Let me make this clear from the outset: I am not obsessed with Conan O’Brien. I have opinions about the late night talk show host — that his show is lousy, that he is not and has never been funny, that as a replacement for Jay Leno he will be a disaster — but I am not obsessed. Rather it is Entertainment Weekly that appears to be obsessed with him.

Buried deep within its television section, EW runs SoundBites, a weekly collection of “funny” things heard on television, a column which has surprisingly survived EW’s recent disastrous, text-halving redesign. Generally the quotes are culled from “sharp” witticisms enunciated by the likes of Chuck Lorre sitcoms, or The View, or the late night talk shows. Of among these, Conan O’Brien receives an inordinate proportion of coverage. There is no rational reason for this, as the “jokes” from O’Brien that SoundBites shares with us are not funny.

Since EW invites letters to the editor, addressed to ew_letters@ew.com, I decided that I would make the occasional enquiry about the reasons for the barrage of O’Brien apercus appearing in this column. On March 12, 2007. I wrote, “Is the person who does the SoundBites column figuratively or literally in bed with Conan O’Brien? Issue No. 925 is the second issue in a row in which a witless monologue comment by O’Brien is highlighted as a quote of the week. This is the rebirth of a trend that lapsed for a few weeks (was the compiler of quotes on vacation and unable to see his or her favorite show?), but throughout last year O’Brien was probably the most quoted person in the column. This would not be a problem if he were funny, but he isn’t (God, how I dread his taking over the Tonight Show), while there are truly witty comments emanating nightly from Leno, Ferguson, Stewart, Colbert, and Maher that go ignored. Is the columnist an old pal of O’Brien’s from Holworthy Hall at Harvard University. Or maybe it’s some sad fat girl, a cog in the AOL-Warner-Time-Life empire who landed upon the SoundBites column where she realized that she could promote the career of her beloved. No matter. One has to wonder what the secret deal is between O’Brien and Sound Biter.”

Naturally the letter was ignored. All my letters to the editor are ignored. But then O’Brien popped up again, so on May 24, 2007, I wrote again, starting off with that week’s O’Brian quote: “‘One of the most popular gifts for high school graduates this year is a gift certificate for plastic surgery. Apparently, the gift certificate is a perfect way to tell a recent graduate that you can be anything you want to be but not with that giant honker.’ Huh! How curious. Yet another Sound Bites quote culled from O’Brien’s witless, insight-free monologue. What is this, the fifth week in a row? You guys act like he is Mark Twain when he is little better than Pauley Shore.”

Again, no response, except that O’Brien appear only a month later, sparking yet another (useless) letter, on June 18, 2007. “No, really, seriously, it’s got to end. No more weekly O’Brien in the SoundBites column. He’s had more than his share of space and time to win anyone over. He isn’t funny and the laborious set ups for those limp punchlines take up space — three times the space of other quotes — that could be more charitably used for actual humor. Please, insist that the compiler of this column change the channel at 12:30 to one of O’Brien’s competitors, people who really do say funny, quotable things, Jimmy Kimmel, for example, or Craig Ferguson, TV personalities who are never quoted in the column.”

Was my plea answered? No, thus this bulletin from July 16, 2007. “My missives decrying the inclusion of witless ‘jokes’ told by Conan O’Brien in the SoundBites column seems to be having the opposite effect. Instead of avoiding him like the plague, as you should, you instead print yet another ‘joke’ in issue No. 944 (for the third time out of four weeks, it should be pointed out) and even highlight it with a photo of the ‘comedian.’ So what is EW going to be like when O’Brien ascends to the Tonight show chair, simply transcribe each of his monologues in full? I also defy you to explain the current joke, which has James Hetfield of Metallica at the airport setting off the ‘heavy metal detector.’ Like all O’Brien jokes, whimsy is set before sense. If it is a ‘heavy metal detector,’ wouldn’t it be a good thing if Hetfield set it off? After all, he is a heavy metal artist. What is setting off the alarm supposed to mean in this joke? What does it mean?”

None of these pleas were answered. When EW redesigned itself (always a sign that a publication is in trouble) a couple of weeks ago, I thought that maybe either SoundBites would be dropped (casting the poor fat girl adift to write an insiders novel about Time-Life), or that O’Brien would be dropped from it, thanks to a new, anonymous composer. Instead, O’Brien appeared in the “debut” redesign issue, and now, on Friday, three weeks later, I have received my latest issue, and there he is again, illustrated with the same image the magazine used the last time. Clearly this madness will never end. We must come to endure it as a cultural condiment, something we can never escape, like “good to go” or caveman ads or the phrase “Let’s not go there” or “I could tell you but I’d have to kill you,” all cultural artifacts about as funny as Mr. O’Brien himself. .

This entry was posted on Friday, July 18th, 2008 at 6:23 pm and is filed under Reel Politique - Film columnist DK Holm. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.