Andrew Sullivan on Leno:
I found myself watching Jay Leno the other night. By and large, I've given up TV, don't have cable and watch the box maybe once every couple of weeks or so (usually at the boyfriend's). But it was late, I couldn't sleep, so I found myself watching the cheesiest, crudest, lowest-common-denominator humor I've seen in a long while. It had Dolly Parton in the same joke as a couple of melons, for Pete's sake. And that was a high point. But I still watched it over Letterman. The NYT today tries to explain why Leno is now so dominant. It's relatively easy, I think: Leno is a conservative voice in an unsettled time. His hackneyed humor and old-as-the-hills jokes, and non-confrontational suck-ups with Hollywood-approved celebs are more comforting than Letterman's snarling irony. More to the point: IRONY IS DEAD. It died years ago - even before 9/11. Letterman, much as I admire him, is a relic. It's over, Dave. Over.
While I don't watch Leno, I agree with Sullivan's assessment. The comedian's politics are reportedly nowhere near right of center, and yet conservative television host Brit Hume uses clips of Leno's political wisecracks for his show's lighthearted outro. They really fit right in.
That got me thinking about irony and how heavily it influenced culture and society in the last decade. Take film (please!). The Nineties expanded and collapsed, respectively, by the strength and overuse of irony. The flood of "(American) life is not what you think it is" movies throughout the decade finally did it in. Whatever countercultural, self-critical insights gained from flicks like Reality Bites, Clerks and Trainspotting were jumbled by nihilist, violent frenzies from the likes of Tarantino and collaborators. Pretty soon the f-word and graphic violence were standard fare - and thus became a little boring. So cynical indie directors, too sophisticated and Europhiliac for their own good, put out the really dark stuff like Happiness and Buffalo 66. Hollywood followed suit with its focus-group-approved American Pie, Fight Club and American Beauty, and the irony industry began to buckle under its own self-hating, self-adulatory weight.
Then the World Trade Center vaporized, and the whole thing about laughing in the face of the devil (who, like, sooo didn't exist) wasn't as funny anymore. How ironic.