from the TV Barn archives
Click here to return to the home page.

Gore-Lieberman: The V-chip ticket

It probably won't make anyone's short list of hot campaign topics this fall, but the future of TV-filtering devices like the V-chip looked a lot brighter Monday with the announcement that Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.) would be Al Gore's running mate in November.

Lieberman's voice has not only been strong and persuasive in defense of the V-chip. Before the tragedy of Columbine, his was often a lonely voice among his Senate colleagues as well. Not many people are convinced of a cause-and-effect between the violent, sadistic media that Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold ingested daily and their eventual rampage of death at Columbine High. But the fact that such media are often discovered afterwards in the bedrooms of high-profile young killers has rightly alarmed law enforcement officials, parents and legislators like Lieberman.

In the early '90s, the chief crusader against violent media was the current vice president's wife — that is, someone of relatively minor political consequence. With the election of the Gore-Lieberman ticket, that would certainly change.

Lieberman published a book earlier this year, his fifth, a short but elegantly composed apologia called In Defense of Public Life. If you have any interest at all in the centrist senator from Connecticut I suggest you read it. Besides the highly readable and often self-effacing review of his 30-year political career, Lieberman offers a surprisingly upbeat assessment of the modern political campaign, so often criticized for its reliance on TV advertising and media image-making.

He concedes that image has become all-important when running for office, but he then proceeds to show how he used images to call attention to issues that he thought mattered to voters. In running for re-election as attorney general, Lieberman presented himself as the consumer's A.G., a David Horowitz with clout. Then in 1988, overcoming a 34-point deficit in the polls in his first U.S. Senate campaign, Lieberman presented incumbent Lowell Weicker as an unruly grizzly bear whose actions were unpredictable and not always in the state's best interests.

Now consider the power a frequently-aired 30-second commercial would have in improving the public's awareness and use of the V-chip. Of course, perhaps that explains why no such campaign has ever been mounted. Lieberman has made plain in his book and elsewhere that it is the industry's job, not the government's, to make people aware of the V-chip. But as vice president, you'd better believe he would use his bully pulpit to lean hard on the industry to comply with his wishes.

People who flame people
Or: "Art" imitates "life"

Comedian Todd Barry's show "Icky" — the title comes from a disparaging remark made about Barry on the Conan O'Brien newsgroup — makes a return engagement this month, beginning Wednesday at the Upright Citizens Brigade theater in New York. It will play there Aug. 9 and 16 before moving to the Ruby Theater in Los Angeles for performances Aug. 23 and 30.

"Icky" is an improvisational-theater special, in the spirit of the Upright Citizens Brigade, whose hilarious Comedy Central series is in hiatus (though you can still catch reruns every Friday at 1:30 a.m.). For those of you unfamiliar with the making of the "UCB" TV show, most of the sketches had their origins in live improvised skits at the UCB facility in New York. A little polishing, some makeup and prostheses and voila! Instant comedy.

Only this time, the comedy emerged from the virtual street theater of the Internet. Last year a woman named Jean posted a message to the alt.fan.conan-obrien newsgroup. It was her weekly summary of the week's best and worst guests on "Late Night with Conan O'Brien," and without a doubt the worst guest that week on the show had been Todd Barry.

Before long a newcomer to the newsgroup began posting messages more or less in defense of Barry. Some began to suspect that the poster might be Barry himself. Fast forward a couple of months to Barry's next "Late Night" appearance:

CONAN: I understand you've had a weird experience; this is true, right?

BARRY: Yes, I was on your show in April, and about a week after I was on your show, I was sitting around in my apartment, doing what most guys do on a Saturday night, I was searching for my own name on the internet. (laughter) And I came across this newsgroup dedicated to your show — it's like, alt dot conan-obrien or something?

CONAN: Right.

BARRY: ... and there's a woman who does like a week in review thing, and she gives like little awards to the guests, and I found the week that I was on, and this is what she wrote ...

CONAN: This isn't a dream, this is real.

BARRY: This is not a dream, this is reality.

CONAN: This is the night of guests reading things. Here we go.

BARRY: "Best Guest of the week: Chris O'Donnell — not just for the way he filled out those blue jeans, but also for his charming personality. Worst Guest of the week: Todd Barry (laughter). No charm, no humor, no wit, and a personality which can only be described as 'icky.'"

(laughter) So, I'm reading this on the computer, and it's like, first of all, you know, once you praise a guy for filling out his blue jeans, I think you lose the right to accuse someone else of being icky. (laughter) ... and second of all, you know, actually, I don't wear blue jeans on your show out of respect, but I look pretty good in a pair of blue jeans, (laughter) and actually I brought a picture.

CONAN: Can we see the picture? I want to see this ...

CONAN: Did you put a toaster down there? (laughter) What the hell is that? Well, it's nice to have you back. You're not icky.

"It started minor chaos on the newsgroup," Barry wrote me later. To say the least. The Barry-Jean exchange became the talk of the newsgroup for more than a month — especially with Barry there, fueling the flames, posting under at least three unacknowledged aliases.

When Barry felt he'd accumulated enough material, he and "UCB" madman Matt Besser got to work adapting the whole mess into a script. The result was "Icky," which played several well-received shows last November at the UCB theater. And just to prove it was all in good fun, Jean attended one of the performances and broke through the fourth wall to meet Barry right there on stage.

"A little uneven and predictable in places, but otherwise a very good time," wrote alt.fan.conan-obrien eminence Damone in his review of "Icky." "There were a couple of times when it looked like it could become a really awful character assassination, but it always veered back to the funny."

Pick to click

David Spade is not exactly known as a man of a thousand voices — or even two. And yet, for whatever reason, he has chosen to voice the two lead parts of his long-delayed, semi-autobiographical cartoon show "Sammy" (NBC, 8:30 p.m.). Close your eyes during the scene after the first commercial, provided of course you make it that far, and you'll immediately hear the problem. The two characters — a young, wealthy Hollywood star and his no-good dad — sound exactly the same. It's disorienting, the storyline only slightly less so. Like "God, the Devil and Bob," NBC's other animated bomb from this season, "Sammy" is missing not only the laugh tracks, but the laughs. Maura Tierney, Andy Dick and Jeffrey Tambor also supply voices to tonight's episode.

On this date...

an all-music version of a long running game show that made its debut this day in 1998 with a new emcee Jeff Probst (whom some may recognize as the former host of just about every show on the FX network). The answer: "What is VH1's 'Rock and Roll Jeopardy'"? -- Tom Heald

Previously at TV Barn:

 

More news you can use

Copyright © 1999-2001 Aaron Barnhart | Back to TV Barn home