Starr Report Leaves Comedians in Joke Dilemma

While providing the country with a titillating view of President Clinton’s sex life, Kenneth Starr’s 445-page report presented a quandary to comedians: Do we just read this stuff verbatim, or try to write jokes?

Stephanie Miller wasn’t sure. Interviewed Friday, about an hour before she was to go on the air at KABC-AM (790), the comedian/talk-show host had been presented with an intact, comedy-friendly script. A cigar used as a sex toy? A president engaged in oral sex as he spoke on the phone to a congressman? With anecdotes like these, who needed to do bits?

Miller, not surprisingly, chose to do bits--calling Starr a “horndog” and referring to the report as a “$40 million sperm stain.”

But by late Friday, Miller was joining a comedy party already in full swing. For as the Clinton-Monica Lewinsky affair exploded into public view Friday, it suddenly seemed all the political world was a “Saturday Night Live” sketch. There was Clinton apologizing, Jimmy Swaggart-like, to a gathering of religious leaders. There was CBS reporter Sheryl Atkinson reading about how Lewinsky showed the president “the straps of her underwear.”

“Comedians are going to have a field day,” NBC’s Tom Brokaw noted dryly after hearing a list of gifts Clinton supposedly gave Lewinsky. “They won’t have to write any of their own material for six months.”

Perhaps because the scandal had already become such a comedy slam dunk, some comedians seemed to avoid it.

Reminding listeners that “all politics are local,” satirist Harry Shearer began his Sunday morning “Le Show” on KCRW-FM (89.9) talking about the furor in Santa Monica caused by plans to open a Hooters restaurant on the Third Street Promenade.

Of course, it didn’t take long for Shearer to arrive at the Starr report and the attendant fallout. In response to news reports that parents were wondering what to tell their children about the scandal, Shearer said: “Tell the children that if they’re ever accused of something by a zealot prosecutor, don’t publicly spit in the guy’s face.”

While David Letterman largely skirted the issue during his monologue Friday night on “The Late Show With David Letterman,” Jay Leno feasted on the scandal during his monologue on “The Tonight Show With Jay Leno.”

While Letterman was ready to move to his “viewer mail” segment, Leno was still firing off one-liners, including these:

“This Ken Starr report is now posted on the Internet. I’ll bet Clinton’s glad he put a computer in every classroom now.”

“I think secretly he’s bragging to his buddies in the White House locker room. ‘Yeah, they investigated my sex life. Needed 36 boxes.’ ”

“Tonight Show” head writer Jim Brogan acknowledged that the very tawdriness of the Starr report has given Leno and others license to turn up the heat on jokes about Clinton’s long-rumored sexual escapades.

“We would never have touched a joke about oral sex before,” said Brogan. “But there it is.”

Brogan reported to work at 2 p.m. Friday; by then, he said, Leno had already read the Starr report and was sifting through 100 potential jokes.

“He asked me if I wanted to read [the report],” Brogan said. “I said, ‘Jay, we’ll never get [the monologue] done if I read this.’ ”

Asked if he thought the Clinton joke-telling had already reached the overkill stage, Brogan didn’t think so.

“He’s the president,” Brogan said. “It’s not like he’s some homeless guy in the street. He’s the most powerful man in the country.”

At Sunday’s Emmy Awards, the report was fodder for presenter Chris Rock, who pulled out a cigar and said, “Early on in comedy, this was used as a prop. Today it still is.”

Fox’s “Mad TV” opened its season Saturday night, offering a parody of summer’s hit comedy film “There’s Something About Mary.” It featured Clinton having a problem with his zipper and, later, a scene in which he was ferociously attacked not by a dog but by the first lady. When he ducked to avoid one assault, Hillary went flying out the window.

Look for other media outlets to get in on the act. A new CD parodying the Clinton presidency, “Executive Privilege: The Inevitable Clinton Comedy Album,” is due in three weeks from Warner Bros. Produced by David Steinberg, the CD features comedian-actor Kevin Pollack voicing the president.

Still, there was this silver lining for the Clinton camp over the weekend: Not yet into its new season, “Saturday Night Live” ran a retrospective show on the late Gilda Radner. On CBS, the prerecorded “The Howard Stern Radio Show” featured the shock-jock interviewing a Penthouse centerfold and Siamese twins. There was also, ironically, an “intern beauty pageant”--although Lewinsky wasn’t among the contestants.

*

Times staff writer Judith Michaelson and the Associated Press contributed to story.