58th Annual Emmy Award Show

[Big Magilla]

The FCC be damned, but let's not got ban kids from watching the Emmys. I'm sure they hear a lot worse in the school playground every day. Better they should hear such comments in the safety of their own living rooms where their parents can explain it to them.

As I stated in an earlier post, Mirren and Flockhart's comment were one of two highlights of the evening. The other was Stephen Colbert's rant about losing an Emmy to Barry Manilow. God forbid he should have said "Barry frickin' Manilow." The FCC would be beside themselves.

[OscarGuy]

Someone should have the FCC fine the PTC for constantly bringing this stuff up again and being too stupid to keep their kids from watching the fricking Emmys. I mean who the hell lets their kids watch the Emmys? It's not even remotely a kids program and is bound to recognize programs that the kids aren't supposed to be watching anyway. Freedom of Speech and Freedom of the Press have consitently been dragged through the toilet by these idiots...someone has to stand up to them.

[anonymous1980]

Those FCC bastards are at it again:

From the IMDb:

PTC Demanding FCC Fine NBC for Emmy Remarks


L. Brent Bozell's Parents Television Council, which has spearheaded the campaign against indecent language on television, has demanded that the FCC fine NBC for not censoring the comments by actresses Helen Mirren and Calista Flockhart during Sunday's Primetime Emmy Awards telecast. Both had expressed concerns about falling "tits over ass" as they came up the stairs. Calling the common British colloquialism "vulgar and obscene," Bozell said Thursday, "It is utterly irresponsible and atrocious for NBC to air this vulgar language during the safe harbor time [before 10:00 p.m.] when millions of children were in the viewing audience." The phrase was not bleeped during the live broadcast in the East and Midwest nor on the delayed broadcast in the West. While a common Britishism, it is sometimes abbreviated as TOA in polite company, as in, "I got out of the taxi and fell TOA on the slippery street."

[Franz Ferdinand]

Though, whomever said that West Wing became the most honored Emmy series in history was wrong. Unless they meant drama, for which I have no usable figures.

I saw it somewhere (most likely on this very board) that it ties Hill Street Blues' record for a drama with 26 (or 27, but no more than 28). Maybe someone can research it for us.

[Franz Ferdinand]

I would have been much more offended if they had showed a catastrophe much more likely to happen in everyday life, and one that has likely happened to everyone on this board; for example, a car crash, instead. Thousands of those happen every day around the entire world, and fatal ones are just as likely as non-fatal ones. They are committed by total strangers on each other: it doesn't matter if they are white, black, Asian, Arabic or Eskimo, everyone behind the wheel is a potential murderer, and a threat to your life. Imagine the utter insensitivity of an award show using such a traumatic event to set up a punch-line! Thank God they had more sense than that!

[Mister Tee]

I don't see the difference as being if something is played as a joke or not.

In that case, we're talking past one another, because that's the essential point for me. Many people are going to use elements of recent history -- September 11th or otherwise -- and how we judge their efforts will vary based on what we think of the artistry involved, and the level of exploitatiion involved (or not). I'm perfectly willing to grant anyone the right to their subject, and their right to succeed or fail at it.

But what I'm talking about here is what I perceive to be a very sensitive/association-laden issue -- peril aboard planes -- and the use of it for easy jokes. I simply don't agree the bit had hardly anything to do with a plane crashing. Had we just seen one faint rumble of the cabin, followed by Conan at sea, I might agree. But we didn't: we saw him buffeted about the cabin in just the same fashion used for serious recreations of crashes... and we seemed to be expected to laugh all along the way. I didn't; I found it grueling, and I cringed.

This doesn't make Conan and his crew bad people. I just think they underestimate the number of people for whom plane travel now has serious fright connotations. (My 80-year-old father had made it clear he's not getting on a plane again as long as he lives) For many of these people, the joke just wasn't funny.

I cited the tsunami because I know it's something to which you relate personally, and was trying to make the point that many have the same visceral reaction to this that you'd have to that (and I still would, too, frankly). I doubt either of us are ready for a rollicking comic routine of people being swept off a beach, and you know what? -- I don't think you will be in five years, either. (Or maybe ever. Somebody tried to tell me a John Lennon-shooting joke a year or two after the deed. I found it completely unfunny...and I think I still would, today)

As far as your last paragraph, I'm completely sympathetic to what you cite, but I don't see how it's conflated with the rather small point I was trying to make.

[Sonic Youth]

I'll avoid speculating whether using the tsunami as an example was accidental or not.

And I'll avoid addressing the proposition that one-and-a-half years and five years are at all equivalent to each other.

I understand that people have differing thresholds for this sort of thing. Some are even more stringent. I don't remember if there were people who objected to Lost's plane crash in the first episode, but it wouldn't surprise me. How many thousands of people spoke out against the United 93 movie for being made at all, no matter how respectful it may have been? Not that they wouldn't be able to see such a movie, but that it shouldn't have been made in the first place. To me, that's over the top.

