Dennis Miller: All In

Several years ago the wife and I drove to Frostburg, MD to see Dennis Miller live.  He was supposrting his then recent “Off White” album.  The night we went to see him, he had a cold/flu thing and his opening act, Denny Dillon’s Sheer Art Attack, ended up going on after him so that he could get medicated and get in bed sooner.  His show was hilarious and very intelligent.  Dillon’s show was amazing.  There used to be some videos of Dillon’s act on You Tube, but the last time I looked I couldn’t find them.  He would come on stage and while music played, he would throw paint on a canvas and end up painting a perfect portrait of the artist whose music was playing.  As I said, it was amazing.  I thank Dennis Miller for introducing me to Mr. Dillon’s work.  Sadly he died a few years later.

Miller didn’t die, but his act has changed to the point it almost seems like the old Dennis Miller has died as well.  Back when we saw Miller, his comedy was more left leaning.  He poked fun at Clinton, but the jabs with true vitriol were directed at Newt Gingerich and the Republicans.  Somewhere around the time of the 9/11 attacks, Miller changed his politics and began talking about Democrats like a man talking about an ex that he particularly despises.  You know, the one he refers to with the C word or the B word 99% of the time.  The telling moment in Dennis Miller: All In was when he tells the audience that all politicians are idiots or crooks, but then he only mentions liberal Democratic politicians.  As a West Virginian, I took special umbrage at his remarks about the recently deceased Robert Byrd.  He tries to paint Byrd as a crazy old man that needs to be put in a home, but Byrd was one of only a small number of politicians that had the balls to stand up and speak against going to war with Iraq, especially in the manner in which we did.  And guess what, Byrd was right.  I didn’t always agree with Robert Byrd, but I certainly respected him and I admired his arcane knowledge of the laws, by-laws, and rules of the Senate.  Miller makes a crack about Byrd needing to go home to WV and get a job as a greeter at a KKK-Mart.  Yes, as a youth Byrd was a member of the KKK, but he grew up and denounced his racist past, something I can’t recall the late Republican Senator Strom Thurmond ever doing.  Of course Miller doesn’t have any issues with Thurmond’s civil rights stance because that might knock him out of getting another appearance on FOX News.

In case you haven’t noticed, I tend to be much more a liberal, and that may color my views on Miller’s new style of comedy.  Basically, I don’t think he is as funny.  I expect my comedians to joke about all the insanity in politics all the way up to the President no matter which party they happen to be in.  Everybody made fun of Clinton, and he was a big boy and he could take it.  George W. Bush was a different story.  Miller gives him a free pass with the exception of a dig at the way he pronounces “nuclear”.  I just didn’t find his act all that funny because of his blatant partisanship.  Miller is certainly entitled to his own opinion, it’s just not one that I share.  He claims that even if we find the war in Iraq to be wrong or immoral or we’re against it for any reason, that we need to shut up and not say so in public.  In public, we should be praising the decision to invade a sovreign country.  I’m sorry, Dennis.  I believe in a little thing called Freedom of Speech.  Lenny Bruce would be very disappointed in you.

I would normally rate a comedy special on the Night Flight scale, but for the first time, I don’t think I can possibly do that.  I disagreed with Dennis so much, that it biased my opinion about the rest of his act.  You can try and check your own biases at the door, if you choose to watch it.  In fact if you happen to be of a right wing conservative mind set, you might think he’s hilarious.  Personally I feel like one of those people in Invasion of the Body Snatchers who has been confronted with someone that looks like their family member, but just isn’t quite the same.