By Bree Hocking
Barack Obama’s “celebrity friends,” as John McCain likes to call them, came out swinging Sunday night at the 60th Primetime Emmy Awards, although strangely enough, there was little-to-no direct reference to the Democratic presidential candidate himself.
McCain & Co., on the other hand, they couldn’t stop talking about.
A mind-numbingly pointless opening skit performed by the quintet of nominated reality show hosts included the fitting observation: ”We are like on Sarah Palin’s Bridge to Nowhere.”
Tommy Smothers, whose opposition to the Vietnam War led to CBS’ cancelling of the “Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour” back in 1969, finally got a much deserved honorary Emmy and reminded us that “there’s nothing more scary than watching ignorance in action.” He added: “Truth is what you get other people to believe.”
Laura Linney, winning for the HBO mini-series “John Adams” made the most pointed reference to Obama of the night, noting that she was ”grateful for the community organizers that helped form our country.”
Martin Sheen’s fictional President Bartlet of “West Wing” fame urged everyone to “vote for the candidate of your choice at least once.”
The funniest men in television — no, Ryan Seacrest, not Hannity and Colmes — Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart were in top form as usual.
Colbert, a bag of prunes in hand, pontificated: “I think right now American needs a prune. It may not be a young, sexy plum. Granted, it is shriveled and at times hard to swallow. But this dried-up old fruit has the experience we need.”
To which Stewart retorted: “You know after eight years of prunes, you would think …”
“Never enough,” Colbert shot back. “What could possibly go wrong?”
Kirk Ellis, the writer who won for “John Adams” was able to thank his producers for allowing him to portray “a period in our history when articulate men articulated complex thoughts in complete sentences,” before getting cut off by the music. Meanwhile, the guy who played the title character in the miniseries, Paul Giamatti, emphasized that his win was proof that ”anybody can play the president. Anybody can play the president.”
The spring-winter combo of Don Rickles and Kathy Griffin, presenting the award for Best Reality Competition, quipped: “The world hasn’t seen a pairing like this since John McCain and Sarah Palin.”
Then there was Tom Hanks, producer of “John Adams,” who summed up the current state of this most dada of presidential elections rather succinctly.
“The election between Jefferson and Adams was filled with innuendo, lies, bitter partisan press and disinformation,” he said. “How great we’ve come so far since then.”
For once, Hollywood was making sense.
Now if they could just channel some of that energy into making halfway decent TV shows.
