Dennis Miller: The Raw Feed

I used to be a big Dennis Miller fan. His rants (later made to books) as well as his overall TV show on HBO was often smart and funny. He knew how to take good pot shots at all the angles. Then after 9/11, he started his decline (his latest show on TV is awful). Once his TV show on HBO ended, this special came. I was interested to see what he had to say, and I *tried* to not put a political bias in my way of liking it or not. But the problem is that, aside from the material verging into just aimless pontification and even talking points from the right-wing, it's just not up to par with his past stand-up stuff. Sometimes a funny line will come up when talking about celebrities (the Willem Dafoe joke was my favorite). However with the political jokes, he doesn't seem to even get as big laughs, per say, from the audience as he gets applause for his lines. It's also of note that the special was taped right before Bush plunged the US into Iraq, and from here you can clearly tell his alliances. It's somewhat of a drag seeing how he's so drastically changed in nine or ten years from his special in 93 (he used to be not necessarily liberal or conservative, somewhere in the middle, not so here), but I didn't want to care about his bias while watching it. Meanwhile, it seemed as though the audience itself had a bias. What I cared about was if the jokes worked, the ironies, and it just didn't do it for me. I'd rank it as my least favorite special of his, despite a few laugh-out-loud jabs. C-

Dennis Miller can be funny and has had his moments. Sadly, this isn't one of them. It appears he used up all his best material before this 2003 appearance. I don't mind his conservative politics, but in this concert it seems his idea of political humor is simply uninspired attacks at the left. I don't mind attacking the left with humor... so long as it's actually clever. What he presents is simply angry self righteous insults that clearly appeal to a those on the right so hungry for conservative humor that they are just happy to enjoy the rare sight of a comedian attacking the left that they don't bother to notice he's not funny.

Aside from his weak attempts at political humor, the rest of his routine seems to be unrelated rants made up of pop culture references, recycled (stolen) material from other comedians, and his signature pretentious use of multi-syllable words to give the false impression he's being clever.

The saddest part about this angry rant from this chicken hawk is watching it again all these years later (I just caught it on TV again last night) and seeing just how wrong and misguided he was about nearly all of his political rants... particularly his call to invade Iraq and mocking those that questioned it. He sounds like a fat man giving diet advice and the irony is completely lost on him when he questions the patriotism of any on the left and insinuates they lack the courage to fight... while he forgets that he, himself, never served.

With liberal humor dominating television and print, it's a testament to the strength of the material that Dennis Miller was able to drop this bomb in the heighth of the anti-war protests it mocks. Drawing on his experience as the 10-year host of his Emmy-winning HBO show "Dennis Miller Live" and his frequent appearances on political and talk shows, Miller fashions an eloquent, insightful and dangerously edgy monologue as hilarious as it is brilliant. Miller's humor is very intelligent, but he speaks from a very common-man perspective, and it's about time someone thew back what the liberals were dishing out. Soon to be launching a political talk show on CNBC later this month, Dennis Miller is sure to be a fixture for common sense political humor for years to come.