I don't see the difference as being if something is played as a joke or not. To me, the difference is whether 9/11 is exploited or not. The premise of the Ben Affleck movie The Sum of All Fears is about terrorists planning to blow up the Super Bowl, and in one sequence a "dirty bomb" is exploded and devastates the affected area. This movie came out less than a year after 9/11 when dirty bombs were at the forefront of potential threats. (Who even remembers them now?) Spielberg's War of the Worlds used images purposefully reminiscent of 9/11 and played upon the audiences' anxieties in order to maximize the film's visceral effectiveness, though without any overall thematic purpose to justify it, at least none that I could see. The Conan O'Brian plane crash sequence did not exploit 9/11, it had nothing to do with terrorism, and any connections between this and real life tragedies were incidental. Had they done this in 2002, or had the plane been brought down by "brown" terrorists, then I would agree that it was inappropriate. The plane crash wasn't the "subject". It wasn't even the joke. It was just a set-up, and the joke was Conan finding himself on the island with the cast of "Lost", and the punchline justifies the set-up.

If I seem particularly irked by this, it's because these past few weeks I've been reading too many stories about brown-skinned people, whether they're Arabic or not, being victimized and escorted off of airplanes due to others' racism and overwrought "sensitivies" (or is that "insecurities"). Recently, there was an Iraqi who was not allowed to board an airplane because the Arabic letters on his t-shirt upset the other passengers; a Muslim was kicked off an airplane because he prayed to himself; and two young Muslim students, dressed in Western attire, were escorted off a plane because the passengers were uncomfortable with their presence, and a twelve year old girl started to cry when she saw them. And it's always excused because this is a tense time; 9/11 changed everything; if people don't want to be spotlighted, then they shouldn't engage in any behavior that might be considered strange or abborant in the eyes of Westerners; please be understanding, because other people are very sensitive and they are entitled to a worry-free flight, plus you can never be too careful. Well, sorry. There's a difference between being sensitive and never getting over it.

[OscarGuy]

You're welcome to your opinion but, IMO, the entire thing was blown way out of proportion...It's just like Nipplegate. Much Ado About Nothing.

I do like the way NBC responded by saying that it was unfortunately timed and didn't apologize for the skit itself but its awkward and untimely position.

[Mister Tee]

Then you must hate Lost. Because that's EXACTLY how the show started out. If you want to cite NBC for insensitivity, then you also have to cite ABC and the series Lost for the same kind of insensitivity.

No...because it's not played as a JOKE.

[OscarGuy]

Then you must hate Lost. Because that's EXACTLY how the show started out. If you want to cite NBC for insensitivity, then you also have to cite ABC and the series Lost for the same kind of insensitivity.

While I was a little shocked they put it in there, I was amused by his crawling into the overhead baggage compartment to hide. However, it's not like plane crashes don't happen all the time. And in no way did it bear any resemblance to 9/11 because those weren't plane crashes in the traditional sense. And if you don't like plane crash parody, then never watch the Airplane! movies.

There are billions of flights daily that don't crash. One here or there is sad but it's not an unsafe way to travel and shouldn't be put on some high pedestal where it cannot be joked about.

[Mister Tee]

As for United 93, that happened five years ago already, and the London bomb plot didn't happen at all... .

Well, to be really snarky, I guess it's time for some rip-snorting tsunami jokes; after all, it's been a year and a half.

Fine, United 93 was five years ago; it was also part of the most traumatic American day of the last two decades, the whole of which centered around aviation disaster. I just don't find the subject of plane catastrophe very funny, in much the same way I didn't find assassinated politicians very funny (except in a very sick way) for a long time after JFK.

I granted to begin with that Conan and co. were unlucky the Kentucky crash happened that very day. But even beyond that, both my wife and I seized up in discomfort as soon as the bit started -- a plane in trouble is just too raw a nerve for us. Sorry if that makes us weenies.

[OscarGuy]

Lansbury holds the record with 18 nominations and no wins (12 just for Murder, She Wrote).

Maher has been nominated 17 times with no wins (though he's only been nominated 2 times as an Individual Performer).

Next year, he will likely pass Lansbury. However, Lansbury will probably always be the most nominated performer without a win (though Cloris Leachman is now an all-time Emmy winner).

Though, whomever said that West Wing became the most honored Emmy series in history was wrong. Unless they meant drama, for which I have no usable figures.

[Greg]

Speaking of Bill Maher, does anyone know if he's the person to have the most Emmy nominations without a single win? He seems to get nominated every year but never wins.

My off-the-hand guess is that honor would go to Angela Lansbury.

[anonymous1980]

Speaking of Bill Maher, does anyone know if he's the person to have the most Emmy nominations without a single win? He seems to get nominated every year but never wins.

[Damien]

The bigger TV controversy was, and remains, the new season of Survivor which will pit four racially segregated teams (one black, one white, one Asian and one Hispanic) against one another. This is truly appalling.

Bill Maher joked that the idea of pitting different races against each other was suggested to the producers by Karl Rove.

Hey, it worked for Bush . . .