Dennis Miller (b. 1953) turns 70 today, but let's get real -- hasn't he been 70 for the past 30 years? So let's just say that he's about a hundred. Hearing that he supported our previous garbage-president I was inclined to blow off my original design of doing a post on him entirely. But I admired the young Miller so much, he's clearly clever and even seems reflective, so I thought it worth contemplating the question we resorted to in the title.
Miller was a working class kid from Pittsburgh, who worked a succession of menial jobs even as was inspired by figures like the late Kelly Monteith to go into show business. His principal gift (as I'm sure you know) is for joke writing, and he has one of the most distinctive, easily identifiable styles in all of contemporary comedy. I'm not saying it's easy to write a Dennis Miller joke, but it is definitely easy to know what to strive for. His jokes tend to name-drop people from pop culture, best if they can be used to illustrate absurdities, and double best if the celebrities mentioned can trigger a knowing scorn for their intrinsic ridiculousness, maybe because they're borderline obscure or out of date. As it happens, most people in show business and in tabloids ARE ridiculous, if you think about it. Rare are those figures so universally beloved and respected and sacrosanct that they wouldn't rate a Dennis Miller joke.
Miller's definitely snarky and a wise-guy but he's rarely so mean that he rubs you the wrong way. He has a lot of charm and a lot of "class clown" energy. Here's an irony (though maybe it isn't one): he reminds me a lot of Bob Hope...and yet Bob Hope is definitely someone he would make a joke about. I would imagine that some people hate him, but to me, at least back in the day, he didn't register as cruel, because when it comes to a lot of his references, the people he mentions have dropped out of the conversation, so he's actually paying them tribute by remembering who they are at all. Certainly, to a degree he is showboating, showing off about the wide range of his news and pop culture consumption. But the end result is a kind of monumental, comic caricature of America. And, even today, he's frequently sharp as a tack.
Anyway, Miller started out doing local television and stand-up clubs in Pittsburgh in the late '70s and early '80s, and got some national attention for a joke he wrote for Playboy. Comedians who passed through town like Jay Leno and Jerry Seinfeld saw his talent and helped him transition to Los Angeles. 1985 was his breakthrough year: he placed second to Sinbad on Starsearch, got a spot on the Letterman show, and then the summit -- he landed the "Weekend Update" anchor spot on Saturday Night Live. He was appreciated at the time as the best performer in that role since the days of the original SNL cast. The show was kind of in the doldrums at that point, so it came as a kind of salvations. And the job allowed him to hone that comic voice we just described. The whole idea of "Weekend Update" is topical jokes.
Miller left the show in 1991, and since then has had a long succession of talk shows on television and radio, peppered with the occasional stand-up special. And gradually he changed. The short answer for that evolution, believe it or not, is Rudolph Giuliani. Living in New York during the years of Giuliani's mayoralty, he admired how the little ghoul brought down NYC's notorious crime rates (which had been proverbial for centuries, let alone decades) and objected to the left's characterization of him as a Fascist. Giuliani's job performance on 9/11 reinforced that feeling, as did George W. Bush's response to same, including the Patriot Act and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. A lot of what steered the change seems to have been, not just approval of the policies, but reaction to the left's responses to them, which he found irrational and out of line.
Knowing this, I think, should be instructive to the many who have found themselves bewildered by the success of the Trump cult. (As well as Bill Maher's recent rightward shift). America's idiotic two-party system artificially forces people into two opposing camps, basically two warring factions. Social media has exacerbated this. If you approve of this aspect or that of someone the opposition detests, you are automatically place in a category, whether you belong there, in the totality of your views, or not. When that occurs, you find yourself in adversarial relationship with former allies, and growing increasing ties and alliances with former opponents. And with only two choices, some people feel (incorrectly, I feel obliged to assert) that one devil is better than another. Many who chose Trump seem to have done so out of an irrational Hillary-hatred I'll never be quite able to fathom. If you listen to Miller's material, for the most part it's not Trump support, it's a ridiculing of what he sees as a humorless, hypocritical and meddling left. I'm not saying I condone where he's coming from. I think MAGA is a plague second only to, well...The Plague. But it goes toward a partial, semi-speculative answer to the question. I mean, being a Giuliani fan has always been a sketchy proposition, but NOW? I mean, come on.
On a related topic: Tinseltown conservatives didn't used to be quite as rare as they are today. For a look at Hollywood Republicans in the classic studio era, go here.
For more on show business history please see No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous, and keep an eye out for my upcoming Electric Vaudeville: A Century of Radio and TV Variety.
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