Actor and producer Vince Vaughn might have cultivated a certain reputation based on his popular roles as the “Vegas, Baby!” wingman, frat boy who never grew up, or any number of smart-mouthed, fast-talking bros who always seem to land on their feet. It wasn’t a surprise, then, to hear him talking earlier this week with outspoken candidness about the sorry state of entertainment with podcaster and comedian Theo Von on his show, “This Past Weekend with Theo Von.”
Most of the post-podcast focus centered on Vaughn’s criticism of late-night talk shows, with the Swingers actor telling Von they are becoming “the same show” and “really agenda-based.” The Wedding Crashers star continued, “They all became so about their politics and who’s good and who’s bad.”
But his main point, an overarching observation about the current state of American culture in the wake of cruelly divisive politics permeating every facet of entertainment, is that we have lost a deep, authentic sense of commonality. When we can’t share laughter, what can we share?
Vaughn has the secret sauce:
The truth is most people, they want to laugh. They don’t want to see stuff be precious that you can’t talk or joke about. Most people can make fun of themselves. You know, in the real world, if you don’t have a sense of humor about yourself, then it’s a lonely experience. You got to be able to laugh at yourself. You can look back at stuff that you believed so strongly a few years ago and laugh about it. So, I think you got to have that quality and comedy is that: being able to laugh at stuff.
Vaughn’s observation, so simple and truthful that it was easy to overlook, earns him the title of Everyman Hero — especially in an industry increasingly dominated by shallow moral preening and risk-averse, viewpoint-reinforcing clique hierarchies that make junior high cheer squads look like bastions of meritocracies and courageous champions of individuality (no offense to junior high cheer squads).
Vaughn, who grew up in the Midwest and never went to college and put his career on the back burner after getting married and having kids, is the heir apparent to the late actor and comedian John Candy. What these two share is an unapologetic view of the good in people and a refusal to engage in the chest-thumping applause mills that get attention from bobble-heads at award shows, glossy write-ups, and fawning interviews by mainstream media outlets. These hacks would rather rattle their tin cups for pennies like an organ grinder’s monkey than find some connection with the average working-class American.
You’d never hear Kimmel, Steven Colbert, or Jimmy Fallon echoing Vaughn’s sentiments about the Pledge of Allegiance: “We were super pro-America, too. Everything was. It was taught in that way. I thought it [The Pledge of Allegiance] was good. Hell, yes. I liked it. By the way, I love it … I still feel the same way. I still feel like [America] it’s the best out there. Not that it’s perfect.”
Instead, we get television “stars” who trash half of America so they can keep paying their kids’ private school tuition. Just after Vaughn’s truth bomb, Jimmy Kimmel illustrated his point by targeting Sen. Markwayne Mullin in his sermon monologue, not for any gaffe or silly political grandstanding on the senator’s part, but because he used to be a plumber. Gee, hard not to find the laughter in that.
Jimmy Kimmel had to keep his career afloat somehow. You didn’t think he was coasting along on his…talent, did you?
The late-night shows had one rule: be funny. To participate, you didn’t have to be a part of the Cool Kids Comedy Club, which isn’t about comedy at all but about signaling your superior intellect or esteemed opinion over the hoi polloi knuckle who (gasp) just want to enjoy some lighthearted entertainment and honest fun before a night’s sleep ahead of a backbreaking or mind-numbing job the next day.
Vaughn understands this concept — that comedy works when shots are taken at everyone and comedians are actually doing comedy. Ratings for these shows are tanking because the people in charge of them aren’t doing their jobs. “You don’t want to become part of a group and feel like you’re now a champion for one ideology. You want to make fun of everybody.” What Colbert, Kimmel, and Fallon are selling is “the same show,” but in the sense that it’s entirely predictable. People are tuning out because they know exactly what they’re going to see, night after night: basically, an MS NOW show with a studio audience. People don’t want to turn on a comedy show and get an hour’s worth of condescension and mean-spirited, mindless snark. If they did, Joy Reid might still have a TV gig.
What defined the golden era of late-night was that it offered Americans equal opportunity to laugh, no matter one’s race, sex, religion, socioeconomic status, or political persuasion. “Ultimately,” says Vaughn, “comedy is a big tent.” It used to be. “We used to be a proper country,” the saying goes. We will be again when we can all laugh about it.
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