The Conan Backlash Draws Nigh
by MICHAEL TUNISON / CONAN O'BRIEN / CONTRARIAN / NBC / TWITTER
Conan O’Brien announced today that beginning next month he will embark on a 30-city comedy tour to keep himself occupied during the seven-month period in which he is prohibited from appearing on television. Otherwise he might only be living on the meager tens of millions he received from his exit contract with NBC. And, naturally, he announced the tour on Twitter, which he now stands astride as a mighty ginger colossus.
Of course, people got really, really excited about this. Like, unsettling amounts of excited. An excitement that caused them to drop nearly $100 per ticket to see a comedian who many of them didn’t watch when he was performing free every night on their TV. An excitement that will also no doubt cause some to find the massive outpouring of Conan love to be downright repellent. Perhaps it will only be overly cynical hating people like myself who loathe seeing so much unvarnished praise heaped on one person, but I imagine there will be others.
However, I’m not quite there yet. Conan is funny, to be sure. His show was good for a late night talk show, which generally are not the most entertaining or consistently creative programs in the world. But then he got kind of screwed over by NBC and Jay Leno, and all of a sudden liking a wealthy TV personality became akin to sticking it to The Man, the teachers who doubted you, the bosses who don’t appreciate you, the girls who spurned you and the uppity grocery cashier who is silently judging my purchases (YEAH, I LIKE THE GODDAMN NEOPOLITAN! SO WHAT?). It was an odd phenomenon and it persists unchecked.
If one year ago today, Conan O’Brien announced a 30-city comedy tour, would all the performances sell out within hours? Would they have to add dates because of high demand? Possibly, but I doubt it. It’s certainly a canny move on Conan’s part to find a project to capitalize on all the warm, fuzzy feelings people have for him. But is my dislike for Jay Leno enough that I’ll spend $80 to see Conan O’Brien do an extended monologue live? Not really.
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Nonpopulist
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The_Pip
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Jane
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Kristen
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Mike Tunison
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robinwi
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robinwi
— January 20‚ 2009 —
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