Now I Wonder How Whatsername Has Been

After today was mostly over, I discovered that it was National Unfriend Day. As you can guess, it's a day in which you are encouraged to unfriend people on social media, particularly Facebook. Apparently this was started by Jimmy Kimmel.  (Though the story about it on the evening news didn't mention that part, so as a viral marketing tool, it didn't work that well.) According to the Facebook page, you should use the following criteria:

• If you wouldn’t loan someone 50 dollars, unfriend them.
• If you wouldn’t invite them to your birthday party, unfriend them.
• If you wouldn’t cry if they got hit by a bus, unfriend them.

I'm not sure about those rules: I've never had large parties, and I would cry for a number of people I wouldn't loan fifty bucks to. But maybe I'm just emotional. After all, I don't really get the concern some people have over friendship being so broadly defined on social media.

Sure, there are plenty of practical concerns about how many friends you have. You can only keep up with so many people, you don't want to share your personal information with someone you just met, and some people post way too much stuff.  Or they post things that make you angry, which is another odd thing about this day: why have Unfriend Day right after American election day?  We've just gone through months of unfriending, with no promotion needed.

Beyond those problems, I don't see why there's a problem with having too many friends.  Unfriend Day's page says it's to "protect the sacred nature of friendship," but I don't think that's a problem.  My close friendships are not harmed just because my friend is also friends with someone they met at night school eight years ago, or the woman in HR he can't remember the last name of.

I'm not just targeting Kimmel here: Others have tried to put down social media friends over the years, portraying them as meaningless things that are little more than acquaintances.  I've always thought that feeling was misguided; there's a lot to be said for those lighter friendships.  I'm not pretending that they are the equivalent of the people you share a close connection with.  But they are a big part of your life. After all, since those relationships include most of your co-workers, and many people you socialize with, you probably spend half your waking hours with them.  They have a big impact on whether you gave good days or bad, and a person who has a positive effect on you can make a big difference in your life.

And the fact is, you don't know when you may have to depend on a sort-of friend.  You don't know when misfortune may strike, and you might need to rely on your acquaintances.  You may find that when push comes to shove, they care more than you expected.  Maybe they'll even loan you fifty dollars.

So don't unfriend your less-close friends.  Instead, be glad that we have technology to maintain connections with so many people. And you could reflect on how so many people have affected your life. Or at least, wonder why anyone would look at this world and decide the problem is that there are too many friends.

Lies, Damned Lies, And Satire

Jimmy Fallon is taking a lot of flack for his interview with Donald Trump, in which he ruffled Trump's hair, asked him a bunch of softball questions, and generally made him look like a regular human being.  That might not seem fair, given that he hosts a talk show, and a fairly light-hearted one at that.  But at the same time, in our Post-Stewart world, the lines between satire and news reporting have been blurred, and we're used to the idea that humourists often say the things that reporters are afraid to.

But there's a bigger issue here, and that is that politicians and voters have blurred the lines between entertaining and campaigning.  As this American election keeps proving, most people vote based on feelings rather than anything logical.  An oft-used test is that people are looking for the candidate they'd most like to have a beer with.  When you look at it that way, you realize that even a relaxed talk show appearance is image construction. It's more important to the candidate as any hard-hitting interview with a journalist, because it has more of an impact on what the public cares about.  So really, even entertainers like Fallon have to consider the political impact of politicians on the show, since the candidates are considering the impact of the show on their campaign.

Another campaign media development got people talking, though this was in the more traditional news media.  It was a New York Times report on the now-infamous press conference in which Donald Trump relented on the Birther issue, but then tried to pin it all on Hilary Clinton and take credit for putting an end to the controversy.  As you hopefully know, Clinton has never had anything to do with the Birther concept, so that was a brazen lie, even by Trump's standards.

What was interesting in the Times' coverage was that they just came right out and said, in their coverage on the front page, that it was a lie. That's unusual, because the way journalism has operated recently is that the media reports what both sides say, without any implication as to who is right, except perhaps on the op-ed page or some other in-depth reporting deep within the paper. It was only a small thing, but it represented quite a philosophical shift, so this could be a big turning point for the paper, if not all of journalism.

And now let's put together those two topics of talk shows handling the election and the discarding of journalism's misguided attempt at neutrality. Often is seems as though late night hosts are having the same struggles as journalists: they're trying to be even-handed, joking about both sides equally.  For one thing, that's proving difficult.  For all her imperfections, Hilary Clinton isn't a goldmine of comedy, as David Letterman's interminable pantsuit jokes proved.

