On Fri, Jul 24, 2015 at 11:02 AM, Tom Wolper <[email protected]> wrote: > > I just listened to the WTF Cenac interview and the TDS story was long and > nuanced. They spent about 30 minutes discussing Cenac's tenure there and > it's an injustice to encapsulate it in two sentences or two paragraphs. The > blowup was not directly about Stewart's Cain impersonation, it was about > how TDS was going to respond to the criticism of FNC and others. Stewart > wanted to do a comedy piece about he is a racist about everybody and Cenac > felt that was being defensive, which acknowledged wrongdoing but made no > effort towards resolution. When Cenac brought that objection up in the > writers' room that's when Stewart blew up. After their argument, which went > from the writers' room to Stewart's office, ended, Cenac stayed on TDS for > another year as a correspondent as he did not want to return to the > writers' room. > > The end of the discussion was about an invitation Stewart extended to > Cenac to appear on the August 6 show. Cenac talked about his ambivalence > and Maron told him to put his hurt feelings behind him and go. (SNIP) >
I agree with Tom that Cenac, who is very bright and sensitive, is nuanced and complex in his discussion of his relationship with Stewart, and the entire interview is worth listening to closely. For example, he makes clear that he loves TDS (though his last few years there were a miserable torture), and he says that Stewart almost literally saved his life, when he hired him at a particularly low point in his life when he was very dark and depressed. He also says that he went in hoping to have a father-son type of relationship with Stewart, and was disappointed that he did not work that way. So part of the underlying emotional context for the incident is this dynamic where Cenac was already feeling that he was not getting as much from Stewart as he wanted. This by the way is the kind of thing other correspondents on the show have said about Stewart - not that he is an asshole, but he is very demanding, very business like, and very much focused on the show. It also goes to the point that I have made on other threads several times over the last couple of years, which is that these shows (TDS and TCR) are much, much more demanding and time-consuming than the network late night shows. No traditional late night host, even Dave or Conan in their creative heydays, spent as much time preparing per minute of air time as Stewart (and Colbert) have on their shows. I disagree a bit though with Tom about the direct trigger of the blow-up. I think it clearly was the Cain impersonation. True, it happened in the context of crafting Stewart's response to the criticism, as Tom notes above, but Cenac's objection to the planned bit (and they did eventually do this bit) was rooted in his objection to Stewart's Cain impersonation, which he clearly things is insensitive if not racist (he makes clear that he does not think Stewart is a racist). Here is a good faith transcription of the relevant part of the interview done by myself. This begins with Cenac explaining (for the third or fourth time, counting earlier attempts on the in-house listserv) his reaction to the Cain impression: "'I've got to be honest, when I heard it... I cringed a little bit, it bothered me'. And he [Stewart] got incredibly defensive, and I remember he was like, 'what are you trying to say, there's a tone in your voice', and I was like, 'there's no tone', and I was like, 'it bothered me', and I was like 'it sounded like Kingfish', and then he got upset and he stood up and he was like 'fuck off I'm done with you', and he just started screaming that to me, and he screamed it a few times, and he was like 'fuck off I'm done with you', and he stormed out, and then I didn't know if I'd been fired. And again, this was the guy who saved me, and now, multiple times he has said I'm done with you, fuck off." As I say, I actually agree with Stewart on the substance of the disagreement, but there are two serious problems with his response to Cenac. One he did take responsibility for - later that same day, and a couple of times over the rest of his tenure there, Stewart apologized for blowing up, saying he forgot he was the boss and that it was unprofessional. But Cenac basically never felt like that response got them very far, and I think it is because of Stewart's second problem, which is that he is not acknowledging the inherent problem in having one black writer on a show like that. They had emphasized to him that he was not being hired to be *The Black Guy* on the show, but because he was just a funny comedy writer. But inevitably, he knows that people (including, maybe especially, people in the Black Community) are going to look to him to voice the "Black Perspective" on things. This is illustrated when Stewart says to Cenac (paraphrasing now) "How come you never complained when I did an exaggerated Jewish accent for Shumer (and this was basically the tone of the bit that Stewart eventually did on the show that night)? Cenac responds in a way that I ultimately disagree with, but which illustrates well the deeper problem Stewart is not acknowledging, which is to say that he (Cenac) is not Jewish and Stewart is, so he trusts Stewart to check on when the line gets crossed in that direction. But when it comes to things that might offend the Black community, he (Cenac) is the one whose ass is on the line, and that people are going to look to, and so he feels obligated to push back strongly when he senses something is wrong. Again, Cenac is a sensitive guy, who admits that he wanted a father figure from Stewart and was disappointed that Stewart did not want to play that role. What he needed (I think) was someone to say "Hey Wyatt - you are not here to represent the Black Community - you are here to help us write a funny show. If you don't think what we are doing is funny, we want to hear that, but give yourself a break and don't take that whole weight on your shoulders". That would have been nice, but was and still is necessary is for Stewart to understand that he put Cenac in that position by only having one black writer on the show in the first place (and of course a similar point can be made about women in the writers room and other groups). -- -- TV or Not TV .... The Smartest (TV) People! You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TV or Not TV" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/tvornottv?hl=en --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TVorNotTV" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
