his oft-lauded and praised house band "The Roots" stared silently at him, mouths agape. Drummer Questlove occasionally tapped his hi-hat out of rhythm. By the third or fourth a capella attempts, I realized that Fallon was inviting the band to join him, but they didn't know how. One of the greatest musical legends of stride rock 'n' roll and R&B piano went unrecognized and unacknowledged by a band of professional musicians. That's when I wrote that show off.
As I previously mentioned, Stephen Colbert irks me when he promotes his own material, but there is also something lurking in the production of the whole show that I am only just beginning to recognize as inherently mediocre and inauthentic. A couple of weeks ago, one of Colbert's guests was author and biographer Walter Isaacson. He was on the show to promote his new biography of Leonardo da Vinci. His previous biographies of Einstein and Steve Jobs are both New York Times bestsellers, and there was every expectation that this book would perform similarly.
Colbert's Late Show afforded Isaacson a tiny sliver of time, likely because they thought that the man and the material were not peppy enough to titillate the younger demographic that their advertisers are chasing. They were dead wrong.
Colbert used all of the buzz words in the opening exchanges of the interview. Steve Jobs? Check. Kids have heard of him. Genius? Yep. Draw a similarity between the author's subjects. As Colbert's ideas sputtered out, Isaacson volunteered the real reasons that his work is relevant and immediate.
Leonardo da Vinci already has an "official" biography, written almost contemporaneously by Giorgio Vasari. Isaccson's biography uses events in Renaissance Italy five hundred years ago to draw social parallels with our present day civilization.
Here's where Colbert missteps. The interview could have pivoted around the fact that da Vinci's life and works not only revolutionized art, medicine, literature, engineering, architecture, and industry, but the man as an individual gives us a glimpse of what it takes to change the world. Elon Musk is trying now. Will he succeed?
The answer is found in the book. 15th century Florence was a hotbed of contrasting opinions and ideologies. The Catholic Church was just about to run into the Reformation, the New World was just being opened up to Europe, trade with the Orient was blossoming into a true exchange of ideas as well as commercial goods. The Crusades and the Black Death were over, but population migration had scattered cultures and languages across any sort of national boundaries.
Into this comes Leonardo. Left-handed, homosexual, flamboyant, iconoclastic, and more than a little heretical, it is possible that he only succeeded because he managed to offend everyone equally while simultaneously charming them over by dint of personality and wit.
Consider today's climate, where political tensions over national identities, immigration, environmental science, religious dogma, and a confused moral compass are tearing apart families, cities, and political parties. In all of this drama and chaos, there is a fertile bed of energy yearning for a creative individual to channel it. Perhaps this book should be titled "Looking for Leonardo."
Considering that the Spanish Inquisition started torturing and burning people for precisely the "perversions" and "heresies" that Leonardo flaunted, and that they were doing it during his lifetime, his triumphs and achievements must be seen as humanity's transcendence surpassing some of its greatest depredations.
The innocent refugees fleeing the ghastly charnel house of Syria and the post Arab-spring Middle East are mimicking the movement of humanity in the wake of the Crusades. The debates over homosexuality and abortion are just alive now as they were then. Climate change? Medical ethics? The clash of ideas is still vigorous. Whether it be the partial sinking of the Tower of Pisa or a starving polar bear; foetal stem cell experiments or the use of cadavers for anatomical research; the grounds of conflict remain the same. The wars have not been won in five hundred years of argument and debate.
In short, Isaacson could have dissected the current American political climate from the point of view of a historical figure who navigated those same waters to create some of humanity's greatest triumphs and sparked centuries of creative insight into the human condition. Instead, he was boiled down to quick factoids and meaningless pop culture references in the space of a few hundred seconds.
That is why Colbert is just about to be kicked off my viewing list. He only remains because he still manages to draw interesting guests who occasionally provide a useful or meaningful datum.
Musical Interlude
- When We Was Fab, by George Harrison
- Roxanne, by the Police
- Stuck in the Middle With You, performed by the Frantic Flintstones
- Have Love, Will Travel, performed by Crazyhead
- Make You Mad, by Odds
- Outside of This, by Jon and Vangelis
- Alison, by Elvis Costello
- Southbound Again, by Dire Straits
And here is where I must leave you once again, dear reader. Until next time, it's goodnight England and the Colonies.
Cheers,
—mARKUS
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