Last Saturday night, CNN debuted D.L. Hughley Breaks the News. I know what you’re thinking: he just put that headline on this post because D.L. Hughley’s a black guy. But the news-comedy show that he produced, at least the first time out, was at least as race-conscious, if not more, than David Allan Grier’s Chocolate News for Comedy Central. We got a joke about black people’s cholesterol levels (Obama’s is 176, which Hughley said was the lowest in history for a black man). We got an interview with “Freddie Mac,” dressed as a pimp. And we got a fake race-baiting anti-Obama ad, which said that under Obama’s health-insurance plan, everybody would get the same grilles on their teeth.
On a sheer comedy level, Hughley’s monologue needs a while to gel. I’m not sure if it was his nerves—though he needs to get out of the habit of laughing anxiously at his own jokes—or the audience, but he and the crowd seemed out of sync. (It seemed at times like the audience wasn’t sure how much they were supposed to laugh at a CNN taping—or maybe it was just that his material wasn’t that funny.)
But more than that, I’m just a little puzzled how this show fits into CNN’s present game plan. As you might have guessed from Hughley’s past appearances, his comedy leaned more than a tiny bit pro-Obama and anti-Republican. (One joke suggested that if Colin Powell joined Obama’s cabinet, it would be the first time there were two blacks in the White House “since Thomas Jefferson had a three-way.” I assume Hughley has heard of Condoleezza Rice.)
Don’t get me wrong: I know that comedy has a point of view, and that nonopinionated political comedy is usually pretty boring comedy. I also don’t care about cable networks having shows with partisan hosts, whether it’s Rachel Maddow or Sean Hannity. As long as the host’s beliefs are out there, no harm done.
But just as a ratings proposition, CNN has explicitly been selling itself lately as a neutral alternative to both Fox News and MSNBC. Late-night show or not, Hughley doesn’t exactly fit into that strategy. What this programming move may show is that, with the election proving the biggest show of the year and the news media competing with everyone from bloggers to Jon Stewart, the need to put on a show trumps everything.
In any case, that decision is above my pay grade, as they say. Hughley will probably want to worry about the funny quotient rather than the meta-strategy of his network. As it is, it’s still an uncomfortable fit, as demonstrated by the fake CNN Election Facts bumpering each segment (“‘Super-duper delegates’ can fly and have x-ray vision”) and a forced skit with Hughley’s monologue being fact-checked by the CNN Truth Squad.
But if Hughley gets some time to run with the show, it should at least be an interesting experiment. Will D.L. Hughley break the news, or will CNN break the comedy?