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Letters
Monday, August 28, 2006 12:00 AM

Conan's crash and burn

Conan's controversial Emmy skit.

The letters thread is now closed.

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Monday, August 28, 2006 07:53 AM

Edited

This video was cut off early to make the sketch seem much worse. The missing scene, at the end, has Conan washing up on a desert island Lost-style. It makes the parody seem not so bad, which is probably why that gossip site edited it out.

Monday, August 28, 2006 08:12 AM

sensitive, schmensitive

This skit was in the works for a long. Cut some slack!

Monday, August 28, 2006 08:34 AM

what is it with people?

This did not bug me at all. I loved it. It was not making light of real plane crashes where actual people die. I guess some people need to be told that, I do not.

Monday, August 28, 2006 08:54 AM

Eh.

"Two and a Half Men" is television's top comedy, but THIS bothers people?

Monday, August 28, 2006 08:56 AM

Not offended

I thought the skit was very funny and clever. If you watch the skit in it's entirety, it's clearly associating the crash with "Lost." Are we not supposed to watch "Lost" because sometimes plane crashes happen? Should there be no crime television because crime happens everyday?

Monday, August 28, 2006 08:56 AM

what's the problem?

Conan is hillarious! What, humor involving airline trouble is no longer acceptable? Maybe we should take the Airplane movies off the shelf too?

Monday, August 28, 2006 08:59 AM

You imply it bugs you, Kerry...

...but you provide no reason. And why did you post a version of it with the punchline missing?

Monday, August 28, 2006 09:04 AM

Out of context

Your edited version of the skit is scary....the real skit was hilarious. Just another example of manipulating emotions by the media. Shame shame shame.

Conan was edgy and funny.

Monday, August 28, 2006 09:15 AM

not controversial, very funny...

it's a entertaining show designed to celebrate tv. a plane crashes and the host can't reference Lost in a 15 second comedy piece? bleh.

Monday, August 28, 2006 09:20 AM

Life goes on....

Would anyone have been offended by the sketch if there hadn't been a crash yesterday?

Probably not.

And I'm not offended. Life goes on. If we don't laugh, then those who take things too seriously have won.

Monday, August 28, 2006 09:38 AM

Conan on a Plane

I kept waiting for the snakes.

Monday, August 28, 2006 09:48 AM

Seriously?

I think it's really a stretch to find this offensive. As others have stated, it's been taken out of context here. Were jokes about Cheney shooting his lawyer insensitive to people who have been shot? Billy Joel's car accidents jokes offensive to MADD? It was an unfortunate coincidence at most. Lighten the up!

Monday, August 28, 2006 10:03 AM

Editors: Do job

This is only the first half of the skit. Did anyone even bother to check this? Seems negligent to ask if it "bugs" us and then provide incomplete footage.

Monday, August 28, 2006 12:32 PM

you label it controversial

who says? you? so lame, read the comments. No one is buying into your nonsubject. Put the whole thing on, at least we could enjoy it.

Monday, August 28, 2006 01:06 PM

Slow news cycle, eh Kerry?

Way to bait your audience with a big heaping dose of moral outrage.

I bet you spent more time figuring out how to posture your "outrage" than you did thinking about the victims of the crash.

I think it's in poor taste to make an issue out of a 15 sec clip from a entertainment awards show when we easily have 100 other issues far more important that actually impact people other than TV critics who needed to fill their columns.

Monday, August 28, 2006 02:16 PM

I'm offended...

...by the fact that you didn't link to the whole skit. I don't have cable and I rely on VideoDog to get me the best clips from TV. Conan's usually good for a laugh or two, even when he *IS* being polically incorrect.

Monday, August 28, 2006 02:23 PM

Conan was the best part of the show

And Dash's point below is the best one I've read about this whole "controversy."

Monday, August 28, 2006 07:37 PM

So Now We Can't Even Make Jokes About Jets Crashing Because...

...some politically correct twit might foam at the mouth. Perfect. Just perfect. You know what I say?

FUCK THE MOTHERFUCKERS if they can't take a joke.

Monday, August 28, 2006 07:43 PM

drumming up controversy

First of all, as has been mentioned several times already, it makes more sense to show the whole sketch. Why? Because the whole sketch, whether of not you find it funny (and I did), had a point, and by showing the cropped version you make it seem like a simple case of horrible taste.

The reality is that this sketch has been finished for days before the kentucky crash and the emmy people probably weren't aware of the severity of the crash by air time. And even if they were...how many people were killed in auto accidents yesterday in this fair country of ours? Based on past statistics, the number probably was about 120, 3 times the amount of fatalities in Kentucky. Does that mean we shouldn't show any car crashes? Oh, and several people were victims of pedophiles too, but I haven't heard anyone criticizing the "To Catch A Predator" part of Conan's routine. Come to think of it, maybe they should have withdrawn the Emmy nominations for 'Flight 93' because that might offend any of the bereaved?

The reality is that this is an internet meme, powered by internet columnists who then fuel traditional media who then called up the tv station. If I had been a relative of the Kentucky victims, would I have been offended? No, I would have been too busy vomiting through my tears at the loss of a loved one to even comprehend it. Those who are offended on behalf of others seem to really relish their horror, even as they breathlessly link to the 'most offensive' parts of the sketch. I think that alone shows how bogus this whole 'controversy' is.

Monday, August 28, 2006 08:50 PM

Why you're all wrong

I didn't see this skit, and I don't need to, because I wrote dozens of skits like this over the years for the low-budget special events that networks put on, and I know what happened.

You've got to realize that these skits were shot days and weeks in advance of the show, written months of advance, and were actually very difficult to produce.

To pull it at the last minute would mean losing 60, 90, 120 seconds of airtime. You think the skit that was produced well before this tragic event was in bad taste...just imaging how terrible the "live" version would've been. They weren't making fun of the day's events. They were making fun of a hit TV show.

Now that we're all aware of how the world of media works, let's all agree to ignore this non-story.

Monday, August 28, 2006 09:00 PM

parody people, parody

oh come on, this was a Lost parody that had been in the works for weeks. just because it happened to coincide with a plane crash in the news is no reason to get worked up about it. and the clip did not provide the context, it cut the part on the Lost island.

why do people get so sensitive about something so insignificant? are we not supposed to portray a murder on any television show because so many people got killed in iraq today?

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