No doubt you’ve heard by now that the producers of tonight’s telecast of the 65th Primetime Emmy Awards intend to pay special “In-Memoriam” tribute to Cory Monteith of Glee.
Except that the Emmys had quite rightly never even nominated him. Yet they are snubbing more deserving actors like Larry Hagman of Dallas and Jack Klugman of The Odd Couple to honor him. (The Emmys had already slighted Hagman with just two career nominations but no wins. By contrast, it had quite rightly rewarded Klugman with three career wins.) What’s more, I could name many other actors – who died last year – who are more deserving than Cory.
This snub, I submit, is reason enough to boycott the show.
A sure sign of the oft-cited decline of Western civilization is a faux celebrity like Kim Kardashian making more money writing idle-minded tweets about her cash-driven life than a Pulitzer Prize-winning author like Philip Roth makes writing psychoanalytical books about his angst-ridden life. Apropos of which, is it any wonder Roth announced just last month that he was ending his writing career?
(“Twitter Rant: Take 2,” The iPINIONS Journal, November 27, 2013)
Trust me, I know only too well that I come across like a curmudgeon with my Twitter rants. But I hope the lamentation on the juvenilization of our culture and common sense they represent is not lost on my detractors.
Alas, this juvenilization will be dramatized in funereal fashion tonight. Mind you, just years ago (i.e., before Facebook and Twitter), no producer would have even countenanced paying special “In-Memoriam” tribute to a young actor whose claim to fame had more to do with his drug-addled (real) life than with the role he played, as part of an ensemble cast, on one TV show. Yet such is the cultivation of unearned fame today that the producers of tonight’s show think this makes sense.
Here’s the plainly disingenuous explanation executive producer Ken Erlich provided for this inmates-running-the-asylum decision:
To a younger generation, Cory Monteith’s portrayal of Finn Hudson (on Glee) was highly admired, and the producers felt that he should be included along with the four other individuals we have singled out [namely actress Jean Stapleton, actor James Gandolfini, comedian Jonathan Winters, and producer Gary David Goldberg].
(The Associated Press, September 21, 2013)
The obvious truth of course is that producers are hyping a tribute to him to boost ratings among the all-important young demographic – paying proper last respects to stars like Hagman and Klugman be damned.
The irony, though, is that most young people will probably be watching Sunday Night Football or the penultimate episode of Breaking Bad. Which is why I fully expect the ratings to reflect just how clueless producers were for thinking they could lure viewers from these counterprogramming shows with a one-minute tribute to Cory. Then again, the whole point of my rants is that there’s no longer any expectation of common-sense behavior in this age of Twitter and faux celebrity….
In any event, here, in part, is how Klugman’s son Adam decried Erlich’s explanation:
I think it’s criminal … my dad was at the inception of television and helped build it in the early days… What about the people who should be introduced to somebody like my father? I don’t mean to say anything disparaging about Cory, but he was a kid who had won no Emmys and it was a self-induced tragedy.
(Hollywood Reporter, September 21, 2013)
Well, not quite criminal, but surely his contempt for what Emmy producers intend is understandable….
Nonetheless, you might think some commentary on the actual, deserving winners tonight is still warranted, but I couldn’t possibly comment. For to do so in light of my outrage would be akin to asking that proverbially oafish question (purportedly coined by American singer, song writer and Mathematician Tom Lehrer):
Apart from that Mrs. Lincoln, how did you enjoy the play?
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* This commentary was originally published yesterday, Sunday, at 2:13 pm