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Jewish World Review
Jan. 21, 2008
/ 14 Shvat 5768
Tonight Show writer: Matt Drudge's gift forever changed the world of comedy
By
Marvin Silbermintz
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
It was ten years ago that Internet icon Matt Drudge gave a great gift to the world; he revealed that then-President Clinton was having an affair with a young White House intern named Monica Lewinsky. And when I say 'world', I mean the world of comedy. Specifically, broadcast comedy, the only corner of the genre where some rules of restraint still are in effect.
Unlike other surnames from the Clinton Administration Cohen, Rubin, Babbitt, Glickman, and other 1998 Cabinet members the name of this young intern is not forgotten. In fact, it's become an eponym. Just like Captain Charles Boycott, Etienne de Silhouette, and Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin, her name came to represent her.......well, her 'specialty'.
And that's what was so helpful to the comedy profession. We had a codeword that described a sexual act that, on the broadcast media, was often intimated but never elucidated. Shock Jocks immediately began conjugating the word: "How about a Lewinsky?", "Do you Lewinsky?", "Do you like Lewinsky sex?". Just like the 'F' word and the 'S' word, it could serve as a noun, a verb, an adjective. Or even an expletive; they could get a laugh by just yelling, "Lewinsky!".
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Actually, Monica was not the first to give nineties comedians a broadcastable dirty word. Some years before John Wayne Bobbitt lived out every husband's nightmare and, for some reason, the nation found it hilarious. For years, no talk show cooking segment was complete without the host picking up a knife and invoking the name 'Bobbitt'. It seems Mr. Bobbitt himself eventually saw the humor too, since he ended up starring in two cinematic masterpieces entitled 'John Wayne Bobbitt Uncut' and 'Frankenpenis'. I'm not sure his wife Lorena ever saw a penny from them, even though the initial shmecklectomy was her idea.
But nothing was a greater gift to comedy then the Monica/Bill scandal, because....:
(1) It had a very famous person getting himself in trouble. Stupidly. This guy was the Leader of the Free World, and he was acting like the night manager at Denny's pulling a chubby waitress into a broom closet for......enough of that analogy, I'm getting nauseous.
(2) It had hypocrisy. Hypocrisy that was pitifully transparent. The more Clinton tried to weasel his way out of it, the funnier it got.
(3) It had sex. (Even if Clinton didn't define it as sex) Hot, steamy, cheap, desperate, up-against-the-White-House-wallpaper sex.
Somehow fate pulled the handle on the human events slot machine just right, the three windows lined up, and we hit the comedy jackpot. The payoff seemed like it would never stop flowing - this scandal was the gift that kept on giving:
Video emerged of Bill briefly hugging Monica at a public rally. It was, as Jay Leno described it, "...their first face-to-face meeting.'.
Monica was taped giving a deposition, during which she stopped several times to drink from a glass. Through a straw. Didn't she realize that comedy writers were watching? All we had to do to get a laugh was speed that video up.
Clinton pointed into the T.V. camera and proclaimed; "I did not have sex with that woman." We used that over and over on The Tonight Show. Every time a female celebrity announced she was expecting, we'd show Clinton issuing that denial. I think we even used it when a Panda in a zoo in China got pregnant.
Then there was Clinton's redefining the word 'sex' for his own purposes, and parsing exactly what the definition of the word 'is' is. He continued to revise history with his autobiography. (Leno; "Just like Clinton, the book will come with a jacket and no pants.")
There were rumors of Hillary physically attacking Bill, throwing appliances at him, and planning to leave him the moment he left office. But we didn't need rumors. We had the hard evidence of the poetry book he sent Monica, the cigar, and the dress with the 'Presidential DNA'. (Leno again; "It looks like Monica had her fifteen minutes of stain.")
I don't have to go through all the jokes this wealth of sordid detail generated. You can find them yourself on the internet. Just google 'Lewinsky' plus 'jokes' and enjoy hours of laughs.
After the Clintons left the White House I expected the focus of broadcast monologues and internet parodies to shift away from them. But even when the set-up lines turned to President Bush, the punchlines seemed to veer back to Clinton and Lewinsky.
Years after the scandal David Letterman mentioned President Bush's dramatic landing by jet on an aircraft carrier (Later made famous because of the 'Mission Accomplished' banner). Letterman began his punchline; "The last president to land on anything that big.....". He didn't have to finish the joke. The audience was howling with laughter, drowning out the name 'Clinton'. Monica's flame was still burning brightly in May of 2003.
If you go back over all the references I've made so far, you'll find something interesting; none of them is offensive by itself. For example, the phrases 'face to face' or 'presidential staff' or 'head intern' become 'dirty' only in the context of the juiciest presidential scandal ever. (Okay, 'shmecklectomy' might be offensive. But not the rest.) That's the miracle of Monica Lewinsky, the patron saint of censored, restrained broadcast T.V. comedy.
Now, a decade later, we realize there was one more factor driving the Lewinsky jokefest. Sure, the Comedy Trifecta of Celebrity, Hypocrisy, and Sex drove it. But what made it funny was the fact that nobody got hurt. There was no death, no illness, nobody left homeless or bankrupt. Comedy professionals hate those messy disasters. No matter how well constructed your joke is, you can't get audiences to laugh at innocent people suffering real pain.
In the passing years Monica has flirted with a television career by guesting on Saturday Night Live and starring in a reality dating show that is now forgotten. She took up knitting, designed handbags, and wrote an autobiography with the pompous title; 'My Life'. Interestingly, the same title has been used by Golda Meir, Trotsky, and Castro. And what a coincidence! - -Bill Clinton. The last I heard of her was a year ago, when she received a Masters in Social Psychology from the London School of Economics.
For the comedy writers who lived and worked through it, we remember the golden age fondly as we sit at our keyboards, trying to wring a chuckle out of the mortgage crisis and the impending recession and Mitt Romney's perfect hair. We know we will never see a time like that again. At least we can impress young writers with tales of the time we surfed the biggest wave of comedy in history.
The Clintons emerged unhurt, as they always do. Sure, Bill can't smoke a cigar in public anymore. But he can travel the country with Hillary, speak to cheering crowds, and plan his return to the White House.
If Hillary makes history as the first female president, I hope she's the first of many women to do so. After all, male interns need love too.
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
JWR contributor Marvin Silbermintz is a staff writer for "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno", co-author of the book 'Backwords', and the man who popularized the neologism 'shmecklectomy'. Comment by clicking here.
© 2008, Marvin Silbermintz
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