Jack Nicholson and Laura Flynn Boyle at the Clintons'
end of the year party at the White House, 1999.
May 26, 2002
The End of the Affair
By WALTER KIRN
The idea behind the show was role reversal. Kicking back in a semicircle on a sound stage around a stand-up comic turned social critic, minor celebrities played political journalists and minor political journalists played celebrities. The program was called ''Politically Incorrect'' to warn people that it would often offend them and to urge them to lighten up and play along. And for several seasons people did, though never in numbers large enough to raise the show to the ranks of Leno's and Letterman's straight comedy. Then one night last autumn, the banter died. Bill Maher, the host, who despite his vow of fearlessness had yet to scare off a major corporate sponsor or incite a boycott of anything, finally said something worthy of the show's title and sent his more sensitive advertisers scurrying. He called the American military ''cowardly'' for fighting its wars with remote-control cruise missiles and implied that the terrorists of Sept. 11 were comparative bravehearts for dying in their attacks.
Now that ABC has canceled the program (and announced that its time slot will ultimately go to Jimmy Kimmel, the frat-boy cutup of ''The Man Show'' on Comedy Central), it seems clear that Maher's comments doomed him and that there are still, and probably always will be, some things a person just can't say on television. The cause of free speech needs its martyrs, Heaven knows, but I wonder if there's not another story here, one that has less to do with network cold feet than with a national change in tastes. Could it be that the great role reversal failed and that the Hollywood-Washington nexus of the 90's that gave us George magazine, Bill Clinton rocking the vote on sax and the brief but curiously intense Warren Beatty-for-president episode has come undone at last?
It was fun while it lasted -- for its stars, at least -- but it always felt like a period piece in the making, this fusion of show biz and constitutional democracy. When John F. Kennedy Jr. dressed a supermodel as the father of our country and launched George (the lame title a tribute to its founder's star power and an omen of the concept's untenability), the idea was that fame was fame, whether that fame was measured by votes or by ticket sales. The ballot box and the box office were one. Cynical yet exhilarating, this notion had a certain postmodern ring to it. It also made both of the interested parties feel good. If politicians were the new celebrities, then there was no shame in appearing on MTV to chat about your underwear preferences. And if celebrities were the new politicians -- weren't their fans, in a sense, ''constituents''? -- then there was no arrogance in phoning the White House, or even flying there and spending the night, to discuss your pet theories on the causes of global warming.
The engineers of American pop culture, who are always looking for crossover ideas that will combine the audiences for two things into a bigger audience for one thing, smelled an opportunity. One result was ''The Man From Hope,'' the studio-quality biopic that wowed the '92 Democratic convention. Another was ''Politically Incorrect.'' As the Clinton White House took on the appearance of the Playboy Mansion East, it somehow seemed natural for habitues of the Playboy Mansion West to pose as watchdogs of democracy. In the go-go management language of the era, L.A. and D.C. spotted a ''market inefficiency'' in their longtime practice of maintaining separate A-lists. Why not join up and make it one big party?
So they did, but the public felt a little left out. The folks in flyover country felt overflown by this swinging bicoastal encounter session. George magazine's best-selling issues -- till Kennedy's death created a spike in interest -- were its first ones, while the audience for Maher's program (on which performers, who in earlier decades might not have made the cut for ''What's My Line?'' were asked to give their opinions on welfare reform) failed to grow much and, ultimately, dwindled. What's worse, Barbra Streisand, the Clinton administration's West Coast ambassador without portfolio, never quite got the respect that she was angling for and finally fell silent on public policy -- around the same time that a gala for Al Gore the candidate had to be moved from the real Playboy Mansion, where, before the late 90's, it never would have been scheduled.
The whole fusion thing seems dated suddenly. While Hollywood returns to its old formulas, replacing the topical gabbing of a Maher with the know-nothing gross-out humor of a Kimmel, the face of political fame has also changed. Its hair is shorter, and it looks like Donald Rumsfeld. Instead of lounge-lizard statesmen with personal keys to David Geffen's bachelor pad, what the public wants now are supercompetent technocrats with no discernible private lives who sublimate their libidos by plotting strategy instead of parading them on cable. The Old Establishment, with its punctual cocktail hours, has a broader appeal now than the New Establishment, with its Renaissance Weekends and wild all-nighters. Indeed, it's hard to imagine today's Rumsfeldians staying up late enough to watch a show like Maher's. Bush's Washington is already in bed when Hollywood is only waking up, and that will make hanging out together difficult. A lot of folks, neither powerful nor glamorous, and wary of those who desire to trade places and take turns being both, won't mind a bit.
Walter Kirn is the literary editor of GQ. His most recent book is ''Up in the Air,'' a novel.