But the other problem is the same one journalists face, that it's hard to hit both sides when one is a whole lot crazier than the other. It's interesting to see how they handle it. The venerable Daily Show hasn't always handled it well.  Of course, they've gone after Trump far more often, but they tend to stick to the idea that this is just a weird election.  Compare that to their alumni Samantha Bee and John Oliver, who take an approach that's more like, "I can't believe this is happening, am I the last sane person in America?"

Not to speak ill of the dead, but I was really turned-off of The Nightly Show in its final months as they struggled to find a position on the election.  Their writers and cast were firmly in the Bernie Sanders camp, and it often seemed like they were working harder against Clinton than against Trump. And speaking of Daily Alumni, Stephen Colbert seems a bit undecided about how to approach this election.  At times he seems to be able to put together the clever critiques that made him famous, and you can really feel how he's feeling more comfortable with the material than he is trying to do light chatting with the band leader.  But at other times, Colbert tries to walk the line and appeal to everyone. He tries desperately to channel Jay Leno, but it just isn't him, nor is it what we need right now.

The big pleasant surprise has been Seth Meyers.  For one thing, it's surprising because he's at NBC, which is also the home of the aforementioned Fallon, and fellow Trump pawns, Saturday Night Live.
It's also surprising because I had thought he was a bit of a lightweight contender in this golden age of televised political satire. But he's often the most effective voice when it comes to calling Trump on his antics. That's in terms of both humour and in drawing out precisely what is wrong with that day's controversies.  It makes me sorry about the post last year when I accused him of nerd-self-hatred.

He Won't Bort You If You Give Him A Fert Shot

Stephen Colbert has been named the new host of Late Night. No, I mean the Late Show. Well the one with David Letterman anyway. People seem fairly positive about the decision, which is good, because there seems to be an awful lot of discussion of late-night talk shows, given how few people actually watch them.

Some are concerned about the fact that Colbert, on his current show, plays a character. We don't really know what he's actually like. I doubt that would be a problem though. First, if you watch his show carefully, you'll see he drops out of character a lot. He'll occasionally say something extreme that plays into the type-A conservative persona, but then tones it down for most of what his dialog.  Secondly, if we're honest, we have to realize that current talk show hosts kind of play a character anyway. If you doubt that, try to imagine any of them at home acting like they do on air.

After Seth Meyers was named new host of Late Night, people lamented that it was yet another white male. The complaints have been surprisingly muted for Colbert, which I suppose is a result of his being an advocate of those who would otherwise complain about lack of representation. But I think it also could be an acknowledgement of this being a good decision.

Now people have started speculating on who will take over Colbert's old time slot. I saw a few tweeters pushing for Samantha Bee. My first reaction was to say, no way, her Daily Show character wouldn't work in doses longer than single sketches. But as I think about it, I think it just might work. If The Colbert Report is a spoof of right-wing pundit shows, Bee's character might be right for a spoof of desperate-to-make-a-story cable news. Or to put out another way: after spending the better part of a decade ridiculing Fox News, why not give CNN a go. So yes, I'd give Bee 180 or whatever it's called a chance.

Let's See Who's On Fallon

I watched tonight's interview with Rob Ford on Jimmy Kimmel Live!.  Well, I only watched part of it.  Eventually I grew sick of watching that amoral clown who'll do anything for attention.  And Rob Ford was annoying too.

This incident really crossed a few lines:  First, from Rob Ford's perspective.  It's one thing to be the butt of jokes.  That's part of being a politician (not usually this big a part, but always a part.)  But actually going out of your way to go on a show to be the butt of jokes is something else.  He seems to have transitioned from mayor to full-time publicity-seeker.

And for Jimmy Kimmel.  Sure, comedians often joke about liking politicians who provide them with material.  But they don't actually help those politicians out.  They may say they're going to vote for Anthony Weiner, but they don't actually do it. Yes, I know Kimmel didn't volunteer to work on his re-election or anything, but a softball interview in which Ford is allowed to repeat his usual lies without challenge certainly helps him out more than a campaign contribution.  Even Ford's former allies in the Sun wouldn't do that much for him.

When a comedian makes fun of a person, it should be because that person has done something to genuinely deserve it. And if that person genuinely deserves to be targeted, we want to see them actually get ridiculed. Suddenly giving them a free pass makes it seem like you're not a comedian so much as a jerk who'll strike out at anyone when it's convenient, and it's not satisfying to watch that.

The irony is that Kimmel famously disliked Jay Leno, and yet this sort of ideologically empty comedy was something Leno was often accused of: He'd make any joke about any public figure, no matter whether it was fair or accurate or contradicting the joke he made the night before.  But now Kimmel seems to have taken up the anything-for-a-laugh (and ratings) mantel.