Comedy or news? Funny you should ask

Once upon a time, before CNBC’s “Dennis Miller,” before co-hosting “Monday Night Football,” even before HBO’s “Dennis Miller Live,” the actual Dennis Miller, host of “SNL’s” “Weekend Update,” had the headline joke-extraction market pretty well cornered. And as sarcastic know-it-alls go, he was pretty funny.

But that was long ago, before “Saturday Night Live’s” incisive Tina Fey revitalized his former franchise, before Jon Stewart remade “The Daily Show” into the only genuine source of political satire on American TV, and before Miller -- whose political apostasy was so swift, categorical and absolute that it made St. Augustine’s thunderbolt conversion to Christianity look like a passing fancy -- became a man on a very particular, if very confusing, mission.

“Nine-eleven changed me,” Miller said last week, by way of explaining how a guy whose living once involved impugning the intellect of the commander in chief could wind up across the table from David Horowitz, another liberal-turned-conservative-pundit, calling him “Davey” and tacitly agreeing to his suggestion that the CIA failed to do its job in Iraq because “the liberals in the universities” somehow prevented its agents from learning Arabic in college.

As Stewart remarked to uber-hawk Richard Perle last week, “It’s a wild world.”

To effect his conversion, Miller seems simply to have pointed his trademark sneer in the direction opposite. But Miller is not the only one whose comedic approach changed after the terrorist attacks. As Stewart told Tad Friend in a New Yorker profile in early 2002, when Stewart took over “The Daily Show” from Craig Kilborn in 1999 the show’s humor shifted from what Stewart called “adjectival humor” and ad hominem, often appearance-based, potshots to having the writers express what they “really felt.”

After Sept. 11, the show’s real foe came into clear focus: the hyperbolic, hysterical and fear-mongering media and, as Friend wrote, “anyone who terrifies, offends or panders to Americans, from Al Qaeda to Tom Ridge.”

Two and a half years later, “The Daily Show” has won three Emmys and become, according to a recent study, one of the primary sources of news for people under 35. This despite Stewart’s dogged insistence that his show was, in fact, “a fake news show.” Of course, regular viewers know that “The Daily Show” is the opposite of fake: It is brutally, nonpartisanly sincere. Lacking in pretense, Stewart is able to say anything that pops into his head as long as it is posed, “Jeopardy”-style, in the form of a question.

Stewart’s reaction to the administration’s backpedaling on the weapons of mass destruction as a reason for the preemptive attack on Iraq, for instance, consisted of a cartoonish “Whaa?,” quickly followed by a sly, composed grin.

Like Stewart, Miller is a comedian impersonating an anchorman. Unlike him, Miller takes himself very, very seriously. (Though his rhetorical style -- verbose and peppered with literary and pop-culture allusions -- still seems better suited to the type of person who gets a shivery thrill from catching an obscure reference than to the type who says “nucular.”)

Miller’s jokes have always been as snappy and spontaneous as a valedictory speech, but they now require a five-minute explanation: His withering scorn will be reserved henceforth exclusively for Democrats, people he finds physically unattractive and their unholy amalgam, Dennis Kucinich.

“I guess you’ve heard I’m not nearly as liberal as I used to be,” Miller said last Monday night, as he launched into a remarkable Howard Beale-ish, mad-as-hell-style diatribe, which followed a bit with a chimp. “I still consider myself a liberal to the extent that I really do believe in someone’s right to think and act as conservatively as they want to.”

Cute. But, seriously, Miller has chosen to exercise this right by giving President Bush what he himself called “a pass.” (“I like him,” Miller told the Associated Press last week. “I take care of my friends.”) By this he means there will be no criticism of the president on his show -- which, due to an overwhelming lack of jokes, a rather somber set, and long, fawning interviews with prominent political figures, looks a lot like ... a real news show.

The decision is also baffling in light of Miller’s other stated goal: namely, to “convey just how insane the public discourse has become in this country.”

(“Highlighting this ludicrousness will be the core tenet of this show,” he went on. “In an increasingly polarized world, I believe you want someone to get incensed for you. Simply put, we will do the news as catharsis. When who is to blame is clear, we’re not going to waste time pretending to adhere to the McGuffin of fair and balanced. We’re going to strive to be fair and unbalanced. We will attack the bad guys from every possible angle.”)

How all of this jibes with previous statements, such as “I don’t have credibility, I’m a comedian,” is unclear. (He also reportedly claimed not to be making a comedy show.) The confusion is reflected in the show, which is clearly in the grip of a serious identity crisis.

Miller makes up for his intellectual leanings (for which he basically apologized to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who assured him that he “communicates very well”) with tricks like the “Dean scream button,” a handy buzzer that emits the shriek heard ‘round the world every time he punches it.

With “Dennis Miller,” CNBC hopes to attract viewers who defect to Fox News come sundown. It’s a reasonable strategy for the network and for someone who announced “excoriation has been my milieu up to this point” (um, meaning his metier). On his show he said he would be a smart aleck with the smart alecks and heartfelt with the sincere people.

Last week, the sincere people consisted of Schwarzenegger (returning the campaign-stumping favor by appearing on episode one), former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and Sen. John McCain. Needless to say, Miller’s fawning interview style made Jiminy Glick look like Mike Wallace.

Perle and former Bush speechwriter David Frum, co-authors of “An End to Evil,” paid visits to Stewart and Miller, respectively, last week. Stewart interviewed Perle, and Miller put Frum in his pundit standoff, the “Varsity Panel.” Let’s compare this excerpt from “The Daily Show” ...

Perle tells Stewart that Iraq was attacked because it was in defiance of several U.N. resolutions.

Stewart: “That is, in some respects, like saying we have to go to war with Iraq, in defiance of the U.N. ... to protect the U.N.”

... with this excerpt from “Dennis Miller”:

Frum: “I have talked to European politicians who say that global warming is evil, that the American habit of driving SUVs is evil. That everything is evil except for evil.”

Miller: “Everything is evil except the foreign guy with the mustache throwing bodies into the wood chipper.”

Hmm. “Whaa?”

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‘Dennis Miller’

Where: CNBC

When: 6 to 7 p.m. Mondays to Thursdays, repeated at 9 p.m. and 1 a.m.; 6 to 7 and 9 to 10 p.m. Fridays and Sundays.

Host...Dennis Miller

Executive producer, Dennis Miller. Senior producer and head writer, Eddie Feldmann.

Also: “The Daily Show With Jon Stewart” airs on Comedy Central, 11-11:30 p.m. Mondays through Thursdays, with multiple repeat airings.